Gospel & Universe 🪐 Preface
P. O.V. 1: Family
Starting Points - The Right Point of View - Audience
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Starting Points
Agnosticism is a philosophy that can be found anywhere. Even aliens probably have their own agnostic versions of doubt. Perhaps they debate them from different angles according to the number of heads they have. In order to understand these angles, we'd need some information about the worlds they live in, who taught them how to think, what were their philosophic options, what motivated them to believe, and what restrained them from believing.
Likewise, in order to understand my arguments — some of which may seem like the arguments of an alien! — it may be helpful to know how I got to be an agnostic. When did I start to doubt? Why did I choose agnosticism over other points of view?
Starting with these questions makes more sense to me than pretending to be objective, to be above personal considerations. I suppose that for thinkers like Plato, the lofty game of Philosophy might be played on a chessboard in the sky, in an Ideal Realm of capitalized abstractions. But that would just make me wonder about the players and the game of chess itself. Where did it come from? What keeps the table in place? Where are the knights and bishops stationed when they aren’t being pushed around the board? Do the pawns belong to a union? Does winning even matter when you’re up there?
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My own views are deeply influenced by my background and my personal experience, starting with my family and the way my parents decided to raise their children. As the 17th century philosopher John Locke noted, we’re products of our sense impressions, from geography and history to language, family, and personal experience. What we experience at a young age will influence the way we see and act as an adult. Even if we revolt against our upbringing, our revolt is still coloured by this upbringing.
My parents were down-to-earth, having both grown up on farms in Alberta and Saskatchewan. They were also liberal, and as a result they didn’t push us into one philosophy or religious viewpoint — except for a general Anglo-Canadian liberalism. They were most likely influenced (albeit second-hand) by Locke’s famous views on the development of children, for they gave us the freedom to develop a sense of our own agency. The following is from the essay, “Locke and Rousseau: Early Childhood Education,” by Jamie Gianoutsos:
[…] Liberty here does not mean a complete absence of restraint, but it does entail a sense of independence in action. Children want to show that their actions come from themselves and that they are free. In this sense, pride has a close connection to liberty, for men act out of liberty in the belief that they have the capacity for freedom and a natural claim to it as rational beings. Liberty also gives children satisfaction in their industry. Whereas some may argue that children love play-games because they excite their imagination or desire for amusement, Locke argues that it is “liberty alone which gives the true relish and delight to their ordinary play-games” (my emphasis). If children were forced to play, they would grow weary of it in the same way that they tire of study when forced to learn. Hence, it is not any particular action that can become irksome to a child, but the denial of liberty and the use of force. Locke explains that play loses its relish as soon as it becomes duty:
Let a child be but ordered to whip his top at a certain time every day, whether he has or has not a mind to it; let this be required of him as a duty…and see whether he will not soon be weary of any play at this rate […] Is it not so with grown men?
Because of this strong desire for liberty, the wise tutor uses seasons of freedom to turn children toward learning, for “the chief art is to make all that they have to do sport and play too.”
The liberal attitude of my parents is probably why we became so different. My older brother became an atheist when he was about 12, and he’s stayed an atheist ever since. Up until the end of high school, my sister and I were all over the map: we experimented with drugs, sex, & rock n roll, read Tolkien & Heinlein, and listened to the experimental music of Led Zeppelin & Queen. Yet as soon as my sister got to university she became a born-again Christian. Not some Bible-thumping prude, but a sincere believer in the power of divine love. Influenced by my sister, my younger brother became a Christian, yet later reacted against it and became a New Atheist like my older brother.
Most of the time I’ve remained between the two extremes, changing philosophies on numerous occasions, always wary of committing to any one system of belief or disbelief. I dipped into theism & atheism, anarchism & idealism, Christianity & Daoism, drugs & meditation, Hinduism & agnosticism, etc. In this sense I became a bit like my New Age mother, who would try anything, and also like my agnostic father, who would debate everything.
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The Right Point of View
My father was a special case: he was a farm boy who worked in an asylum to get through business and law school in nearby Edmonton. He then worked for a French oil company in Calgary, and brought his family along with him for several years to Paris and Geneva. He spent much of his time flying to Rotterdam and Basel, coaching Little League baseball, talking about the Edmonton Oilers, and getting his oil company to support The One Third Ninth classical music trio as well as the Raga Mala Society. Perhaps influenced by his university friend, who was a judge in Edmonton, his philosophical ideal was that of the wise and impartial judge. I remember him quietly remarking on numerous occasions that it’s extremely difficult to arrive at the right point of view.
He was always very supportive. In the mid-80s, just after my wife and I came back from East Asia, I spent two years mostly at the computer in the den on the top floor of his house in Victoria. I would be writing madly and he would be working at his desk behind me.
I always expected him to tell me that I was wasting my time writing insane travelogue (that never got published). Yet one day, out of the blue, he said to me, “You know Rog, this may be the most valuable thing you ever do.” It’s a sentence I never forgot.
I also remember his reaction after he read a draft of an agnostic argument I made. He said he liked the draft, yet he added that I was wasting my time trying to influence people on the topic of religion. Perhaps he said this because he had an uncle who was a rock-solid evangelical. Perhaps he’d banged his head against that wall one too many times. Or perhaps he simply knew how doggedly people stick to their beliefs.
My dad would be proud that I didn’t just believe him and give up on the argument. In this sense, and with a sad smile, I dedicate all my arguments to him.
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Audience
My dad’s comment also raises questions for me: Who is my audience? If convinced atheists and convinced believers won’t budge, why bother to argue that they ought to try new ways of thinking? For me the answer is simple: I’m not writing for the convinced. If believers or atheists find my arguments interesting, that’d be great. Yet I’m writing for people like me, who are puzzled by reality and who haven’t found a philosophy that resonates with their bewilderment. So often we’re accused of being wishy-washy and of sitting on the fence. I think our accusers are right about our uncertain position, yet they’re wrong to see it in negative terms.
Agnostic aren’t evangelists or New Atheists — that is, they don’t burn to change the views of other people. Who knows, those other people may be right. But there are many people who, like me, doubt that they’re right. It’s also to those people that I offer my thoughts, hoping they find in them some companionship along the puzzling way.
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Next: P.O.V. 2: Literature
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