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Friday, January 26, 2007

"Agnosticism"

Sam Harris, I think, thinks he can know. He is a scientist. He even "knows" that God doesn't exist. That is, he is literally an atheist.

I have labeled myself an agnostic with respect to God. Or an "agnostic Christian," if my answers to my own "religion survey" are to be believed.

But it occurs to me now that I am maybe an agnostic in a wider sense. I don't think that we can know everything. I'm an agnostic, that is, with respect to science, too.

And I don't mind being a lone, wide-ranging, "Thomas Painean" free-thinker. It's the way I've come now, a good deal more than midway through my life, to respond to this "human condition."

6 comments:

  1. I believe questioning the existence of God is good for the soul. It makes us search harder within ourselves.
    Basing God on what religion tells us is not.

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  2. Thank you for those words, Roxan. Dogmatic, you and I are not.

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  3. I went to a religious private school. I saw simple enjoyment of life treated as a sin and people who thought, because they enjoyed these things, they had to be "saved" over and over. I used to think "When does God stop listening?"
    I went on my own personal journey with religion and found that it isn't the same for everyone. God does not mean for us all to think the same way or to believe the same either. That's my personal conviction.

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  4. Peace,
    I always wondered why there was such a disconnect between Science and Religion. Why does it have to be either Science OR God? I understand historically there's been some tensions (to put it mildly) btw the Church and Scientists...

    but getting beyond that I find that I understand God more through Science (precision, beauty, perfection, symmetry etc) And Science has an added layer of meaning when looking at it through the prism of a gnostic.

    I can almost understand Sam Harris' rejection of "faith"...because it mirrors blind believers on the other extreme.

    I don't understand agnosticism, because it seems so uncommitted to anything.

    And then how would you derive meaning to our existence? What's the point? Is there a point? Are we just a comical abberation of a universe gone wild?

    I am really interested in the thought process, because as I have struggled in determining whether Islam is "the" path (and now I am settling for it's "a" path); i never questioned the existence of God...it just seems like everything would be too mundane for such a beautiful world.

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  5. Good morning, Maliha!

    I really like your statement and questions about agnosticism, for they challenge me to muse about this and, if I'm lucky, to advance on my "journey of self-discovery through self-exploration."

    Whether there is, or need be, a divide between religion and science is a live question today. The number of articulately religious scientists who are speaking out (even in debate with people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins) suggests that there need not be a divide. I'll think about this too and try to find out and articulate where I stand on it.

    In fact, I think I already know approximately where I stand. My belief that God "is that God is" or "is not that God is not" goes hand in hand with my belief that we live in one world, a world home to both cause and effect and to miracles (understood as transcending "cause and effect" governed by scientifically discoverable laws).

    Hmm, the phrase "scientifically discoverable laws" even reflects on my agnosticism, perhaps. That is, I am agnostic as to God and as to science, in that I don't believe that science can know everything.

    But, as I say, I'm still thinking on these things. And thanks again for your penetrating questions. But know that I can't tell you when my muse is likely to strike with something like insight. She comes in her own time, but always faithfully responsive to my sincere desire for answers. (Another of my bedrock beliefs from Jesus Christ is his "Ask and ye shall receive.")

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  6. I need to adjust my statement that my faith in my faithful muse is "another of my bedrock beliefs from Jesus Christ: his 'Ask and ye shall receive.'" For that implies that I have faith in my muse BECAUSE of what Jesus said. Not so. I have faith in my muse because of countless proofs of her being there for me. Even in my past life as a technical writer. My first professional paper was titled "Invoking the Muse of Technical Writing" and was published in the 1974 edition (I think) of the journal Technical Communication. It was even adopted as a text in technical writing courses in the University of New Mexico (I think that was the institution; I know it was in New Mexico).

    In other words, what Jesus said about asking and receiving was something I accepted "as gospel" ONLY BECAUSE of my "own experience and light of reason." Anything he said that doesn't pass that test isn't going down here.

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