Deep Life Reflections: Friday Five
Issue 110 - Certain
Welcome to Issue 110 of Deep Life Reflections, where each week I share my thoughts on what I’m reading, watching, and thinking about.
This week, we explore the terrain of certainty. Two relevant works mark our path. In God Is Not Great, the late Christopher Hitchens delivers his eloquent case against organised religion. Meanwhile, in the Oscar-nominated Conclave, we are sealed inside the shadowed halls of the Vatican, witnessing one of the most secretive and ancient rituals—the selection of a new Pope. Both works interrogate the allure of certainty and suggest that doubt, if correctly held, may be our salvation.
Before we begin, a short announcement I’m proud to share: I’ve been named a Finalist in the 2025 Berlin Photo Awards. My submission, Walk, was selected as part of this year’s international shortlist for its “Creativity, Originality, and Technical Excellence.” It captures the kind of quiet, reflective moments that Deep Life Journey stands for. The Winners will be announced on April 27 by a panel of judges. I’m happy just to have made it this far.
Now, join me for another walk as we explore this week’s Friday Five.
1. What I’m Reading
God Is Not Great. By Christopher Hitchens.
I often wonder what Christopher Hitchens—who died in 2011—would have made of our current polarised times. A ferocious debater, writer, and intellect—and, for many of his adversaries, an irritant more persistent than the common housefly—Hitchens was irresistible to watch, read, and listen to: scathing, blunt, and brilliant.
In Issue 33, I wrote about Hitchens being interviewed by British journalist Jeremy Paxman. Hitchens, dying of cancer at the time, was asked why he hadn’t embraced Pascal’s Wager—the idea that a non-believer might hedge their bets by converting at the end, just in case God is real.
Hitchens replied:
“If I’m facing such a tribunal, I would say ‘I hope you noticed that I didn’t try to curry favour—that I was honestly unable to believe the claims made by your human spokespersons.’”
In other words, if God is all-knowing, He would already know that Hitchens would refuse to grovel. Or, in more Hitchens-esque shorthand: Surely God would prefer the honest dissenter to the cowardly convert.
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is Hitchens’ case against religion. Its title leaves little room for ambiguity, and I suspect Hitchens wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. In less than 300 pages, he puts all the major religious texts in the dock—Christianity, Islam, Judaism, even Buddhism—and delivers his indictment with clarity and force: that religions are man-made, corrupt, dangerously sexually repressive, intellectually dishonest, and a distortion of the real marvels of our world. That religion is not just false, but harmful.
In place of hell, Hitchens proposes the Hubble Telescope and its awe-inspiring view of the universe. Instead of Moses and the burning bush, he points us to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix. The concept of an all-imposing God, he argues, has left humanity with life-changing injuries. Religion, in his view, is a man-made wound—passed down through generations, each time demanding submission, further deepening the infection.
Our salvation—if Hitchens would be comfortable using that word—lies in secular humanism; a term he was happy to apply to himself. It’s a philosophy rooted in human reason, logic, and science, rejecting religious dogma and superstition as the basis for morality and decision-making. Real wonder, he argues, is found in looking at the Milky Way, or marvelling at the magnificent cathedrals, mosques, and synagogues we—human beings—have built with our own labour, effort, and imagination.
Unlike many of today’s influencers, Hitchens wasn’t just opinionated—he had the intellectual armour to back it up. And he was more than happy to debate. He did so in a memorable debating exchange with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2010, proposing against the motion, ‘Religion is a force for good in the world.’ What’s noticeable, watching that debate today, isn’t just the clarity of the arguments from both sides, but the respect for the form. A low bar perhaps. But a bar nonetheless.
God Is Not Great is treated by many as inherently controversial because of its stance. Yet, if we take the opposite—a book that affirms faith—it receives a cultural pass. But if we truly believe in intellectual freedom, why is one claim considered sacred and the other inflammatory?
To take this further, a defence of faith is seen as noble and grounding, while a rejection is seen as combative and morally reductive. We call Hitchens combative. But faith—by definition—is a claim. To say, “God exists” is no less provocative than to say, “He doesn’t.” The difference is one has tradition on its side; the other has only doubt.
One is free to agree or disagree with Hitchens—and he would be the last person to want your agreement if it came cheaply—but his view is simply another worldview, one that places its trust not in the divine, but in the human.
One might even say Hitchens does have faith—just not the kind people naturally think of. He believes in reason, literature, argument, and above all, dignity and moral courage. He had many friends and acquaintances who were deeply religious. And yet, it didn’t dilute his conviction—or his friendships.
Hitchens believed in progress and enlightenment, despite (and perhaps because of) his own awareness of human cruelty.
And that the world might be a better place without ‘Him’.
But he’d have insisted on hearing the case for the Defence.
2. What I’m Watching
Conclave. Directed by Edward Berger.
“Certainty is the great enemy of unity… Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts.”
– Cardinal Lawrence, Conclave
Working my way through this year’s Academy Award-nominated films, Conclave is a film about the holy trinity of faith, power, and compromise—and how doubt may be the most sacred quality of all. I happened to watch it around two weeks before the death of Pope Francis, giving the film today an added cultural relevance and poignancy.
As the world watches for a new Pontiff to emerge, we have a film dedicated to that very process—one of the most secretive and ancient on the planet. One hopes there is a little less drama in the real-life version, although I suppose we’ll never know.
Based on the novel by Robert Harris, Conclave is a smart, sophisticated, and atmospheric political thriller. The film opens with the death of the Pope and the selection of a new one. Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence (Oscar-nominated Ralph Fiennes) is tasked with overseeing the process—the papal conclave.
It becomes clear this is no straightforward task. As with any power vacuum, ambition fills the void. Several candidates emerge as contenders, each representing a distinct theological and ideological future.
Cardinal Lawrence hopes his colleagues will settle on Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci), who shares his desire to move the church more fully into the 21st century. They represent the progressive vote. In competition is Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellito), a reactionary figure who believes that opening up the church to different races and genders has diluted its power. Liberal versus conservative. Doctrine versus reform. One might only look at our current political spectrum to see a parallel.
Conclave remains fully insular—we never once leave the Vatican, even as outside events rage beyond its walls. Director Edward Berger takes us behind the secret closed doors of the Catholic Church. We’re confined to its cloistered halls, its dim corridors, its candlelit chambers—each cardinal sealed in isolation, yet surrounded by centuries of ritual and politics.
The production design is striking—the electric red of the cardinal’s robes burning against the shadows and unlit spaces of the Vatican, creating both an ancient and urgent atmosphere. Meanwhile, the outside world continues to wait for the white smoke that signals the election of a new pope. And they wait.
The moral and intellectual centre of the film is Cardinal Lawrence—a man trying to do the right thing at a time when he has lost his own faith. Fiennes is superb in the role, delivering one of the best scenes in the film during his address to the College of Cardinals:
“Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance… Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore, no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts.”
That line becomes the film’s thesis: certainty, though seductive, is corrosive. Doubt, held correctly, becomes a kind of respect.
Mystery is central to the film: covert negotiations, competing visions, and questions about what the Church is and what it should become: liberal and tolerant or a return to something more punitive and hierarchical. Again, audiences watching now can’t help but consider this in light of the real trials and crises of the Catholic Church—past and present.
While the Church no longer holds global dominance, the office of the Pope still carries immense symbolic weight.
The film builds towards a thoughtful if controversial climax. Isabella Rossellini has a small but potent role as a nun. It’s her voice—ironic, given she is constrained by tradition—that carries the impact that reverberates beyond the Vatican walls.
Conclave isn’t just a film about religion and an ancient process. It’s about any system of belief where compromise is necessary and certainty is dangerous. The Church, like any human institution, hinges not on who is most right, but who is least wrong.
Faith, like politics, is forged in rooms of compromise.
And doubt lingers.
3. What I’m Contemplating
A timely pairing of works to reflect on this week, given the impending papal conclave—traditionally convened 15-20 days after a pontiff’s death. Once assembled in the Sistine Chapel, 135 cardinal electors will swear an oath of absolute secrecy and begin their deliberations.
The idea that “certainty is the enemy of unity” runs through both God Is Not Great and Conclave.
Christopher Hitchens—despite his boldness—was humble enough to admit he wasn’t certain what happened after death. But he was certain of one thing: that nobody else did either.
If God Is Not Great argued that faith without doubt is dangerous, Conclave makes the opposite case: that faith without doubt isn’t faith at all.
Doubt, then, is not weakness or indecision, but something essential to personal integrity—and perhaps a greater understanding of our world as it truly is.
We’re conditioned to see doubt as failure. But doubt, rightly held—as suggested in Conclave—can be a form of reverence. Not for institutions, systems, or authority, but for truth, complexity, and the humanity of others.
Both works interrogate certainty. And both suggest that it’s the tension between knowing and not knowing that makes us human.
I’ve had decisions this week that sit in that same uneasy chasm. I like certainty—most of us do—which makes anything uncertain challenging. But maybe there’s something to practice in not knowing. In letting that tension exist, without trying to resolve it too soon. Or accepting that it might not be resolved at all.
We are not saved by certainty.
We are saved, perhaps, by our willingness to stay with uncertainty.
4. A Quote to note
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
- Voltaire
5. A Question for you
What uncertainty in your life might you be learning to live with?
Thanks for reading and being part of the Deep Life Journey community. If you have any reflections on this issue, please leave a comment. Have a great weekend.
James
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