Is Doubt Evil?

“I have tempted a priest,” [Hastur] said. “As he walked down the street and saw the pretty girls in the sun, I put Doubt into his mind” (Pratchett and Gaiman 18).

A Duke of Hell proudly describes the evil deed he had done. Is doubt necessarily evil, though? Without doubting, one would be believing one thing forever, not discovering if there are any other possibilities, or if it is even true or not. That was the key, to all the magnificent and not so magnificent discoveries and inventions that had popped up through history of mankind.

Crowley, a Fallen Angel, had tempted Eve to eat the “forbidden fruit,” which gave them knowledge. If questioning things and gaining knowledge is “evil,” then, does being “good” mean being a non-thinking doll or animal of some kind? At the end of the text Crowley questions God’s intentions which both Heaven and Hell thought they understood: “why make people inquisitive, and then put some forbidden fruit where they can see it with a big neon finger flashing on and off saying ‘THIS IS IT’? …why do that if you really don’t want them to eat it, eh?” (Pratchett and Gaiman 389). It’s true. We don’t know if God had placed the tree on purpose and knew that when the first two human beings were ready to go out of the comfortable Garden of Eden, in to liminality, they would take the fruit which would give them knowledge—probably enough to survive—which would give God the reason to push them into liminality.

Like Aziraphale and Crowley discuss, everything may be all part of God’s ineffable plan and there is no way we would understand all of its aspects. Nevertheless, it does make sense why some religions believe that change is not that good. If eating the “forbidden fruit” is bad and doubt is evil, then it is natural to be resistant to any kind of evolution. It is important, however, to remember that questions led to inventions and theories, such as the Pythagorean theorem, which many people don’t consider to be evil.

Pratchett, Terry and Neil Gaiman. Good Omens. HARPERTORCH: New York, 1990.