Toward a Spiritual Agnosticism
Finding God through Godlessness
With the most powerful telescopes, Astronomers have now counted a trillion galaxies in the part of the universe visible to us. Each of those galaxies contains, on average, hundreds of billions of suns. This is the glory of creation. Away from the lights of cities, there is enough of the starry universe visible to make us tremble with awe if we understand what we are looking at. The visible universe is so vast that light, traveling at 200,000 kilometers a second from the most distant stars that telescopes can see, has taken over 13 billion years to reach us. But many people believe that there is a creator of this universe who is so insecure that he is prone to jealous rages and requires our obeisance and worship.
Indoctrination
The Catholic Church got its hooks into me early. I attended a Catholic private school for nine years. I wanted to believe in the Catholic God. From an early age, I feared old age and death, and I knew that could be my fate. I say “could” because my ambition was to die young in some glorious adventure and then have my soul transcend to heaven.
At about age thirteen, I had skeptical thoughts that could never again be unthought. I could not believe in the fairy tale any longer. I don’t call myself an atheist; a mystical bent seems to be innate in my nature. But a bad-tempered tyrant with superpowers — the anthropomorphic projection of an Iron Age desert people, didn’t cut it for me.
The more I learn about the complexities of science and the vastness of the universe, I see the pretentiousness of the priests who claim to define the mind and will of God. We can learn more about the mind of God by studying science than scripture.
It's not that I have never read the Bible; I would not understand the history of my culture or its literature if I did not. I found some beautiful metaphors in that book — along with unspeakable justifications for abominable cruelties and genocides. One can only hope that those accounts are fiction.
Belief defines both theism and atheism. Many theists are comforted by the belief there is an afterlife, while the certainty of oblivion reassures atheists. Agnosticism, on the other hand, embraces the mystery. To deny mystery is to deny the very core of being. Each day, I'm astonished to be alive. I'm amazed at the forest and mountains that stretch out from my backyard. On summer days, I wonder at the flowers and insects in my front garden. And then, of course, at night — there is the sky. For me, religion doesn't explain any of it. It only tries to explain it away.
I used to refrain from questioning the assumptions of people who embraced conventional faith-based religion. What right had I to potentially instill doubt in those who, in clinging to their belief, were probably happier than me?
The Peril of Conviction without Evidence
Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, however, I have had second thoughts about the harmlessness of modern-day Christian delusion. The reason for believing in a faith-based doctrine is because you want to believe in it or have never questioned the religious tradition embraced by your community. In either case, it is the acceptance of belief without evidence. Believing something without evidence — because you want to — opens the door to believing other things without evidence because you want to — for instance, that the 2020 election was stolen. As one Trump cult follower put it, "I just have a feeling."
Religion can be a balm for the anguish of confronting mortality. It can also provide solace for loneliness by fulfilling the need to belong and embrace the values of a community. For these reasons, people have worshiped all the various thousands of different deities going back to prehistory.
Sometimes, there were harsh penalties for not embracing the community's beliefs. During the 400 years of the active Catholic Inquisition, one could be burned alive at the stake for questioning even a minor tenet of doctrine.
When I emailed the local archbishop stating my desire to officially leave the Church, I received a polite reply acknowledging my wish. I wasn’t led to the stake. But in some 18 countries where there are Muslim majorities, one could be arrested and prosecuted, and in some places, like Saudi Arabia, even sentenced to death for the crime of apostasy. In Islam, apostasy includes not embracing the community’s consensus interpretation of doctrine.
Some religions have evolved a little more than others. After hundreds of years of conflict and the deaths of millions, Christians have relatively recently stopped killing each other over the differing interpretations of their doctrines. In Islam, Sunnis and Shias continue to murder each other daily over matters of doctrine and the right of succession from the prophet.
If Christ walked the earth today, what would he say about the ultra-wealthy pastors of mega-churches, who fleece their flocks so they can live lives of luxury and who endorse corrupt political leaders in return for the promise of enhancing their own power?
“Ye Hippocrates…..” Christ called the similarly corrupt Pharisees of his day. They were the ones who then clamored for his crucifixion.
The Cosmic Barber
Some years ago, while I was getting a shave from a skilled barber in Indian Goa, I noticed that the barber had a crucified Christ statuette and an elephant-headed Ganesh figurine on his counter. As he paused in the shaving to wipe the razor, I remarked on this.
“Yes,” he replied, “Although I am a Hindu, those are both beautiful symbols for me.”
A minute later, he paused again while shaving and, lifting the razor from my face, said, “But they are only symbols. God is God.”
Many people in the West have the idea that Hindus believe in thousands of gods. Some perhaps do, but in essence, the core belief is that there is only one God and that he/she/it is everything that is. But the all-encompassing divine nature, referred to as Brahmin, is beyond comprehension to mortals. Therefore, Brahmin has thousands of manifestations that humans can relate to, identify with, and incorporate into their rituals.
Unfortunately, Hinduism’s traditionally tolerant honor for everyone’s expression of the ineffable divine has, at times, been perverted by nationalism.
Just because I wasn’t burned at the stake for my apostasy doesn’t mean that I consider the modern Catholic Church an enlightened institution. In my letter to the archbishop, I enumerated some of the crimes past and present committed in the name of the Church that I did not want to be associated with. I sent out copies of my letter. I believe it is incumbent on all of us who have been raised in a religion to make it clear where we stand concerning crimes committed in the name of that religion.
The Oldest Corporation
The Catholic Church is the world’s oldest corporation, not as a legal entity, but in its structure. Corporations, no matter what their founding values, seem to take on an amoral life of their own as they expand. The corporation’s driving goal is to continue growing and getting more customers. For the Catholic Church, it’s easier to have more babies born into the faith than to make converts. That’s why it is sinful for a Catholic man to put on a condom or for a Catholic woman to use any contraception. Good Catholics need to be good baby machines for the good of the corporation. Even during the height of the Aids epidemic in Africa, it was forbidden for Catholics to use condoms. This interdiction caused untold suffering and death — but it was good for increasing corporate memberships in the longer term. Oh, yeah, it was really about preserving the sanctity of life. What a crock, although I’m sure many Catholics, maybe even the Pope, believe it.
In Eastern monasteries, celibacy is practiced as a path to liberation from desire. Among the Catholic clergy, however, it is seen and practiced as a sacrifice. I heard one Catholic priest describe his celibacy as an “open wound.” That is so sick. This unnatural perversion has caused the Catholic clergy to lose their minds. The institutionalized rape of children is a sorry byproduct.
There is a trend now among right-wing intellectuals (like JD Vance) to convert to Catholicism. Many intelligent people in the past have done so, too. I never understood it. It seems to me like a reversion to juvenile idiocy. The Church’s pretense to speak as a moral authority is untenable in light of its history. In its supreme arrogance, it enshrined St. Paul’s demand for obedience — no matter how unreasonable those demands. The decree against the use of contraception is no less backward than the threat to burn Galileo at the stake if he did not recant his idea that the earth revolves around the Sun.
“demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5
Right, make every thought obedient to the Church, which claims to speak for Christ.
It’s fine with me if you want to call yourself a Catholic, but if you do so, you should dress in black when you go out in public and beat yourself over the head with a board (like in the Monty Python Penitente skit) and beg forgiveness for the crimes of the Church past and present from every passerby.
In North America, there is an exodus from organized religion. A trend toward free thinking is a positive sign. But there is a downside. Church groups gave people a sense of belonging to a community. Leaving these congregations has likely contributed to the epidemic of loneliness prevalent in North America today.
Many people have gravitated to communities based on Eastern mysticism. Unfortunately, the near godlike status among the gurus of many of these organizations has led to the widespread abuse of power, often involving the sexual abuse of vulnerable young women. The Buddha taught, “Question everything, even what I teach you.” So, if you find yourself in a group where questioning is discouraged, you are in a cult. Get out.
A real teacher will always welcome your questions. Yoga and Buddhist practises are aimed at self-mastery and introspection. Don’t trust a self-proclaimed teacher who can’t walk the talk.
Plumbing the Deep
That the laws of physics are so fine-tuned that they create our Goldilocks universe where life is possible, is perhaps the greatest mystery of science. This is a much bigger mystery even than why there is something instead of nothing.
Stephen Hawking wrote, “The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. … The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”
The source of consciousness is another great mystery. Recently, there was an article on panpsychism published in a credible publication, Scientific American. Panpsychism is the idea that consciousness is embedded in all matter. If this sounds a little woo-woo, it doesn’t have to be. Science would not deny that consciousness arose out of matter based on the embedded laws of physics.
Panpsychism comes close to some ideas in Eastern philosophy and those of Western deep thinkers like Spinoza and Einstein as well. Here’s a quote from an interview with Einstein in 1923.
“Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality and intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. […] This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance, this may be described as ‘pantheistic.’”
I once met an extremely intelligent, well-read young man who had lost his faith — not his faith in God, but his faith in reason. He had embraced the most childish and simplistic religious fundamentalism. Everything is simple, he told me. It’s not. I guess he just got scared.
So many mysteries, so much to explore.
And concerning my ambition to meet an early demise, despite many close calls, I have improbably made it to age 74. But since I still participate in dangerous adventure sports, I haven’t given up hope.
