On Agnosticism

 Why I'm an Agnostic

Humans seem to fear nothing more than uncertainty, which is why they tend to just make shit up. As members of a generally dimwitted species, most humans need myths just to get out of bed in the morning.

In my experience, the main personality difference between a theist, an atheist, and an agnostic is that agnostics don’t ram their beliefs—or disbeliefs—down your throat. Atheists weren’t always that way, but they’ve become increasingly pushy and arrogant to the point where they’ve eclipsed even religious fundamentalists in their intolerance for anyone who doesn’t join their team.

To explain why I identify as an agnostic, it’s necessary to define my terminology. I’ll explain what these words mean to me—and don’t come barking at me with dictionary definitions, because unlike numbers, the meaning of words is forever in flux. I’ll lay out how I define these terms and build a framework from there.

The fundamental question of existence is, “How did we get here?” To answer that question, I believe people can generally take one of three approaches:

A “theist” is someone who believes a personal God—an entity discrete from the rest of the universe—created the universe for reasons that are either selfish, compassionate, sadistic, or inscrutable.

An “atheist” is someone who believes—and the emphasis is on the word “believes,” because I can’t see how it can possibly be proved—that existence suddenly sprang from nothingness.

An “agnostic” is someone who admits they have no clue how the universe originated. The word itself derives from the Greek agnostos, meaning “unknown” or “unknowable.” For my purposes, I’ll stick with “unknown” and allow the possibility that the universe’s origins may one day be knowable.I don’t call myself an “agnostic” because I think there’s a 50% possibility that, say, Christianity may be true, but strictly because I am incapable of explaining the universe’s origins. As I see it, the word “agnostic” has very little to do with the idea of God.

When it comes to world religions, I think the Western monotheistic ones are by far the dumbest. It seems obvious that they’re all projections of human traits onto imaginary deities in order to establish cohesive tribal myths. Christianity is probably the most imbecilic major religion ever concocted. As someone who has a son, I can’t see how it’s an act of love to send your own son off to be crucified—if anything, it seems like a punk move. And Islam, with its eternally touchy and pissed-off God, is likewise nonsensical. Judaism, with its whole “chosen people” shtick, appears to be racist, if you’re worried about such things.

Eastern religions seem to make more sense because if they posit a deity at all—some would say Buddhism is nontheistic—it is one that permeates everything. That’s more reasonable than the Western notion of a God who is in some way separate from the rest of existence. If God can be separate from something, then he obviously has limits and therefore isn’t all-powerful.

Still, atheism seems to require blind faith in the idea that the universe just occurred at random, that everything suddenly decided to belch forth from the void. It also depends on a blind faith that human cognition is capable of grasping the universe’s origins.

Stephen Hawking writes:

Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing….

I’m amazed his editors let him get away with that. Wouldn’t a six-year-old ask, “But where did the law of gravity come from?”

I agree that theists have a burden of proof hanging on them—if you insist there’s a God, then PROVE it. But the same could be said for atheists—if you believe everything came from nothing, PROVE it. Good luck with that.

I also allow the possibility that reality is multidimensional and that every idea ever posited may be simultaneously true, but then you’re venturing into multiverses, alternate pasts and futures, and speed-freak sci-fi Philip K. Dick territory. At this crude point in our evolution, we’re not even sure what an “idea” is.

Ultimately, the bedrock of my agnosticism is the suspicion that humans may simply be too goddamned dumb to figure out the nature of existence. It may not have anything to do with primitive, addle-brained conceptions such as “God.” It’s probably hanging right there in front of our faces, but our powers of comprehension may be insufficient to get the hint. It’s like walking up to a platypus and telling him what your favorite episode of Seinfeldis. Platypuses simply don’t seem wired to grasp the concept of what constitutes a “sitcom.” And life is a sitcom that always ends in death.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to understand. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use science, logic, and math to navigate our way through the world— they’re currently our best tools for forging ahead through dark waters. I have confidence in the seafaring vessel called science—the problem is that the ship’s captain may be a moron.

Some will accuse me of being a fence-sitter, but that requires belief in the fence’s existence. I’ve seen an “atheist” described as “an agnostic with balls,” but I think an agnostic is someone with the balls to admit they have no idea how the universe originated. And it’s not as if there are any social benefits to claiming agnosticism, because both sides wind up throwing rotten tomatoes at you.

The Bomb Inside My Brain

Jim Goad

***

Three forms of agnosticism: (1) I am certain (know) that this is impossible for anyone else to know. (2) I am uncertain (do not know at present) whether this which I don’t know now, can be known by me or by anyone at some time. (3) I am certain (know) that this which I do not know, can be known sometime.

These three cover agnosticism about death.

Three main attitudes to death (my death): (1) I believe (know) that I shall survive my death. (2) I believe (know) that I shall not survive my death. (3) one of the three forms of agnosticism.

It is impossible for ordinary, normal thought to confront the idea of (my) death except in one of these attitudes. All of these attitudes are wrong through the assumptions (explicit and implicit) that they necessitate*. Consequently it is impossible for normal thought to confront (my) death with a correct attitude. (May 58)

377. If there is rebirth then there is nothing in this whole world, not even oneself, that is worth killing anyone for. But if there is no rebirth, then there is nothing, provided only that I am clever enough to evade the direct consequences, to prevent me killing one who gets in my way. Materialists might not (like?) this.

* In a syllogism (1. All men are mortal. 2. Socrates is a man. 3. Therefore Socrates is mortal), the generalization (all men are mortal) must have been arrived at by induction. No inductive process is ever absolutely certain. There is always the leap, the assumption, of generalizing and therefore one of the premises of a syllogism must have an element of uncertainty. So it cannot prove anything with certainty.

A syllogism is therefore a signpost pointing where to look for direct experience, but can inherently never give information that is 100% certain. But a syllogism (on metaphysical subjects) can also point to what can, inherently, never be experienced; then it is an anomaly.

Nanamoli Thera

Now, it is important to understand that one thing is certain: faith is an essential component of human existence, and cannot be avoided, unless by replacing it by direct knowledge.

If you believe, you act in confidence and faith believing that what you believe is true. But if you know that you believe, you know ipso facto that you do not know. What happens then if you have no belief? The question has no meaning for to be conscious is to believe. Technically it is a “visualized” expectation of the direction of the actual “motion” which “is” consciousness. The belief expects the direction will be such: knowledge records it as memory that it was such: in between is the denial, the motion of view point that is called consciousness.

Or

Regarding the matter of faith, it is commonly felt and often stated that faith is a weakness, a mere substitute for knowledge, a “blind belief in dogma” and “unnecessary.” But the point overlooked is that there is an element of faith in every conscious act. It is another of the false aspects inherent in all consciousness: the presenting of objects in such that the perception of them necessitates inference about what is hidden. This is in fact an aspect of faith. Without this faith nothing can be done at all, viz. faith that things will repeat themselves and happen as one expects. But the case is most clearly seen in the case of death. Death is an obvious fact. Described in terms of life, it is meaningless (like a blank featureless wall, or a black chasm to vision), but nevertheless by its very existence, by its basis in experience, necessitates inference about it. The three main inferences are that life of some sort continues after death, that it does not, or plain agnosticism.

Whichever I adopt is a matter of pure faith (I leave out “evidence” for and against other alternatives here). But I cannot avoid adopting one of the three.

On the other hand, faith about, say, “phoenixes rising from their own ashes” is simply this same universal attribute of consciousness applied to a fantasy, an assumption (the phoenix) that has no basis in experience. What is unnecessary here is not the faith but the assumption. Now many faiths place faith in baseless assumptions. And when people discover this, they not only reject the assumption (rightly), but, because they fail to discriminate, they deceive themselves into thinking that they can do without the faith too. All that has happened to them, though, is that they have transferred their faculty of faith to the basis of experience and have simultaneously forgotten that they are using it. Now to forget that one has a sharp knife in one’s hand is dangerous.

Faith in the Buddha

If the Absurd is the proper object of faith, and Understanding (=knowledge) is to be mortified and excluded (vide Tertullian), then any form of absurdity is a fit object for faith, and no discrimination between forms of absurdity can be made whatever by faith alone, but only by understanding (knowledge) that is ruled out.

If the Buddha’s teachings require faith in the development of faculties, then a Christian is justified in arguing that it is merely a matter of developing faculties to be able to perceive the revealed dogmas, and so the Buddhist cannot vanquish him in debate on that point.

The Buddha’s teaching does not require belief in the development of new faculties to perceive outward worlds hitherto unperceived. It is not concerned with new outward worlds but with the clear vision of the world of experience as instable and unsatisfactory, and that this is due to craving. The assertion made is that a line of conduct will reduce the craving and the suffering consequent on it (which can be tested) and the belief required is that that line of action can be carried to the point at which craving ends and suffering ends.

Nanamoli Thera

This ‘sacrifice of the intellect’, which Saint Ignatius Loyola says is ‘so pleasing unto God’, is required also, incidentally, of the quantum physicist: he has to subscribe to the proposition that there are numbers that are not quantities. It is not, however, required of the follower of the Buddha, whose saddhā—trust or confidence—is something like that of the patient in his doctor. The patient accepts on trust that the doctor knows more about his complaint than he himself does, and he submits himself to the doctor’s treatment. So far, indeed, from saying to his disciples ‘You must accept on trust from me that black is white’, the Buddha actually says, in effect, ‘What you must accept on trust from me is that you yourselves are unwittingly assuming that black is white, and that this is the reason for your suffering’.*

*The faculty of self-observation or reflexion is inherent in the structure of our experience. Some degree of reflexion is almost never entirely absent in our waking life, and in the practice of mindfulness it is deliberately cultivated. To describe it simply, we may say that one part of our experience is immediately concerned with the world as its object, while at the same time another part of our experience is concerned with the immediate experience as its object. This second part we may call reflexive experience. (Reflexion is discussed in greater detail in Shorter Notes & FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE.) It will be clear that when there is avijjā there is avijjā in both parts of our experience, the immediate and the reflexive; for though, in reflexion, experience is divided within itself, it is still one single, even if complex, structure. The effect of this may be seen from the Sabbāsavasutta (Majjhima i,2 <M.i,8>) wherein certain wrong views are spoken of. Three of them are: Attanā va attānam sañjānāmī ti; Attanā va anattānam sañjānāmī ti; and Anattanā va attānam sañjānāmī ti. ('With self I perceive self; With self I perceive not-self; With not-self I perceive self.') A man with avijjā, practising reflexion, may identify 'self' with both reflexive and immediate experience, or with reflexive experience alone, or with immediate experience alone. He does not conclude that neither is 'self', and the reason is clear: it is not possible to get outside avijjā by means of reflexion alone; for however much a man may 'step back' from himself to observe himself he cannot help taking avijjā with him. There is just as much avijjā in the self-observer as there is in the self-observed. (See CETANĀ [b].) And this is the very reason why avijjā is so stable in spite of its being sankhatā.[m] Simply by reflexion the puthujjana can never observe avijjā and at the same time recognize it as avijjā; for in reflexion avijjā is the Judge as well as the Accused, and the verdict is always 'Not Guilty'. In order to put an end to avijjā, which is a matter of recognizing avijjā as avijjā, it is necessary to accept on trust from the Buddha a Teaching that contradicts the direct evidence of the puthujjana's reflexion. This is why the Dhamma is patisotagāmī (Majjhima iii,6 <M.i,168>), or 'going against the stream'. The Dhamma gives the puthujjana the outside view of avijjā, which is inherently unobtainable for him by unaided reflexion (in the ariyasāvaka this view has, as it were, 'taken' like a graft, and is perpetually available). Thus it will be seen that avijjā in reflexive experience (actual or potential) is the condition for avijjā in immediate experience. It is possible, also, to take a second step back and reflect upon reflexion; but there is still avijjā in this self-observation of self-observation, and we have a third layer of avijjā protecting the first two. And there is no reason in theory why we should stop here; but however far we go we shall not get beyond avijjā. The hierarchy of avijjā can also be seen from the Suttas in the following way.

Nanavira Thera