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Core Beliefs

Change, Being, & Science - Q & A

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Change, Being, & Science

While agnostics avoid doctrines and final conclusions, they do have core beliefs. They’ll scrap these beliefs if they’re struck by a lightning bolt of Reason or Revelation, yet for the moment they’re beliefs nonetheless. These beliefs are largely grounded in physical or empirical reality, yet they allow for the possibility of mystical or spiritual experiences, ones which can’t be explained by science. Given the overall contingency of agnostic belief, the following five “core beliefs” should be taken with five large grains of salt:

1. Everything changes and hence our understanding of everything also changes. To insist on a rigid doctrine or explanation is, in time, to invite the mockery of Time.

2. We’re basically animals with amazingly complex nervous systems. Our brains allow us to think, to become self-aware, and to create ideas about where we come from and who we are. Our brains also allow us to debate these ideas and to consider alternatives. Debate and dissent aren’t erring tangents from truth so much as they’re natural functions of our curiosity.

3. Since medical science and astronomy are still exploring what and where we are, it’s too early to exclude the possibility that we’re capable of experiencing — or making contact with — dimensions or entities that are beyond present verification. This is especially true in regard to astronomy: because we’ve only explored a tiny percent of the universe, we remain ignorant about the largest parameters of material reality, of which we’re only a tiny part. We live in a world of constant change, and these changes take place within a tiny fraction of both the spatial and temporal framework of the universe. We can’t claim to know what realities exist sextillions of parsecs from Earth, and we can’t claim to know how what’s above us affects or determines what’s around and within us. Any gospel about the nature of the universe, or about the relation of the universe to life on Earth, is premature.

4. Although science hasn’t fully explained the brain, and has only started to explain the universe, it still appears to be the most reliable method of arriving at truth. Science’s domain is vast, since it includes observations and temporary conclusions, as well as speculations and hypotheses about things we don’t yet understand. In this sense, the open exploration of the scientist is very close to the open exploration of the agnostic. Here it’s very important to distinguish the scientist from the positivist. A scientist can be theistic, agnostic, or atheist, whereas positivists argue that only the scientific method can guarantee truth. Agnostics cherish the scientific method, yet, like many scientists, they aren’t convinced that science can or will explain everything.

5. Because of the gaps in our knowledge, and because of the limitations of our senses and our means of verification, agnostics believe that we should remain open to all possible sources of information and to all sorts of ideas and experiences. We should even remain open to religious ideas which contradict historical records, as well as to metaphysical ideas which contradict the laws of physics. While agnostics believe in these records and these laws, they doubt the completeness of our understanding. Just as we discovered the two libraries at Nineveh in the middle of the 19th century, and just as we discovered the Dead Sea scrolls in the middle of the 20th century, so we might find other ground-breaking sources in the years to come. While agnostics are in no way convinced about religious assertions, they’re not willing to close the door on the possibilities of religion. They often have a sense that science and religion are different methods of getting at the nature — and at the wonder — of our existence. Even if we dismiss literal readings of religion, there remains a great deal of value in its myth, symbol, imagination, speculation, and art.

Not to mention Beauty. Agnostics tend to read scripture as literature, and to see religion as art. Not surprisingly, many agnostics also see literature and art as religion — in the sense that they awaken us to the beauty that lies in specific physical forms yet also projects itself further, as if on an epic sentiment, toward the open sea.

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Q & A

The following chart simplifies a great deal, yet it aims to clarify the basic ways agnosticism aligns with, or diverges from, theism & atheism.

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