Gospel & Universe 🍏 Starting Points

A Philosophy of Doubt

Possibilities - Bridges of Myth - Borders

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Possibilities

Hard agnostics say that no one can know whether or not this spiritual realm exists. Open agnostics say that they don’t know, but that other people might. They’re also open to the possibility that atheists and agnostics will know in the future. But until that future comes, agnostics remain puzzled by those who profess to know that there is — or isn’t — a spiritual realm.

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Bridges of Myth

To me, agnosticism ranges far beyond the basic dichotomy of believing or not believing in God. This is because in exploring religion and science agnostics observe how the truths of both change throughout history and across geography. 

Take one small example: the Irish figure of Finn McCool (a.k.a. Fionn mac Cumhaill). Finn’s story comes from a Gaelic culture full of folklore and myth, yet this same culture allows for the superimposition of another set of stories. These other stories are about a man who can walk on water, who traces his lineage to a Middle Eastern tribe, which traces its lineage to a man and woman in a garden with a tree in it. In this garden there’s a magical apple that they’re not supposed to eat. The Irish figure of Finn is from a pagan culture, yet he travels across time, from a world of druids and naturalistic geometric designs to a world of priests and crucifixes.

Irish narratives undergo a metamorphosis, as the old Gaelic stories get modified by the new Christian ones, and as the old pagan gods dwindle into fairies and the old folk heroes expand into Giants. Wikipedia’s entry on the Giant’s Causeway notes:

in Irish mythology, Fionn mac Cumhaill is not a giant, but a hero with supernatural abilities, contrary to what this particular legend may suggest. In Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888), it is noted that, over time, "the pagan gods of Ireland [...] grew smaller and smaller in the popular imagination until they turned into the fairies; the pagan heroes grew bigger and bigger until they turned into the giants.”

As a giant, Finn builds a causeway of rocks from Ireland to Scotland in order to fight the giant Benandonner. In one of the stories, Finn hears that Benandonner is very big and strong, so his wife disguises him by dressing him up as a baby. When the Scottish giant sees the baby — and the ‘baby’ bites his finger! — he thinks, If this is Finn’s baby, how big is Finn? Benandonner then flees back to Scotland, en route destroying the causeway. The remains can be seen along the coast about 100 kilometres north of Belfast:

These splintered hexagonal rocks are a wonder of nature, yet mythic stories give them meanings that have nothing to do with science.

Humans do this everywhere. For instance, a river is a hydrological fact, yet the Jordan becomes sacred, the Ganges becomes a goddess, and the Styx becomes the underground border between life and death. A mountain in the Sinai desert is a geological fact, yet it becomes sacred when Moses climbs it and God gives him the ten commandments. Elsewhere, Shiva shakes the cosmos when he makes love with his consort Parvati on Mount Kailasa, and Attar’s birds convene their mystical conference on the peak of Mount Qaf. 

For agnostics — and for many poets and geomorphologists — these are wonderful stories about rivers and mountains. But for believers these stories constitute a sacred geography, the divine plan of deities superimposed on the topography of Earth.

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E.M. Forster makes an interesting observation in his 1924 novel A Passage to India:

The Ganges, though flowing from the foot of Vishnu and through Siva’s hair, is not an ancient stream. Geology, looking further than religion, knows of a time when neither the river nor the Himalayas that nourished it existed, and an ocean flowed over the holy places of Hindustan.

Looking at the larger currents of religious history, we can see that Mesopotamian religion preceded Judaeo-Christianity, and that astronomy and geology preceded evolution and genetics. These are deep and complex shifts in time, space, and understanding. Tracing the influence of one thing on another is no easy matter. 

For instance, it was only in 1872 that an English philologist named George Smith discovered that the story of Noah and the Ark derives from a polytheistic narrative that was common in the Mesopotamian world in the 2nd millennium B.C. Smith’s philology, combined with Copernicus’ astronomy, Hutton’s geology, and Darwin’s evolution made many late 19th century thinkers conclude that history and science held the most plausible explanation for our existence. The question remained, and remains: Is science — especially the combination of neurology, psychology, and history — the most plausible explanation for systems of belief?

The case for science is a strong one, given that, unlike religion, it hasn’t much changed its fundamental principles over time and across space. The empirical method was articulated by the Ancient Greeks, and by Medieval scholars like Hasan Ibn al-Haytham and Roger Bacon. The various fields — astronomy, geology, natural science, etc. — coalesced into a general theory of evolution in the mid-19th century.

Yet in the case of religion, truths merged and diverged throughout history. They also developed very differently according to their geography, the religions of the West differing markedly from those of the East. 

In the West, Christianity diverged from Judaism to become the Early Church, which whittled down the variety of Classical belief systems into two categories: false heresies and true beliefs. This Early Church later diverged into three groups: the Roman and Orthodox Churches diverged in the 11th century; Protestantism diverged from Catholicism in the 16th century, after which Protestants splintered into countless denominations. Islam likewise diverged from Judaism to make one religion, which then diverged into Sunni and Shia, and into various sub-categories of each.

In the East, Daoism and Confucianism developed by themselves in China, whereas Buddhism derived from Hinduism. Some refer to a Chinese religion, which is a fusion of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. Daoism strays farthest from an organized religion with a strict set of doctrines. It’s elusive version of God (the Dao or the Way) resembles a mix of Mother Nature and Shelley’s Neoplatonic One:

The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters—with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

— from “Mont Blanc,” Part I

Hinduism started off as a mystic union of Vedic poets along the Saraswati River, named after the goddess of writing, music, language, and art. Hinduism later splintered into six main schools, two of which are most dominant today: non-dualism, which focuses on a Deity that pervades everything in the physical and transcendental universe; and qualified non-dualism, which focuses on specific deities such as Krishna, Shiva, or Kali. These two groups merge in the notion that however many expressions of gods and powers there may be, they all converge in the greater concept of Deity, which subsumes absolutely everything that exists.

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Agnostics examine these religious developments across time and space, and then marvel when they hear believers call their faiths a solid Rock. If these faiths are rocks, then they are rocks that jut out of the earth, rising and falling in the surges of Time — like the stepping stones Finn McCool built on the Irish shore:

Are religious myths bridges that unite people? Or are they like the bridge Finn McCool built to fight his Scottish neighbour? Religion is often blamed for so many intractable animosities between people, whether individuals or groups. Yet religion often prevents people from killing each other. It counsels us to love our neighbour and to exercise forbearance and charity. And yet how many battles have been fought over this or that version of Christianity, and over this or that version of Islam? How many crusades have been waged over which is the true faith, Christianity or Islam? And how many burning trains went back-and-forth during Partition, between Calcutta and Dacca, between Amritsar and Lahore? Agnostics watch the tragic battle of theologies and wonder, What the hell?

But it isn’t only religion that shakes the air with thunder and rains down catastrophe from the sky. Science, pride, and materialistic greed too often combine to create glide bombs and genocides. The vicious strains of human culture take each technology and find a way to blast their neighbours with death. Jonathan Swift got this right when he mockingly marvels, with his idiot Gulliver, at the invention of gunpowder:

In hopes to ingratiate myself further into his majesty's favour, I told him of an invention, discovered between three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder, into a heap of which, the smallest spark of fire falling, would kindle the whole in a moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it all fly up in the air together, with a noise and agitation greater than thunder. That a proper quantity of this powder rammed into a hollow tube of brass or iron, according to its bigness, would drive a ball of iron or lead, with such violence and speed, as nothing was able to sustain its force. That the largest balls thus discharged, would not only destroy whole ranks of an army at once, but batter the strongest walls to the ground, sink down ships, with a thousand men in each, to the bottom of the sea, and when linked together by a chain, would cut through masts and rigging, divide hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste before them. That we often put this powder into large hollow balls of iron, and discharged them by an engine into some city we were besieging, which would rip up the pavements, tear the houses to pieces, burst and throw splinters on every side, dashing out the brains of all who came near. That I knew the ingredients very well, which were cheap and common; I understood the manner of compounding them, and could direct his workmen how to make those tubes, of a size proportionable to all other things in his majesty's kingdom, and the largest need not be above a hundred feet long; twenty or thirty of which tubes, charged with the proper quantity of powder and balls, would batter down the walls of the strongest town in his dominions in a few hours, or destroy the whole metropolis, if ever it should pretend to dispute his absolute commands. This I humbly offered to his majesty, as a small tribute of acknowledgment, in turn for so many marks that I had received, of his royal favour and protection.

Swift wrote three hundred years ago, yet it only gets worse. Together, the worst of religion and science scratch their traces across the holy ether and the molecular air, as our gods fly downward to avenge our enemies, and our high-tech, unmanned drones fly downward to the cities of Novgorod and Kiev. 

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Borders

The more agnostics look into the depth and variety of history and geography leading to specific versions of religion, the more they wonder how the fluid truths of religion can be neatly defined, let alone divided off from each other? How, for instance, can the complex human brain that believes in Christianity, Hinduism, or Daoism be so categorically fixed into the one religion it believes? Add to this that we are only at one moment in time and space, and that there may be many more developments to come. There may be more options than 1. this physical world and 2. the spiritual realms of our great religions. The universe is enormous, and perhaps there are ways of being and understanding that defy our present parameters. We may be like a New World shaman in 1491, yet to see a colourful flag on a high mast.

In its lack of doctrines and borders, agnosticism shares much with ❧ literature, which mirrors reality in all its possibilities, with ❧ science, which explores the universe in all its forms, and with ❧ free-thinking mysticism, which explores all states of psychology, spirituality, and consciousness. Hard agnostics might wince at my inclusion of mysticism, which could be defined as the merging of the self with an imminent or transcendental God, with what Marcus Aurelius calls the Universal Mind, or with the Spirit or Mystery of Nature. Yet open agnostics entertain such mystical possibilities, especially if the theological framework isn’t an inclusive or intolerant one — that is, if it doesn’t require you to forego or disdain other forms of thinking.

Agnostics who have mystical experiences generally don’t know what to conclude from their experiences. Just because they feel an expansive unity, does this mean there’s a God, a Heaven, an eternal soul, or even some vague otherworldly fifth-dimensional realm? Experiences of oneness or cosmic connection may be functions of our animal state, or they may be linked to some theological design. Who really knows?

For instance, let’s say that you have the type of experience William Blake describes in “Auguries of Innocence.” You feel that you are holding Infinity in the palm of your hand. Agnostic would note that this isn’t a usual or rational way of expressing a deep feeling of connection and expansiveness, but they understand that it’s a poetic way of trying to articulate a feeling or state of mind. Yet when Blake suggests that you can see Heaven in a Wild Flower, agnostics would wonder what this means. Open agnostics would withhold comment and wait for further insight and context. Hard agnostics would more assertively question the notion of a Heaven. They’d ask, “How do you know that your experience connects to place or concept called Heaven?” 

This suggests the following principle: the less a mystical experience is linked to a specific theology, the easier it is to see it as part of a continuum or an overlapping of physical and metaphysical worlds. For instance if you articulate your experience in terms of Krishna or Christ, you evoke theological systems which many see as incompatible with history or with each other. It becomes hard to see how one of these systems can operate, let alone the two of them at the same time. On the other hand, if you articulate your experience in terms of a feeling of oneness or love, this is more easily reconciled with the love that mammals share or the divine love that religions promote.

The thing that most distinguishes open from hard agnosticism is that the open variety assumes that we can’t know whether other people’s experiences are illusions or whether they’re embedded in a specific religious system of metaphysical Truth. Hard agnostics would be very skeptical of someone who paired Infinity with anything so specific as a Heaven, that is, as distinct from a cycle of natural regeneration or reincarnation. Hard agnostics would say that no one can know such specific things about Infinity, or about the way it might connect to a spiritual realm. Yet open agnostics aren’t quite so too quick to assign strict categories and inflexible associations. Perhaps Blake’s Heaven can also be Krishnaloka or Devaloka, which are versions of Heaven that operate temporarily within the superstructure of reincarnation. Or perhaps the notion of Heaven is just a poetic way of pointing toward Infinity. In this sense, it would echo the secular opening line, “To see a World in a Grain of Sand.” Why not approach the question from all angles, giving other people the benefit of the doubt? Who knows? perhaps they’re right.

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Open agnostics don’t use doubt to separate themselves from what others believe or don’t believe. Rather, they use doubt as a lever to free themselves from fixed and restrictive ideas, and to launch themselves into the unknown. There, they may find that realism and science lead most reliably to truth. For instance, they may locate their version of a capitalized Infinity in the contemplation of space, from the subatomic to the astronomic. And yet I imagine an astronomer being so dazzled by the immensity of the starry heavens that he starts mixing the scientific with the mystical. I imagine him five thousand metres above the Atacama Desert, spellbound in the thin air of Chile’s ALMA observatory. He looks again and again at the acronym for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, and wonders if it can also mean SOUL.

Open agnostics may find wonder in the universe of facts, or they may find it in the magic of Krishna on his chariot, Christ on the water, or Guanyin on her mountain in the sea:

Perhaps religion is just a trick that language and symbol play upon our desire for a magical realm. Perhaps it’s just a function of our desire to escape this hard world of facts and wars and greed. Or perhaps the magic is real in some symbolic or mysterious way…

Perhaps there really is a spiritual realm that lies deep in outer space, in a place called Heaven of Krishnaloka. Perhaps there’s a divine spark inside our human flesh and bone, somewhere deep in the blood of our hearts, or in the currents and waves of the human brain. Perhaps the Kena Upanishad is right when it asserts that God isn’t what we think, but rather that by which we think. That is, God isn’t our conception of Deity, but rather the greater Power that allows us to imagine the concept of Deity. Perhaps what’s important isn’t what we see but rather that by which we see; isn’t what we know but rather that by which we know; isn’t what we believe but rather that by which we believe. Perhaps one day we’ll find that God “is that toward which the mind moves, as it were, that by which it is ever aware and that which forms its purpose.”

Or perhaps we won’t find any such thing.

The main point about open agnosticism isn’t that we find or don’t find a spiritual dimension. It’s that we remain open to the possibility.

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Next: 🍏 A Middle Position

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