Gospel & Universe 🧩 Introduction
Sitting on Fences
While theism and atheism are relatively clear, agnosticism lies between the two and is trickier to get at. This often leads people to ask questions such as, Can’t agnostics make up their minds? Aren’t they just sitting on the fence? Aren’t they just stuck in a default uncertainty that makes them afraid to commit? Doesn’t a person have to either believe or not believe?
In Gospel & Universe I answer these questions with an emphatic No.
Well, No, and Yes. But mainly No. By which I mean Yes agnostics sit on the fence, and Yes they embrace a default uncertainty. But No, agnostics aren’t this way because they aren’t capable of making up their minds. They have made up their minds, for the moment at least: doubt is the default position. And the moment is the sum of what’s come before, and will change at a moment’s notice. Agnostics believe that to stop doubting is, from both a scientific and a philosophic point of view, to ignore the fact that certainty doesn’t exist.
Finally, No, sitting on the fence doesn’t come from a fear of commitment. Rather, it comes from the fact that there are at least two options — materialism or spirituality, atheism or theism, existentialism or essentialism — neither of which cancels out the other. The material world is solidly in front of our faces, beneath our noses, bumping into our shins. The spiritual world on the other hand is nowhere and yet everywhere — at least according to most of humanity. No amount of physical proof can make it vanish because it inhabits the emptiness of space. It exists in the ‘formless form’ of a dimension beyond space and time. Excluding one of these two options, on the strength or allure of the other, isn’t as much a logical imperative as it is a practical or ideological choice. Agnostics simply refuse to make this choice; they choose instead what they see as the obvious imperative: uncertainty. Instead of deciding on either reason or religion, agnostics accept reason and remain open to religion. They argue that sitting on the fence gives a clear view of the two and allows for re-evaluation and experimentation.
Not making up their minds also allows agnostics to take a good look at the fence on which they sit. They examine how the divide is constructed, how it snakes this way and that, how it connects to other fences, where the gaps are, and where it leads.
Agnostics sometimes even wonder if the fence itself is a metaphorical fallacy, its logic at once decisive and divisive. Or perhaps that’s just a limit placed on the possibilities of fences. Perhaps the fence can run down an embankment, twist sideways, and stick out into a river. Perhaps the agnostic sits on a dock instead. The dock lifts up into the air. It turns into a walking bridge and reaches the other side. The agnostic stops half-way, to watch the river below. He hovers above it at a single point in space. He watches as the river turns into a symbol of ever-changing possibilities.
Or the agnostic runs along the horizontal fence like a river runs to the sea. It’s here that the reality of constant change flows into the symbolic notion of the infinite sea. The sea isn’t in fact infinite, yet one might say that it’s a more powerful symbol than space because it’s more tangible. Unlike endless outer space, the sea is right there, and one could swim into it. And swimming in it, as any sailor knows, is a dangerous business. Little wonder it’s seen as the greatest symbol of Nature’s power. It can dissolve your identity and batter your bones like little slats of wood.
The agnostic knows that we don’t know what lies beyond our world. He sees the ocean as a stand-in metaphor, knowing that we have deep sea divers who can tell us what is down there, deep in the dark depths. The more challenging we imagine the ocean journey to be, the more we understand how challenging our situation in the universe is. One can use the word challenging, yet it is also terrifying, awesome, and not for the faint of heart. No one, however wise, really knows what’s out there.
In writing about agnosticism I hope to dispel the notion that agnostics merely sit on the fence. They do sit on the fence, watching what’s going on in the wheat field on one side and in the barnyard on the other. Yet they also walk along the fence, from farm to city, tip-toeing over the barbed wire of a warehouse gate, and kicking the sturdy boards of a gated community. They grab an apple in a sacred grove, jump down onto the pavement, sit in a café, and open their laptop.
Next: 🧩 A Literary Approach
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