re: #33 Prof. Backpfeifengesicht, PhD

To explain my aversion to the title: doubt is one of the cornerstones of the modern democratic civilization. The opposite of doubt is dogma. So by casting doubt as something negative the authors not only do disservice to science, reason, etc., but also fall into a trap: “Oh, you reject doubt, you dogmatists!”. All this could have been avoided through the use of qualifiers such as “unreasonable”.

As John Ralston Saul points out, reason and doubt are not quite the same thing. In the modern definition of reason doubt is actively denied.