The Double Refuge 🍏 Starting Points
Core Beliefs
Change, Being, & Science - Q & A
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Change, Being, & Science
The core beliefs of religion are well known. In fact, this may be part of the problem: how can one say that one’s religion is the absolute truth when the sects within that religion define their differences so sharply? Part of my aim in The Double Refuge is to dull these differences, to let go of these fine distinctions. I imagine a world in which one believer communes with the next without worrying about whether God is a Trinity in One, or One in the Trinity, or whether the eucharist wafer is the body of Jesus or symbolic of the body of Jesus.
While wandering down Spaccanapoli I saw a church that advertised gluten-free wafers in communion. Later, the Vatican decided that Christ can only be transubstantiated in wheat wafers, not in gluten-free wafers. I am Celiac. 1.6% of Italy is Celiac. Why on earth create such a fine distinction?
Agnosticism on the other hand suffers from not being clearly defined. This is understandable, since agnostics tend to reject labels. Yet while agnostics avoid labels, doctrines, and final conclusions, they do have core beliefs. They’ll scrap these beliefs if they have a religious experience, 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. 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.
“The Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant, all that remains of a tremendous stellar explosion. Observers in China and Japan recorded the supernova nearly 1,000 years ago, in 1054. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University)” — link here
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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While agnosticism lies between theism and atheism, the focus of The Double Refuge is on 🔺 the nature of agnosticism, located as it is between belief and disbelief, and on 🔺 the way the open exploration of agnosticism can overlap with theism. The graphic below illustrates my focus on the way agnosticism can flow into belief or disbelief, and the way that open belief and open doubt are especially compatible. Note that the arrows emanating from the double refuge don’t go all the way to the extremes of belief and disbelief: the arrow on the left doesn’t reach a belief that rejects other forms of belief; the arrow on the right doesn’t reach a disbelief that insists on the rejection of all forms of belief.
Nor does the solid arrow to the right reach what I will discuss later, hard agnosticism, which insists that doubt is all we have. Throughout The Double Refuge I focus instead on soft or open agnosticism, which doubts that doubt is all we have. I believe that this is a more consistent definition of agnosticism; it doesn’t allow doubt to become a fixed or certain doctrine. Open agnosticism is clearly what the originator of the term, Thomas Huxley, meant. In his notion of agnosticism, science is very much included, yet he insisted that true science is open to all possibilities, including those of a speculative metaphysical nature. I return to the importance of open agnosticism in A Middle Position, Rivers of Change, Huxley’s Definition, and The Unconvinced.
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Q & A
The following chart simplifies a great deal, yet it aims to clarify the basic ways that agnosticism aligns with, or diverges from, theism & atheism.
