Gospel & Universe 🍏 Starting Points

Layout

Omar Khayyam - Overview - Tangents

🍏

Omar Khayyam

In Gospel & Universe I explore agnosticism, which can be seen as a philosophy that lies between belief and disbelief, or an attitude toward life that doesn’t shy away from doubt. Agnostics accept their doubts, which makes it easy for them to be skeptical, yet they also doubt their doubts, which opens a path to belief.

For agnostics, doubt isn’t a form of inviolable truth. It’s more a method, in parallel with the scientific method or an open-minded mysticism. It’s less a way of life than a way of going with life’s flow, less an explanation and more an exploration of what’s true.

The 12th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam gets at the skeptical side of agnosticism when he writes, “I will divorce reason and religion, / And take to wife the daughter of the vine.” Like Khayyam, the agnostic distances himself from being married to any one idea or system, whether in the realm of religion or reason. The agnostic prefers to drink the wine of life to the dregs and to be intoxicated by the world that lies before us. He doesn’t want to be slowed down or stifled by conventions, by pre-determined ideas, or by fixed categories of thinking or belief. If he were trapped in a metaphoric marriage to religion and reason, the agnostic would opt for a momentary separation rather than a divorce. A suspension rather than a rupture. And instead of marrying the daughter of the vine, he’d spend some time with her, get drunk with her friends, and ask if Sister Moon was free Friday night.

While Khayyam distances himself from the doctrines of religion and reason, he gets ever-closer to what I think of as their essence: exploration, curiosity, wonder, and connection. He rejects the grand cosmic scheme of religion, yet he articulates cosmic harmony in a mystical way: instead of explaining how the diurnal cycle is divided in parts, he writes of “this battered Caravanserai / Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day.” He says that we are “the puppets and the firmament is the puppet-master,” and he soberly notes that “For a time we acted on this stage,” and then “one by one” we went back “into the box of oblivion.” And while he professes to reject reason, in real life he was an expert in cubic geometry and solar calculation. Even in his poetry he has the realistic mind of the naturalist, who looks at the world and doesn’t superimpose on it some other world: “This reason which seeks the way of bliss / Says again and again to you, / ‘Seize this moment which is yours: You are not that herb which is cut down only to flourish anew.’”

Khayyam’s point isn’t that ideas and systems are dangerous in themselves; as scientist and poet he took full advantage of them. His point is that we shouldn’t be captive to fixed systems and categories of thinking. We shouldn’t be captive to the nice distinction, at least not while life is all around us to be lived:

When Khayyam says he’ll divorce religion and reason he’s making a poetic point about living for the moment, entering the current of life rather than losing ourselves in the arid fixities of dogma. Likewise, when agnostics take religion and reason to task, they don’t aim to dispense with either. They aim to shake them up, to re-configure them, and to question their separation. More than anything, they aim to reconnect with experience and with a sense of freedom and wonder, which can get lost if we stick too doggedly to a single conclusion about the meaning of life.

🍏

On the remainder of this page I outline the structure of Gospel & Universe. On the next page, 🍏 Core Beliefs, I give an overview of the main tenets of agnosticism. In 🍏 Argentinian Wine I return to the battered Caravanserai, to the daughter of the vine, and to how she might view the circling heavens above.

🍏

Overview

Gospel & Universe begins with two wide-ranging introductory chapters, 🍏 Starting Points and 🧩 Complexities. In these two chapters I range from Khayyam to Shakespeare, from Heraclitus to Camus, from prose to poetry, from critical analysis to fiction & autobiography — yet always with the aim of introducing the many-sided beast of agnosticism. In general, 🍏 Starting Points is more introductory, while 🧩 Complexities goes into zero-sum philosophy, paradox, infinity, negative capability, etc.

After this comes two main sections, Pathways to Doubt (8 chapters) and Currents of Religion (9 chapters). Pathways to Doubt emphasizes the effect of science on religion, especially how astronomy and natural science eroded Medieval certainties, and led to the formulation of agnosticism in the late 19th century. Currents of Religion emphasizes the diverse history of religion as well as aspects of mysticism that survive the collapse of certainty.

Throughout Gospel & Universe I use historical timelines, yet my arguments are more about the nature of doubt than about the historical development of doubt. My range is quite wide and varied — from early aspects of agnosticism in Mesopotamia, India, China, and Classical Europe to the empiricism and agnosticism of the 18th and 19th centuries and the liberalism and existentialism of the 20th century. I also highlight literature that’s relevant to agnosticism — for instance, the proto-agnosticism of Dickens in Bleak House and the Modern agnosticism of Forster in A Passage to India (🦖 At the Wild & Fog).

The bulk of Gospel & Universe is written in essay form, although I often shift into fiction and autobiography: in 🇫🇷 The Priest’s Dilemma a Parisian priest struggles with evolution and philology, and in 🍎 The Apple-Merchant of Babylon the business troubles of Moses lead him to a novel form of monotheism; in ☠️ Ars Moriendi I deal with the death of my father and brother, and in 🇲🇽 Señor Locke I take a personal look at Locke’s empiricism. This veering away from exposition and argument is in keeping with my notion that while agnosticism is a philosophical system, it remains, like literature, fundamentally experiential, phenomenological, and existential. At its heart it isn’t as much a logical system as it is a mode of operating. It urges us to think and feel critically, openly, eclectically, and ecumenically.

🍏

The first large section, Pathways to Doubt, follows a rough chronological order. I start by looking at the revolutionary impact of astronomy (🔭 The Sum of All Space) and at the parallel rise of science and skepticism from the 16th to 20th centuries (🔬 Science & Mystery & ♒️ A River Journey). I then look at the skeptical and empirical strains in agnosticism, from the Greeks to the 19th century (❤️ Three Little Words), after which I look at 17th and 18th century empiricism in light of my personal experience while visiting Guanajuato in the year 2000 (🇲🇽 Señor Locke). I then look at the shift from pre- to post- Darwinian thinking in Dickens’ England (🦖 At the Wild & Fog), at the relation between agnosticism and the 20th century French existentialists Sartre and Camus (🎲 Almost Existential), and at a mystical version of the contemporary existential heroine in the song, “A Lighter Shade of Pale” (🧜🏽‍♀️ The Mermaid).

Currents of Religion also follows a rough chronological order, starting with an overview of religious history (🌎 Many Tribes). I then look at the influence of Mesopotamian civilization on Judaism & Christianity (♒️ Currents of Sumer), at changing religious paradigms (⏯ Systems & ✝️ St. Francis), at a fictional Biblical & Mesopotamian scenario (🍎 The Apple-Merchant of Babylon), at religion vs. science in contemporary France (🇫🇷 The Priest’s Dilemma), at mysticism in Classical China & Whitman’s 19th Century Transcendentalism (💫 Mystery), at the battle against dogma in the Indian subcontinent in the 20th century (🇮🇳 Fiction), and at the age-old puzzle of death (☠️ Ars Moriendi).

🍏

Tangents

While chapters have themes and threads, I have a laissez-faire attitude in the pages themselves, taking tangents wherever I think they might yield some insight. A certain amount of latitude seems appropriate in the exploration of agnosticism, which seems to me a sliding, floating endeavour. It may be that if you’re willing to explore anything, you’re likely to shift your bearings quite often, and at times quite abruptly.

I follow timelines and threads, but beyond these there are other trajectories and fabrics. The lines we type onto the page or Internet stretch so far from us that eventually they become other, our scheme intersecting with other schemes, until we suspect that the universe is full of patterns and schemes, yet no clear and ultimate Scheme. To impose a pattern or gospel on the universe says more about us than it does about the cosmos. This is the meaning behind my title, Gospel & Universe.

🍏

Next: 🍏 Core Beliefs

Back to Top

Brief Contents - Detailed Contents - Core Beliefs - Layout