Summary
Tom McLeish responds to a question submitted on Facebook about whether he ever has doubts regarding his faith.
Simon Smart asks Tom McLeish, a theoretical physicist at Durham University and the author of Faith and Wisdom in Science, a question submitted on Facebook about whether he ever has doubts regarding his faith.
This is a short segment from a longer interview. To watch the full interview, click here.
Transcript
SIMON SMART: Cecily Thew Patterson asks this: Do you personally have doubts regarding your faith and if so, what are they based on?
TOM MCLEISH: Cecily, thank you. I think we all have personal doubts. I have a good go at being an atheist every so often. It’s a little discipline that I exercise. But that’s not a doubt, it’s a self-enforced doubt. I make myself have doubts because I want to do sanity checks the whole time. Maybe all my atheist colleagues and friends are right. So, let me go and jump into their world system as much as I can and believe it and ask – is this making sense? Perhaps in answer to the previous question – that will be the thing that one day I will think, ah yes, this is better or no, this is clearer, I can see much clearer now. I think that is a risk that those who are honest about our faith commitments really have to take. I have doubts about how well I’m obeying God, how well I’m carrying out his command to love my neighbour as myself, to love him. I have huge doubts about how well I’m doing that. But we all have those doubts and we all need to go through the experience of being forgiven and getting up on our feet again every day.
