The Double Refuge 🍷 Bubbles Winking at the Brim
Refuges Here & There
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As I see it, both open agnosticism and open theism are dogged by probabilities & improbabilities, arguments & counter-arguments, ifs & buts, maybes & perhapses, conundrums & coincidences, ambiguities & paradoxes. Because agnosticism focuses on doubt and counter-argument, I’ll begin by exploring this many-sided beast, noting the ways it’s compatible with yet also distinct from atheism and theism. My main goal, however, is to explore the way that open agnosticism and open theism relate, differ, connect, and strengthen each other. If I were to boil my point down to one paragraph, it would go like this:
I’ll explore how the double refuge — the open space that embraces doubt and belief — allows us to freely access existential and spiritual aspects of our lives. This refuge opens up a non-judgmental space to breath and to be who we are. Because it’s a sort of void or pivot, it avoids fixed ideas and predetermined outcomes. It thus can be very helpful in allowing us to allow ourselves to explore new ideas and beliefs. It also suggests that there may be connections between the physical world and that elusive Something Greater, which remains beyond our ability to grasp, define, or control.
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In the next chapter, 🍏 Agnosticism, I’ll argue 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 questioning and critical thinking in all sorts of ways. Even the form of his long poem urges a rethink of old literary norms: 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, open 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.
The National Gallery, London. Photo by RYC.
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 reluctant to question the doctrines of either, figuring that if these doctrines are true then 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.
Open agnostics (as opposed to closed agnostics — again, see Types of Agnosticism) 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 and positivists 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.
Sunset over Urbino (photo by RYC)
This vision of openness is liberating yet it can also be combined with specific beliefs. Indeed, my point about the double refuge is that just as doubt is a refuge from dogma and restriction, so belief is a refuge from endless exploration. Just as we can step out into the universe like a sailor setting out on the open sea, so we can make port, find a tavern, let the host pour us a deep glass of red wine, and listen to the music.
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Next: 🍏 Literature