I’m Certain I Will Be Seeing “The Rite.”

I haven’t yet seen the new movie, “The Rite,” starring Anthony Hopkins, but I’m looking forward to it, based on the look and feel of the trailer, the fact that the director seems to have a taste for horror, and that Anthony Hopkins is one of our very finest working film actors. I recognize that such stories – a thriller about exorcisms – often conclude by upholding the status quo and embracing a religious point of view in some way. Perhaps I’ll come back to this space with a review once I see it.

Meanwhile, here’s an interesting related item:

“Anthony Hopkins reveals the secret atheist message he put into The Rite

http://m.io9.com/5744377/anthony-hopkins-reveals-the-secret-atheist-message-he-put-into-the-rite

It seems that Hopkins ad-libbed a line for his character – a priest – which expresses a clear sense of uncertainty in his own beliefs – and which in fact, Hopkins says, reflects his own personal beliefs. Comments Hopkins, “I don't know what I believe, myself personally.”

Nevermind that the headline of this piece is ridiculous – it labels as “atheist” a line that is clearly agnostic. Give a failing grade to that headline writer.

But that aside, on the face of it, I’m pleased Hopkins inserted the line. However, while I remain a fan of the actor, and indeed the person from what I know of him as a public figure, nevertheless, I disagree with his philosophical musings.

“I would hate to live in a world of certainty,” Hopkins declares. And he offers that, "Hitler knew the truth, so did Stalin, so did Mao Zedong, so did the Inquisition. They all knew the truth and that caused such horror. Certainty is the enemy.

This is relativism of the worst sort – implying the post-modern notion that there is no such thing as a testable truth. Those men certainly did not know truth. On the contrary, they were simply all too certain of what they declared to be truth, without rational evidence. They thought they knew something -- and they were WRONG. They believed in bad ideas. H.L. Mencken said, “The most fundamental of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.” It can also amount to the most fundamental of all evils.

Certainty is NOT the enemy. But it is also not the point. I suppose it cannot be said enough, that science is not really about certainty – it’s about a kind of temporary certainty. The fact is, science embraces uncertainty. But at the same time, science is also about seeking truth -- and being certain about it, for a while at least, until we know better.