The Double Refuge 🍷 Bubbles Winking at the Brim

Refuges Here & There

Two Refuges - Iconoclasts - Overview - Objective & Subjective - Tangents

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Two Refuges

In The Double Refuge I explore the relation between doubt and belief. I suggest that each can help in understanding the other, and that each can be a refuge for the other. Belief can be a refuge from fear, alienation, angst, and meaninglessness, and doubt can be a refuge from pride, dogma, religious conflict, and the feeling of being boxed in.

Conventionally, doubt and belief are seen as distinct, and are quite often seen as opposites. Even irreconcilable opposites. I, on the other hand, see them as complementary. Moreover, I think they can strengthen and temper one another. Belief can soften the hard edges of doubt, and doubt can soften the hard edges of belief. This complementary relation relies on one thing: openness. For my double refuge system to work, doubt must remain open to doubting its own doubt (which creates room for belief), and belief must remain open to different beliefs and ways of thinking (which creates room for doubt).

The conventional scenario is that we leap from doubt to faith, or we fall from faith to doubt. Yet that scenario often involves a great deal of psychological angst, and leaves us divided between what we were and what we are. This invites internal fracture, a chasm in the psyche. I suggest instead that we get used to sliding back and forth between doubt and belief, until the mix of the two isn’t just a part of our thinking, but is instinctual, living inside the nerves that move our muscles and bones. I suggest going back and forth so often that the invisible ligaments between doubt and belief become strong enough to support running at full speed or darting like a hummingbird. In this way, we can leap from place to place without leaving our past behind.

In The Double Refuge I go into the nature of agnosticism in depth. I also stress the way doubt can interact and interpenetrate belief, particularly a belief which is open to all places, faiths, and times. It’s the belief of a Hindu who has his own deity and is happy that others have theirs. It’s also the belief of what I call Christianity 2.0, where exclusive dogma is discarded and one believes in Christ as an open, loving, inclusive spiritual force.

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People often talk about matter and spirit as if they were separate, as if a Great Wall has been built, and as if innumerable traps are set on both sides (and in some places gun turrets!). They often talk as if there was in fact a solid border, impenetrable on the scientific side because of verifiable facts, and impenetrable on the religious side because of time-honoured doctrine. Both sides appear to have different types of gravity and magnetism, attracting us in different ways and pulling us apart so that we see the two as completely separate. Yet what if the same gravity and magnetism operated in both? What if the border doesn’t really exist, but is just a way of dividing up the same Whole? How many ways can we divvy up what we can’t see?

In The Double Refuge I focus on the unifying notion of refuge, which refers to an escape or refuge from the trap of isolation, alienation, & exclusivity that we can fall into if we divide science from the invisible beauties of emotion, art, intoxication, mysticism, etc. In this sense the double refuge is a safe haven from both the alienation of existentialism and the dogma of religion.

Notwithstanding this notion of refuge, I’m still agnostic enough to admit that I don’t really know if I’m right or not. So I look as widely and as deeply as I can into the question of how the most open versions of realism and agnosticism might connect with the most open versions of mysticism and religion.

In both cases I suspect that humility is the key. In the double refuge of open agnosticism and non-doctrinal mysticism we see that we’re only a tiny part of the universe and that we can’t claim to speak for the Great Whole, whatever that may be. Scientifically and rationally we may think of the Cosmos; poetically and mystically we may think of the One and the Good. Yet however we approach the topic, the Great Whole may well be infinite and therefore beyond our conception. And yet, while we may not be able to reach conclusions or clear definitions, we can still imagine a God who is infinite, omnipresent, and eternal, a Unified Field, a Universal Mind, a Wholeness, an Absolute, a Full Void, a Goodness, a Mystical Union, a Yoga of body and spirit, a Holy Spirit connecting everything. It may not make perfect sense, but there it is.

In Adonais, his 1821 elegy on the death of Keats, Shelley gets as close as he can to the poetic mysticism of ineffability: “Rome’s azure sky, / Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak / The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.”

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Iconoclasts

In this explorative study of doubt & belief I argue that, contrary to what many people think, one can be devoted to both. As I see it, both open agnosticism and open religion are dogged by probabilities & improbabilities, arguments & counter-arguments, ifs & buts, maybes & perhapses, conundrums & coincidences, ambiguities & paradoxes. Because of this stress on doubt, critical thinking, and ambiguity, I use agnosticism as my starting point. While The Double Refuge takes many twists and turns, in general I start with 1. the many-sided beast of agnosticism, then look at 2. the ways that agnosticism is compatible, though distinct from, atheism and theism, and finally I explore 🔅 3. the way that open agnosticism and open theism can work hand in hand.

1 and 2 are crucial to this study, yet my goal is to sound the depths of 🔅 3, that is, the way that open agnosticism and open theism relate, differ, connect, and strengthen each other. I’ll explore how the double refuge — the open space that embraces both doubt and belief — connects the material to the spiritual, and opens us up to ideas, experiences, imagery, and symbolism which help us understand our relation to the physical world and to that elusive Something Greater, which remains beyond our ability to grasp, define, or control.

I’ll start by arguing that agnosticism is neither a stasis of indecision nor a philosophy that lacks historical depth. On the contrary, it has deep roots, strong reasons, and an endless number of applications. Few knew the deep roots of doubt better than Byron, whose meandering epic Don Juan (1824) champions doubt in many of its forms. Upending the structure of the epic, he says he’ll write 12 books (like Homer), yet continues past 16. He also says he’ll tell the secrets of the afterlife (like Homer and Dante), yet does no such thing. In Canto 9 he argues that because our understanding of reality is so uncertain, the thing that most closely corresponds to our experience is doubt. In this sense, doubt is more certain than doctrine, proof, or certainty:

There's no such thing as certainty, that's plain
     As any of Mortality's conditions;
So little do we know what we're about in
This world, I doubt if doubt itself be doubting.

Like epicureans — and Byron — agnostics strive to live in the moment, even to relax into it. They want to savour the fluid truth of living naturally, spontaneously, and authentically. They refuse to live in fear of cracking the golden frame of an icon someone nailed to their wall.

Yet agnostics differ from atheists in their iconoclasm — that is, in their breaking of icons. This is because they question both revelation and reason. They’re not afraid to question the doctrines of either, figuring that if these doctrines are truly solid they can’t be broken. In sounding the depths of reason and revelation, they go as deeply as possible into both. They refuse to worry about being called unreasonably emotional or coldly rational. They aim to leave that name-calling behind, and instead follow the moment’s slippery truth, whether they glimpse it in the methodology of the scientist, the exegesis of the priest, or the imagination of the poet.

Agnostics also question their own philosophy. At times, they even accuse themselves of setting up an impossible ideal of infinite exploration, much as theists set up an unchanging and invisible Truth, and atheists set up repeatable verification according to the scientific method.

The agnostic notion that we can simply go on thinking and feeling without deciding on a particular truth may seem impractical or undesirable. Yet this is what agnostics believe: we can keep stretching our emotional and intellectual horizons, as if we were walking towards the horizon on a planet that grows larger every day.

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Overview

Introductions

The Double Refuge begins with three introductions. In the first, 🍷 Bubbles Winking at the Brim, I illustrate my philosophical point and my literary approach, and I use the metaphor of wine to discuss an intoxication that may be both physical and spiritual. 🍏 Agnosticism highlights the role of agnosticism as an intercessor between atheism and theism, and also defines some of the terminology I use throughout. 🧩 Butterflies Landing delves into more involved terms and concepts — such as zero-sum philosophy, paradoxes of doubt, the philosophical implications of infinity, T.S. Eliot’s unified sensibility, Keats’ negative capability, etc.

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Sections

The main body of The Double Refuge is comprised of two sections. The eight chapters of PATHWAYS TO DOUBT emphasize 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. The nine chapters of CURRENTS OF RELIGION emphasize the diverse history of religion, as well as aspects of mysticism that survive the collapse of certainty. I’ll argue that this mysticism, with its open borders and lack of doctrine, can act as a conduit between agnosticism and theism — as well as a refuge from the ravages of both.

Throughout this exploration I use historical timelines, yet my arguments are more about the nature of doubt and belief than about historical development. My range is quite wide and varied — from early expressions of doubt and belief in Mesopotamia, India, China, and Classical Europe to the empiricism and agnosticism of the 18th and 19th centuries, to the liberalism and existentialism of the 20th century. I highlight literature that’s especially relevant to the relation of agnosticism to belief. For instance, I look at proto-agnosticism and Christianity in Dickens’ Bleak House, and at Modern agnosticism and mysticism in Forster’s A Passage to India in 🦖 At the Wild & Fog (starting with A Misty Maze, But Not Without a Plan).

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Chapters

The first large section, PATHWAYS TO DOUBT, follows a rough chronological order. I start by looking at the revolutionary impact of astronomy in 🔭 The Sum of All Space (starting with Third Spinning Rock from the Sun), and at the parallel rise of science and skepticism from the 16th to 20th centuries in 🔬 Science & Mystery (starting with Overview) and in ♒️ A River Journey (starting with Mountain Springs). I then look at the skeptical and empirical strains in agnosticism, from the Greeks to the 19th century (❤️ Three Little Words, starting with Critical Distance), 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, starting with The Gringo Takes Stock).

I then look at the shift from pre- to post- Darwinian thinking in Dickens’ England (🦖 At the Wild & Fog, starting with A Misty Maze, But Not Without a Plan), at the relation between agnosticism and theism in the 20th century French existentialists Sartre and Camus (🎲 Almost Existential, starting with Poor, Bare, Forked), and at a mystical version of the contemporary existential heroine in the song, “A Lighter Shade of Pale” (🧜🏽‍♀️ The Mermaid: Existential & Then Some, starting with The Heroine).

The second section, CURRENTS OF RELIGION, also follows a rough chronological order, beginning with an overview of religious history (🌎 Many Tribes, starting with Overview and Six Versions of Infinity). I then look at the influence of Mesopotamian civilization on Judaism & Christianity (♒️ The Currents of Sumer, starting with Introduction & Overview), at changing religious paradigms (⏯ Systems, starting with Mere Religion? and ✝︎ St. Francis, starting with Rapt Angel), at a fictional Biblical & Mesopotamian scenario (🍎 The Apple-Merchant of Babylon, starting with The Genealogy of Mortals), at religion vs. science in contemporary France (🇫🇷 The Priest’s Dilemma, starting with Rivers of God), at mysticism in Classical China & Whitman’s 19th Century Transcendentalism (💫 Believing in the Mystery, starting with Introduction: Daoism & Whitman’s Transcendentalism), at the battle against dogma in the Indian subcontinent in the 20th century (🇮🇳 The Fiction of Doubt, starting with Rise of the Simurg), and at the age-old puzzle of death (☠️ Ars Moriendi, starting with Teeing Off).

For a list of contents for each page of each chapter, see Detailed Contents.

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Objective & Subjective

Throughout The Double Refuge I range widely in focus and approach. I go from Khayyam to Shakespeare, from Zhuangzi to Camus, from prose to poetry, from critical analysis to fiction & autobiography, from serious debate to comic diversion. For the sake of convenience, one might divide my writing into two types: non-fiction which aims at objectivity and fiction which stresses subjectivity.

First, there’s the non-fiction of history, geography, natural science, astronomy, philology, politics, and philosophy. For instance, in 🔭 The Sum of All Space and 🔬 Science & Mystery I look at how astronomy and science approach the notions of doubt and infinity. In 🔬 Three Little Words I look at the development of skepticism, focusing on Montaigne’s three little words, which aren’t I love you, but What know I? or Que sais-je? In 🌎 Many Tribes and ♒️ The Currents of Sumer I look at the history of religion, and at how Judaeo-Christianity has borrowed from, and, all too often, belittled other philosophies and cultures, including the Mesopotamian civilizations from which it largely derived.

Second, there are the more abstract, subjective, or fictional fields of theology, culture, music, art, literature, and autobiography. While much of my exploration of agnosticism is focused on non-fiction (history, geography, etc.), I also bring in creative writing, literary criticism, and autobiography. In particular, I use literary criticism in four chapters. In 🦖 At the Wild & Fog I argue that Charles Dickens is a sort of proto-agnostic, and that his novel Bleak House is a powerful reflection of the years immediately prior to Huxley’s coining of the term agnosticism. In 🧜🏽‍♀️ The Mermaid: Existential & Then Some I explore the mix of existentialism and mysticism in the lyric “A Lighter Shade of Pale.” In 🇮🇳 The Fiction of Doubt and 💫 Believing in the Mystery I look at how the mysticism of Whitman and Zhuangzi includes doubt, and at how the skepticism of Rushdie includes mysticism.

I also use autobiography on many pages (Family, Man’s Best Friend, The Scoundrels of Theology, etc.) and also throughout the chapter, ⛱ Señor Locke. In this chapter, I borrowing Locke’s empirical theory of the mind to illustrate the relation between belief, doubt, and sense impressions. Drinking coffee in a colourful square in Guanajuato, Mexico, I wonder how unbiased my thinking about religion can ever be, having been abused by a counsellor at a so-called ‘Christian’ camp. I also wonder if I can ever be free from fear, having been robbed at knifepoint in Mexico City and held captive briefly in Istanbul. Have such experiences made me less open to belief, or more willing to try new forms of belief?

Tangents

The bulk of The Double Refuge is written in essay form, although I sometimes shift into fiction and autobiography. For instance, ☠️ Ars Moriendi reflects on the death of my father and brother, and 🇲🇽 Señor Locke applies Locke’s theory about sense impressions to traumatic experiences I had — being robbed at knifepoint in Mexico City, and being held by criminals in Istanbul. This fictional and autobiographical veering away from exposition & argument is in keeping with my notion that while agnosticism and theism have abstract philosophical dimensions, they are based in personal experience.

This is especially true for agnosticism: at its heart it isn’t as much a system or doctrine as it is an open mode of operating and being. It urges us to think and feel critically, openly, and eclectically. Of course, religion can work in this open, critical way too, which is why I think of open agnosticism and open theism as the double refuge. Christian ecumenicalism goes some way in this, yet it often remains within the sphere of Christianity rather than becoming part of a global religious sensibility. Notable exceptions to this can be found in the writings of Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Merton, Raimundo Panikkar, Bede Griffiths, or, more recently, Richard Rohr.

The following poem I wrote exemplifies what I mean by a global religious sensibility. In it I try to combine this sensibility with the desire to burn away the chaff, that is, to remove whatever stops us from connecting more broadly, from exploring and empathizing, from loving and forgiving, from reaching the grain or valuable substance which is protected yet also hidden by the chaff. In my poem the names of God are many. God thus becomes Shiva, the God of destruction and creation, as well as Christ, the God who is killed and resurrected. In both agnostic and mystical thought, it doesn’t matter what the name is; it’s the principle of improvement and the experience of reconstruction that counts:

By and large religion is dominated by those who tend to think in exclusive terms, often promulgating the notion that their religion is the best. They set Christ against Krishna, Mary against Mahakali. Personal experience too often gets subsumed by the doctrine of a particular church, sect, or school — just as it does by the atheist doctrine of positivism, which argues that the only verification we can rely on comes from the scientific method. Agnostics, by the very nature of their philosophy, are loathe to make such claims to exclusivity and superiority. It’s why agnostics aren’t bothered in the least if an agnostic embraces faith or leaves it altogether — that is, if they stop being an agnostic and become a theist or an atheist. It’s the sincerity of the search and the honesty of the appraisal that counts.

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While The Double Refuge has 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 exploring the relation between poetic agnosticism and mystical theism, since both are rather sliding, floating endeavours. It may be that if you’re willing to explore everything, you’re likely to keep shifting your bearings, and at times quite abruptly. Even to include humour, as when I have Moses in 🍎 The Apple-Merchant of Babylon get so frustrated by the Indian apple-merchants that he invents a new religion. Or by seeing God as the Scarlet Pimpernel, having fun rather than making fun of what’s so often seen as exclusively serious:

In my exploration of doubt & belief I follow timelines and threads, but beyond these there are other trajectories and fabrics. Much as beyond Miró’s blue blob there’s a galaxy of gold and black lines with hints of stars and justice, of upside-down smiles and beings on faraway planets.

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. To impose a pattern or gospel on the universe says more about us than it does about the cosmos.

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Next: 🍷 Doubt + Belief

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Contents - Detailed Contents - Core Beliefs - Overview