Brief Table of Contents
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Introductory Section: 🪐 Preface - 🧩 Introduction - Philosophy, Science, & Literature: 🏛 Skeptics - 🔭 Space - 🔬 Science - ♒️ River - 🔬 3 Words - ⛱ Locke - 🦖 At the Wild & Fog - 🎲 Almost Existential - 🧜🏽♀️ The Mermaid - Currents of Religion: 🌎 Many Tribes - ♒️ Currents of Sumer - ⏯ Systems - ✝︎ Francis - 🍎 Babylon - 🇫🇷 Priest 💫 Mystery - 🇮🇳 Fiction - Coda: ☠️ Ars
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Introductory Section
🪐 Preface - Situating Agnosticism - Approach, Overview, & Aim - Rivers of Change - Paradox - P.O.V. 1: Family —2: Literature —3: Fault Lines - A Positive-Sum Philosophy - Freedom of Thought
🧩 Introduction - Layout - Q & A - Core Beliefs - Two Infinities - Mysterious Heavens - Huxley’s Definition - To Believe And Not to Believe - Types of Agnosticism - Sitting on Fences - A Literary Approach - Nightingales & Unified Sensibility - Unconvinced - Agnostic Geometry - Lucia: 1—1: Parma —2: Florence —3: Rome
Part 1: Philosophy, Science, & Literature
🏛 Skeptics & Stoics - Among the Isms (chart) - Not Quite Skeptical —1 —2 - Nor Quite Stoic: 1: Meditations 2: The Bigger Picture - 3 The Uncertainty of It All 🚜 In Progress 🛠
🔭 The Sum of All Space - Third Spinning Rock from the Sun - Of Sand & Salt - Competing Explanations - Cities of God - Dogma & the Stars - The Chinese Sky - The Outer Reaches: —1 —2 - The Unknown Arcs of a Sphere - Alas, Poor Yorick
🔬 Science & Mystery - Selective Infinities - Possible Explanations - Dante’s Journey - Don’t Forget the Miller - Summa Post Theologica - Primum Mobile - Bruno & Saint Francis - Secrets & Mysteries - Two Sides of the Fence - The Crystal Ball of Science - Man’s Best Friend
♒️ A River Journey - Mountain Springs - A Chinese Interlude -Montaigne - French Currents - Riverboats & Sheep - Fry Day: The Atheist Fish - Prufrock - Rome 1: Sunset —2: Odysseus, Prufrock, etc. —3: Eye of the Gods - Heraclitus: Athens & Allahabad - Rushdie: Birds & Fishes
🔬 Three Little Words - Critical Distance - Locke’s Double Key - Locked into this World - Que Sais-je? - Teacher - Montaigne’s Balance - Pyrrho’s Equilibrium & Zhuangzi’s Pivot - Hegel’s Dialectic - Whitman’s Cosmos - Byron: Carrying Sail - Byron: Trickster of Change - Keats’ Negative Capability - The English Garden of Sense - On Warnings - The Problem with Explanations
⛱ Señor Locke - The Gringo Takes Stock - Under the Umbrellas - Campfires - Beneath the Aonian Mount 1 - Seeing Double - Train of Memory - Howling at the Moon - Aonian Mount 2 - In the Valley of Darién - Aura 1 - The Tiny Pyramids of Ra - Señor Locke & the Jaguar - Aura 2 - Cuba - Aura 3: Inside Van Gogh’s Ear — 🚜 In Progress🛠 — John Locke on the Beach of the Dead - Hotel Cervantes - The Floating World
🦖 At the Wild & Fog - A Misty Maze, But Not Without a Plan - Pope: A Mighty Maze - What the Dickens - Love Amid the Fog - God Among the Scientists - Hutton’s Hammer - Jardine’s Monkeys - Darwin’s God — 🚜 In Progress 🛠 — God & the Devil at the Inns of Court - Angels Fallen & Angelic, etc. - A Passage to Forster - From London to the Marabar Caves
🎲 Almost Existential - Poor, Bare, Forked - Between the Flippers - Doctors of Revolt - In the Shadow of Borges - The Status Quo - Hitler’s Perfect World - Ontology Precedes Epistemology - The Permeable Self - Starbucking - Cloud Illusions - Petals Fallen from a Wet Black Bough
🧜🏽♀️ The Mermaid: Existential & Then Some - The Heroine - The Wine-Dark Sea - The Miller - Neptune - The Queen of Love - Beyond Alienation - Myth & Mysticism
Part 2: Currents of Religion
🌎 Many Tribes - Overview - Six Versions of Infinity - The Creation of Outcasts - A Specific Version of Infinity - Nothing in Damascus - Myth & Religion - East & West - One God - Anti-Definitions - All Those Things the Wise Men Say
♒️ The Currents of Sumer - Introduction & Overview - Currents of History - The Whore - The Flood - The Exegete & the Philologist - Zero & Positive Sums - More Zero Sums - Gaming Out - The Bounty of Sumer & Akkad - Friendly Gods - Again, Minus 1 Plus 1 - Rewind & Fast-Forward - Grace: The Most Positive Sum - Myths of Sin & Divinity - The Archaeology of Mystery - Post & Other Scripts - The Return of Enlil
⏯ Systems - Mere Religion? - Systems of Dread - Currents of Christianity - Abraham’s Vice - Agoraphobia - Selective Grace - Exclusive Geographies - Christianity 2.0 - Systems of Operation - Veils - Gods & Souls - The Scoundrels of Theology - Versions of Deity - Churches of Thought - Unlimited Agnosticism - “Open Your Heart” —1 —2 —3
✝︎ St. Francis - Rapt Angel - San Francisco - The Baby & the Bathwater - Keeping Baby - Believe It or Else - Pascal’s Wager 1: Pensées —2: It Isn’t Necessary to Wager —3: God & Infinity —4: Zhuangzi in Tipasa —5: The Cosmic Casino - Holy Dreamers - From Kerry to Crete - Canticle to the Stars
🍎 The Apple-Merchant of Babylon - The Genealogy of Mortals - Moses & the Apple Merchants - Gods - Golden Calves - The Holy Bin - Final Judgments - Aziz - The Confused Astronomers of Babylon —1 —2 - In the Beginning - Adam & the Snake - West
🇫🇷 The Priest’s Dilemma - Rivers of God - Pinpoints of Light - Golden Triangle - Nineveh - Que Sais-je? - Priest & Pastor
💫 Believing in the Mystery - Introduction: Daoism & Whitman’s Transcendentalism - I: The God That Has No Name - A Global Picture — 🚜 In Progress 🛠 — II: The Self That Has No Definition - III: The Way That Has No Path
🇮🇳 The Fiction of Doubt — 🚜 In Progress 🛠 — Rise of the Simurg - All the Letters Mixed Up - When Religions Collide - Coming Together - Eruptions of the Sacred - Return of the Simurg - Flapping Eagle - Two Adams - Amina: The Rock - The Poet & the Three Weird Sisters - Flight of Angels
Coda
☠️ Ars Moriendi - Teeing Off - Batter’s Up! - Sky Train - Dying by the Law - Post Scriptum, Post Mortem, Agnosticum - On Time - Like Flies to Wanton Boys - The Deadly Force of Chance - Living by the Numbers - Dying by the Numbers - The Readiness Is All - Beyond Whose Bourn - The Pageant Faded
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Next: 🪐 Preface: Situating Agnosticism
Table of Contents - Annotated Contents - Layout - Core Beliefs