Some years ago, I read a book entitled In God We Doubt: Confession of a
failed atheist by John Humphrys.
I read the book in order to better understand
the mind of an agnostic. Notwithstanding the shortfalls in that position, I
discover that there are some apparent benefits to being an agnostic. And to
give them the well-deserved byte-space here, I would like to take this
opportunity to summarize their stand.
Of course, my summary is not a representative of agnosticism as a whole
and I think most of them couldn't be bothered anyway. It is very much a
subjective assessment. Further, I am quite sure that what I am going to write
here will grate against the nerves of some fundamentalists/militants on both
sides of the fence, that is, theists and atheists. So, let me just take this
preemptive stand and qualify that this is a provisional exercise tempered with
a little self-indulgence on my part.
Now, before I outline the five benefits of being an agnostic, I think a
little background is in order here.
In case you are wondering who or what is an agnostic, well, it is a
person who neither believes nor disbelieves the existence of the ultimate cause
of all things, that is, God. He remains uninvolved with or apathetic to things
immaterial and unseen. He endorses learning only through personal experiences
as the ultimate source of knowledge. So, it is not too far from the truth to
say that an agnostic is someone who straddles in the middle of all things, that
is, he avoids either extremes. He is neither religious nor irreligious. He is
neither a devotee nor a skeptic. He is neither hot nor cold. That’s one way of
seeing it.
Another way of seeing it is that an agnostic is neither at either
extreme nor is he in the middle of it all. He just doesn’t have an opinion about
all things spiritual or supernatural. He lives his life in the here and now. He
sees his birth as the start of personal surviving and thriving and he sees his
death as the end of it. In between, he makes the most of his life by keeping
his nose clean, his mind clear and his hands busy.
You can say that in the century-old debates about religion, where atheists
and theists are arguing their hearts out, an agnostic is either a spectator in
the crowd or he is someone who is not even in the crowd because he has better
things to do at home or at work. I guess if an agnostic were asked about what
he thinks about religion or atheism, he would simply reply, “Well, the atheist has the most convincing
argument but the least inspiring. And the theist has the most inspiring
argument but the least convincing.” Therein ends my definition of an
agnostic.
So, without further ado, let me unfold the five basic benefits of being
an agnostic as I see it.
1)
He avoids the
silliness of religion and the bullheadedness of atheism. If you think about it,
an agnostic is the smarter of the two extremes. He doesn’t go around looking
for the face of God in a plate of spaghetti or interpret a single beam of sunlight,
which manages to escape through the swirling mass of dark menacing cloud, as
some kind of supernatural sign meant only for him. At the other atheistic extreme,
he doesn’t close his mind to the beautiful wonders that this world has to
offer. He is open to change his mind when changing his mind is justified. So,
if one day, a supernatural being, like ET, would to descend from the sky with
his index finger outstretched to make the connection with an agnostic,
the latter would readily and willingly embrace it. However, a bullheaded
atheist in the same situation, I suspect, would readily rush off to make an
appointment for a brain scan (uncannily, seen from this angle, an agnostic
almost resembles a mature Christian minus the headless fanaticism or a
level-headed atheist without the tightfisted militancy).
2) The second benefit
is this: An agnostic doesn’t really need to contend with one of the ultimate
conundrums of life, that is, Why is there
something rather than nothing? As far as the agnostic is concerned, there
is clearly something rather than nothing because he himself is that something
that no amount of nothingness can
ever deny. And if there were really nothing to start with and it stayed that
way, consistently and unchanging, then no amount of somethingness can deny that fact either (I know...semantic chaos). By plain logic, only
one state can exist at any one time as they are clearly mutually exclusive. So,
for an agnostic, he is satisfied just to enjoy the somethingness that is himself and the world around him and he is
neither concerned with the “Why” of it
all nor the “how come this way and not
the other way” kind of existential highwire act that vexes most religious
and irreligious people. In a nutshell, an agnostic chooses to travel light even
if traveling light means depriving himself of the inspiring aspects of believing
and the self-endorsed freedom of denouncing.
3)
The next benefit of
being an agnostic is what I would like to call the blissful state of
nonchalance. An agnostic understands that it takes a lot of hard work and
discipline to stay an atheist or a theist. To be a full-blooded atheist for
example, you must be able to stick to your guns and to daily repeat this
Hitchen’s mantra taken from his book God
is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, “Religion is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and
tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry,
contemptuous of women and coercive towards children.” Any lesser sentiment
or passion would not make the cut of being a bona fide, dye-in-the-wood
atheist. And to be a full blooded theist, the never-say-die, stick-in-the-mud kind, you must
always be looking to the clouds for the end of days, that is, the apocalyptic countdown
to both universal destruction and selective deliverance - all happening at the
same time. So, both cemented and almost ossified positions (atheism and
theism that is) are mentally and physically exhausting for an agnostic who honestly
just want to punch out after work, enjoy a hearty family dinner, and have a
good night sleep.
4) An agnostic avoids
the disappointments of unanswered prayers and the disillusionments of unbelief.
At least, when prayers are not realized, an agnostic (in the shoes of a theist) is not compelled to give
some of the trite excuses (not that they are not credible but at times, they
are too self-referential and arbitrary to be credible to an agnostic). Here are the usual excuses: “He has better plans for you”,
“Keep believing, don’t give up”, “You are asking amiss”, “It’s not the right time”, “Any unconfessed sins?”, and this last
one, “Maybe it’s redemptive suffering
that you are going through, and so instead of taking this bitter cup away from you, you
should be asking for a second helping?” To an agnostic, instead of coming
up with the above excuses to squeeze the faith elephant into the theological
fridge, he merely attribute them to random luck for things he has no control
over and character flaws for things that he has. It’s all quite black and
white for him actually. As for the disillusionment of atheism, the agnostic can
do no better in explaining this than to endorse this sagely words of the great
physicist Freeman Dyson, “Science and
religion are two windows that people look through trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to
understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but they look
out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both
leaves out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of
respect.” Well, for an agnostic, he is not exactly going to be looking at
both windows at any time soon since the only “window” he is looking at is the
tv screen in his living room. However, Dyson’s quote still somehow resonates
with him because it is about keeping both windows open instead of shutting them tight
and thereby compromising the amount of light that is illuminating his mental
room.
5)
Finally, and this is
obvious, an agnostic gets the best of both worlds. He gets to remain
un-religious, mostly uncommitted, free from the hypocrisy of religiosity and
the clutters of its practices, and yet he can quietly savor or immerse himself
in the rich historical culture and community of organized religion. In other words, to
borrow a biblical phrase, he gets to be in the world of religion but not of
that world. At the other extreme (atheism), he gets to embrace the latest
scientific discovery, learn to accept and adopt, revise and update his
storehouse of knowledge continuously. And yet at the same time, for those
subjects that science has a short reach, like the mystery of our origin and the
perplexity of our conscience, he can relate intimately to the sentiments
implied in these words by John Humphrys, "Many atheists...say that people believe because of the way they were
brought up: children are credulous and accept what they are told. As they grow
older they get rid of their comfort blankets and often the beliefs with which
they were inculcated. But not everyone does that - and even those who do may
return to belief, in one form or another, in later life. There remains what the
atheist philosopher A.C. Grayling calls "the lingering splinter in the
mind...a sense of yearning for the absolute."" In other words,
the agnostic keeps his options open. Therein ends the five main benefits of
being an agnostic.
I guess it is this same “lingering
splinter in the mind" and this "sense of yearning for the absolute" that led the once formidable atheist philosopher Antony Flew to come to this public
declaration in 2004, “I now believe there
is a God!” Personally, I believe an agnostic still sometimes crosses over
to the supernatural just so that he could take a sneak peek into the void in
case the divine decides to make a special, if not brief, appearance. Cheerz.
