(Part 1 of a collection of science and religion articles)
What is agnosticism?
- Imagine saying that you knew how to cook flawless French cuisine without truly knowing what France was. This is the mistake that most agnostics try to avoid, but on a grander, more complex scale.
So great a power was never meant to be understood by mortal men. What kind of person would I possibly be if I claimed to understand the clockwork of the universe and the hand that moves it? The only item that I can be certain about is that I will never know the truth until I am dust in the ground. A negative perspective? Not really. In fact, it rather puts me in my place as a human being. For millennia humans have crusaded across the globe because their god or gods or spirits or ancestors or divine kings told them to do so. How arrogant! Perhaps we believe too much that a higher power would be interested in what we little, insignificant mortals do with ourselves. I’d rather believe that some omnipotent force that created the universe would have its hands full, wouldn’t you? Rather than some omnipotent force playing us all as pawns.
There is nothing wrong with spending a lifetime questing for the truth of the matter. Questing for the truth usually implies a thirst for knowledge, and we can never have too much knowledge at our disposal. But given the scale of the subject of omnipotence, I am content to stay somewhat out of the loop. Uncorrupted, one might say. I’m not saying that all religious people are corrupt. Far from it. I know many men and women alike that practice a religion of some description or another but have an open mind and tolerance for those around them who don’t practice as they do.
I have a certain appreciation for living with the notion that because I do not understand the omnipotent, I do not have to question its nature when tragedy befalls us. Agnosticism allows for random chance and contrary without needing to know precisely why (or claiming to know, for that matter).
In 1997, my father and I attended a lecture by an astronomer who discovered a comet, Dr. Alan Hale. During his lecture he awed us with slides that had been taken by the Hubble Telescope, and the images put things into perspective for me. Among the most incredible of images was one in which millions of tiny, colorful starlike dots were smattered against blackness. The scale of the photo was the equivalent of a mere pinprick in our sky, but each of those colorful dots was its very own galaxy. Millions of them, going on and on and on out of our meager view. It was staggering to see that a miniscule pinprick of our sky produced so much… and so much mystery as well. The awe and wonder that filled me when I saw that photograph was one that could not be compared to anything else. I began slipping from conventional faith and instead found myself submerged in new questions but not one solid answer. What could possibly have created so much, and why were the religious folk convinced that this creative cosmic force was only focused upon our world? How far does that universe go, and if it is finite then where is the center, for surly the center of the universe (if there is such a thing- an infinite universe cannot have a center) would hold most of the clues for discovering how we came to be? These questions, I understood, would not be answered with nonchalance. It would not and could not be answered by a single book of historical and religious texts. It certainly could not be answered by one man claiming to be a prophet, nor could even the most brilliant scientist explain it. In its vastness, the universe and the power that moves all things in it cannot be retained and understood in our gray matter, no matter how hard we try or how long we wish it to be so.
This is agnosticism.