Gospel & Universe 🪐 Preface

Approach, Overview, & Aim

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Approach

In making the point that agnosticism encourages the exploration of every form of thought and belief, it’s not surprising that in Gospel & Universe I use many fields of study: literature & history, geography & astronomy, philology & Assyriology, art & aesthetics, philosophy & politics, etc. In making my points, I also use many genres of expression, especially prose argument, poetry, and visual arts.

Following the phenomenologist’s notion of experience over theory, I also use a fair degree of autobiography and fiction. For instance, in 🇫🇷 The Priest’s Dilemma I create a scenario in which a Parisian priest struggles with evolution and cuneiform, torn between the doctrine of his pulpit and the open lectern of the Collège de France. In ⛱ Señor Locke I tackle the trauma of sense impressions, from being robbed in Mexico City, and briefly held captive in Istanbul, to experimenting with drugs and being haunted by the girlfriends of my youth — all while drinking coffee in a colourful square in Guanajuato.

In other scenarios, a Babylonian Moses fights against the importation of foreign goods & philosophies, a girl in Parma wonders if the angel in a painting is real, I howl at the moon in Oaxaca, and a band of angels plays music to a star-struck tourist in the Vicenza night.

Detail from the bottom of the main panel of The San Pier Maggiore Altarpiece, by Jacopo di Cione and workshop, 1370-1. In The National Gallery, London (photo by RYC).

In yet other scenarios, Li Po stares drunkenly into the night sky, Heraclitus’ ever-changing river surfaces in Rishikesh, a monkey sets the dinner table while Dickens’ megalosaurus waddles up Holborn Hill in London...

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While Gospel & Universe doesn’t have a fixed setting, tone, genre, or style, it does have a constant focus: the many-sided, untameable beast of agnosticism.

As I see it, agnosticism is dogged by variety: contrary scenarios, abrupt revelations, inglorious defeats, shifting moods, long periods of calm, probabilities, improbabilities, tangents, counter-arguments, ifs, buts, maybes, perhapses, conundrums, coincidences, ambiguities, and paradoxes. All of these are only part of the endless tryst with reality — whatever that may be — that characterizes agnosticism.

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Overview

In order to lend coherence to this diversity, I include a fairly lengthy 🪐 Preface and 🧩 Introduction: I explain and illustrate my approach in Aims, Rivers of Change, and Paradox; I acknowledge my bias in P.O.V.; I argue my main point — that religion and philosophy don’t need to be zero-sum games — in A Positive-Sum Philosophy; I explain how I use frameworks of history in Layout; and I explain key concepts and definitions in Q & A, Core Beliefs, Two Infinities, Huxley’s Definition, Types of Agnosticism, The Unconvinced, & Agnostic Geometry.

Following these two introductory chapters are two major sections. PART 1: SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, & LITERATURE focuses on the origins and applications of agnosticism. Here I take a more or less historical route from Classical philosophy to the rise of science, astronomy, science, empiricism, evolutionary theory, and existentialism. PART 2: CURRENTS OF RELIGION focuses on the way agnosticism challenges religion yet also offers a way to appreciate and at times reconcile science & religion.

For a more detailed description of the contents of Gospel & Universe, see Layout, which is the opening page of 🧩 Introduction.

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Aim

My overall aim is to show that agnosticism has deep roots, strong reasons, and an endless number of practical, theoretical, and creative applications. Like epicureans, 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.

Agnostics differ from atheists in their iconoclasm, however: they question both revelation and reason. They entertain the arguments and experiences of both, refusing to worry about being called coldly rational or hotly emotional. They aim to leave that name-calling behind, and instead follow the moment’s slippery truth, whether in the academies of science, the temples of priests, or the imaginations of poets.

They also question their own philosophy. They accuse themselves of setting up an impossible ideal of infinite exploration, much as religious people set up God, and science sets up verification. The notion that we can simply go on thinking and feeling without deciding on a particular philosophy, is impractical to many, perhaps undesirable by most. 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 doubles its size every week.

I’ve felt this way since I was quite young. Even at 14 years old, at Stonehenge with my dad in 1974, I felt I was on a journey that had no final destination.