To
the Unknown God:
What Agnosticism Can Teach Us About Faith
The idea of Agnosticism has been
around since about the 1800’s. The name being first suggested by Thomas Huxley,
the renowned naturalist and evolutionary apologist. Many in the scientific
community immediately took to the idea of agnosticism as it gave a perfect
explanation for how they felt about faith in relation to their study of the
natural world. Prior to agnosticism, scientists had really only three options.
1. Be a Christian apologist seeking to prove the Bible’s accuracy through the
study of science. 2. Be an atheist who did not believe God existed at all, And
finally. 3. Claim to be a deist who believed in an original cause or the
immovable mover, but not in a personal God. Most scientists in the 19th
century chose the later.
Huxley’s
agnosticism offered an incredibly appealing alternative to the stark options of
the time. It was a way for thinkers to admit that they couldn’t actually rule
out the existence of a god, neither could they prove “he” existed in any
meaningful way, and that was ok. The word agnostic
comes from the Greek term “agnost” which means “incapable of being known.”[1] Huxley believed that on
the subject of God, it was impossible to know whether or not God existed, since
he does not reveal himself within the dimensional world and thus cannot be
tested or explored. Huxley invented the term agnostic while reflecting on the
sermon by Paul at the Areopagus in Athens when he referenced the alter that the
Athenians had dedicated to the unknown God.[2] Paul sought to reveal to
the people that which they did not know, which Paul suggested was Jesus Christ.
Huxley seemed to hold more in common with the thought process of the Athenians
than he did with Paul, however. Huxley believed that the natural world is all
that can be known, and anything else beyond it is essentially unknowable. He
disavowed atheism and instead accepted that the original cause of the universe
is by definition unknown and unknowable since such a God would not be a created
being and thus would not be part of this universe.
Many
accused the agnostic of simply being the modern Greek equivalent of a much
older term, that being infidel. Much of the religious community accused Huxley
of simply hiding under the made up guise of agnosticism. They said that in
claiming that one could not actively study and know God they were inadvertently
denying Jesus himself since Jesus made claims on the existence and power of God
that could not be refuted. Huxley responded to such claims in stating that he
did not so much doubt the divinity of Jesus and his authority, but rather
doubted the authority of those who wrote down the story of Jesus and his words.
Huxley states, “Now, the question as to what Jesus really said and did is
strictly a scientific problem, which is capable of solution by no other methods
than those practiced by the historian and the literary critic…”[3]
Agnosticism has
a bad reputation of being used by those too lazy to actually articulate their
own belief and understanding of God. However, it is unfair to discount it
simply for this fact. We do not discount all of Christianity because the
majority of Christians make the same mistake. As a tool for intellectual
inquiry, agnosticism may in fact be the only legitimate stance one can take
when approaching faith and experience with the unknown. Christianity has a bad
habit of being far too arrogant about what it can and cannot know. Many a
Christian scientist has staked their entire career on the pretense that their
version of things is correct, and thus they have colored their findings so
profusely with confirmation bias as to be laughed out of any legitimate intellectual
or scientific society. The reason I can claim that Agnosticism may be the only
legitimate stance for true seekers is because agnosticism is one of the only
philosophical stances that approaches every question with the idea that you
don’t already know the answer. Truth can only be studied and truly reached when
the searcher is intellectually honest with themselves and starts from a
baseline of absolute neutrality. This does not have to mean that the researcher
does not believe in any objective truth, but rather that the observer opens him
or herself up to the possibility that what they think they know may in fact be
wrong.
One of the
major problems that organized religion faces in each successive generation is
that they tend to back themselves into corners. They declare, “If this one
teaching or theological ideal turns out to be wrong then everything is lost and
there is no objective truth.” It is an all or nothing type of faith. Those who
hold to such narrow-minded theology often find themselves forced to either
ignore evidence and fact, or reject their entire faith system. One of the major
advantages with a type of agnostic faith is that no matter what facts are discovered,
and no matter what scientific inquiry is made, faith is not severely affected.
It has the flexibility to acknowledge that God is always greater than what we,
as dimensional creatures, can study and experience. An agnostic faith is never
dependent on certain facts in order to substantiate its legitimacy; it does not
have to seek to prove itself, and thus does not have to twist its data in order
to fit within its previously accepted theology.
Having an
agnostic approach to faith does not mean that you cannot believe in the
validity of certain unproved facts substantiated only by faith, such as the
existence of angels, heaven, or the divinity of Jesus. What an agnostic faith
does, however, is open up the mind to the possibility that what you thought was
true may in fact be proved wrong. It interjects humility into the equation.
With any scientific endeavor, however, it still may be necessary to operate as
though your belief is the absolute truth, even though it lacks evidence.
Gravity is an unproved concept, highly tested, and highly studied, yet still
unproved, yet you still must operate as though our current understanding of the
way gravity works is the absolute truth. Einstein’s Relativity is still
unproved, highly tested and highly studied, yes, but never the less unproved,
yet scientists use it every day to explain the phenomena of our existence. That
all being said, most scientists have the humility to admit that these theories
are simply highly tested theories that currently are adequate to explain our
day to day existence, even if they are not completely proved.
Faith should be
held to no less of a standard to that we impose on the scientific community.
Within western society there is a hierarchy of knowledge. In my estimation this
hierarchy goes: science, philosophy, religion. This is because as you go down
this ladder you gradually exit facts and observation and enter opinion and
belief. The fact is that we hold religion to less stringent standards than we
do science. This must change if religion is to maintain its relevancy within a
rapidly changing and developing world. The first step toward closing the gap
between science and faith may in fact lie with the ideas first proposed by an
evolutionary biologist nearly 150 years ago and the unknown God to which he
appealed as the foundation for his agnostic faith.
No comments:
Post a Comment