Doubt does not undermine belief. It is central to belief, an indispensable part of accepting God and the mandates of a religious tradition. Even fervent believers have doubts -- lots of them.

My friend was having trouble reconciling the fact that I am both a scientist whom she respects and someone who calls himself a Christian. How do I tell my friend that being a Christian has not always been foundationally defined on belief, but a transformative way of newly living, a faith?

This has been happening to me my entire life. My "Catholicism" seems to rest on my belief about one single, solitary scenario: what to do about an unexpected pregnancy. How, in a world filled with as much trouble as ours, did my faith get reduced to that singular question?

Those of us committed to rigorous inquiry must welcome the doubts that younger Americans are expressing. For too long doubt has acquired the hallmark of paralysis and stagnation when it's actually a catalyst for change and renewal.

The devout understandably want to view their faith as inevitable -- as existing beyond chance, contingency and debate. Close examination of key passages in the Bible underscores, by contrast, that the book they worship is far from reliable.

When it comes to the discussion of religion -- or, for my theological colleagues, the discussion of doctrine -- no questions should be pulled off the table. We need questions to keep us honest.

When conversations in our culture center on religious issues and doubt, false dichotomies are always given as the only choices. But belief is never that neat or clean.

As HBO's Big Love heads into its final season, series creators are turning their attention back to the bread-and-butter themes that have made the show so compelling: faith and family.

Without doubt, life would simply be a series of packaged assumptions, none of them tested, none of them sure, and all of them belonging not to us, but to someone else whose truth we have made our own.

Just as the lonesome call of the loon authenticates the Canadian wilderness, unanswered questions are reliable markers for genuine faith.