Gospel & Universe 🧩 Introduction

To Believe and Not to Believe

Eastern Religion: the Challenge of Hinduism

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One can say that agnostics don’t believe in anything, but one can also say that they might believe in anything, if given sufficient reason — or revelation. Agnostics believe in the fact of living, and in the wide range of experiences and ideas that are open to exploration. Generally, it’s not a philosophy for those who simply can’t decide because everything is just too confusing. Rather, it’s a philosophy that requires an open and receptive mind. As a philosophy, it gains in depth when tested by further knowledge and experience.

Agnostics concede that theism or atheism may be true, but that we have no reliable way of knowing for sure. They lean toward science and skepticism, yet they also argue that spiritual or alternate dimensions may interact with us in some way, even if we don’t know how or why.

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Claims about the miraculous, such as the parting of the Red Sea or yogis levitating, are impossible for agnostics to verify or experience, and are therefore impossible for them to believe. It’s also difficult for agnostics to believe in the historical validity of Moses, much less the earlier Abraham, Noah, and Adam. Accounts of such events and figures include specific times and places, and can therefore be tested to some degree by history, archaeology, and philology. Noah stands out among the above-mentioned figures, however, since he can be strongly correlated with the Utnapishtim of Sumerian legend. And yet this correlation also questions the originality and authority of the Jewish story. (At the very least, Noah loses a great deal of his Jewish identity — I’ll return to Noah below, on several occasions throughout Gospel & Universe, especially in 🌎 The Currents of Sumer 2: The Flood). Moses, Abraham, and Adam on the other hand don’t seem to exist outside the Jewish narrative whatsoever. The reputed author of the first books of the Bible, Moses, seems more like the legendary Laozi, author the the Daodejing. Agnostics, however, don’t exclude the possibility that Moses existed. But until they get some sort of proof, the account of Moses remains on the level of fiction and legend.

Even if historians could locate Moses in an Exodus from Egypt, agnostics still wouldn’t believe in a miraculous parting of the sea. They’d be open to the possibility, yet they’d withhold their belief until they’re given some sort of proof that 1. such a thing is possible, and 2. this specific instance occurred at this specific moment in history.

Historically, doubt about the historical and chronological precision of the Jewish God deepened in the 1870s when we discovered that the seminal story of Noah’s Ark is a reworking of the story found in Gilgamesh and the Atra-Hasis, extant versions of which go back to the 17th century BC. This threw a profound doubt over the Bible since it showed that what was thought an original and historically accurate account of the Jewish God derived from a previous polytheistic source. (Again, I deal with this in 🌎 The Currents of Sumer 2: The Flood).

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Eastern Religion: the Challenge of Hinduism

Neoplatonism, mysticism, and Eastern religion in general are less difficult to reject on historical or literal grounds because in general they don’t pretend to be historical or literal in the first place. For example, in Hinduism it’s hard to hold scripture about the gods and heroes to historical account because most Hindus don’t pretend to a precise chronology. Also, accounts don’t attempt to preclude other accounts. A god may speak, yet there are so many variations of the same speech that literalism and exclusivity aren’t valued modes of interpretation and validation. If anything, multiplicity, fusion, and profusion are valued qualities.

One of the key reasons here may be that Hinduism starts around 1450 BC with the symbolic poetry of the Vedas, and symbolic poetry by its very nature is open to a variety of interpretations. The early emphasis on Brahman in the Upanishads (c. 400 BC) and in texts such as Shankara’s 8th century commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita, strongly advanced the view that God transcends all attempt to describe Him/Her/It or to contextualize God within the parameters of human history.

The key concepts about an Ultimate God are exceptionally abstract in all the major Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism). As a result it’s not as easy to cast doubt on Shankara’s Brahman, Buddha’s Absolute (or paramārtha), and Laozi’s Dao than it is to cast doubt on a God who said specific things in particular places at particular times (as we see in the Bible). It’s important to note here that Shankara’s non-dual (advaita) tradition is complimented by a qualified non-dual (visist advaita) tradition in which specific gods are raised on the highest pedestals. Yet it’s important to note that qualified non-dual traditions rarely claim to be verifiable historically. Moreover, they almost always accept that 1. gods can be understood as psychological concepts (as in Sri Aurobindo’s writing) and 2. all versions or manifestations of gods fuse in the greatest of cosmic realities, which lies beyond all schools of human thought. Hindus don’t worry so much whether one sees this fusion as Brahman, Krishna, or Mahadevi.

The claims Eastern religions tend to make about history are vague and the value of their texts doesn’t lie in a contract or covenant with God, much less one that was made at a particular time with a particular person, family, or group. For instance, one might speculate on when exactly Rama ventured into the forest, yet this speculation doesn’t determine the theology in any important way. The earliest Hindu scripture, Rg Veda, is said to have been written in the Punjab area on a banks of the Saraswati River, which no longer exists. Whether or not the river ever existed doesn’t change the symbolic nature of the poetry. Geologists have found evidence that the rivers of the Punjab have drastically changed their courses over time, and so it may well be that the Saraswati River was in fact where the poets composed the Rg Veda. But even if we find this to be true, it doesn’t change the basic meanings of the poems.

I don’t mean to imply by this that the spiritual claims of Eastern religions are any more true than the claims of Western religions, once we leave aside the question of their historical claims. Hindus, Buddhists, and Daoists have all sorts of claims that are as doubtful as the Virgin birth or walking on water. Returning to the idea of an invisible Saraswati River, Hindus believe that this river flows underground to meet the Ganges and Yamuna at the city of Allahabad (or Prayagraj), where they hold the Kumbh Mela, the worlds largest religious festival. Hindus also believe the River is the Goddess Saraswati, just as the Ganges River is the Goddess Ganga, who flows through the hair of Shiva from Mount Kailasa to the Bay of Bengal. Even though we aren’t asked to believe these idea in a historical sense, this doesn’t mean that we’re obliged to believe them in a religious sense.

Yet like the story of Moses, the meaning of Saraswati, goddess of literature and art, means more than specific times and places. The otherworldly meanings don’t have to be historically specific or interpreted literally in order to suggest a greater meaning. And given that there is, in any case, no way to verify specific or literal aspects of soul or deity, the agnostic is content to live with the suggestion — that is, without turning religious conception into dogma, and without feeling compelled to say that what can’t be proved is true, either literally or abstractly. The religious conception is, however, open to be appreciated and explored.

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Next: 🧩 Types of Agnosticism

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