Gospel & Universe 🧩 Introduction
Two Infinities
Double Mysteries - Infinities - Non-Selective Infinities of the Physical or Practical World - Selective Infinities of the Metaphysical or Theological Realm
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Double Mysteries
At the core of agnosticism lies a question mark about the definition and meaning of reality. Because agnosticism lies between believing and not believing in religion, agnostics see the universe as a mystery. They see that the universe created our bodies and minds, and they're open to the notion that the universe — or nature — is controlled by a benevolent God (like Jehovah, Allah, or Vishnu) or an orderly God-like Force (like the Neoplatonic One, the Dao, or Brahman). If there is such a benevolent God or ordering Force, then it may or may not have created a soul within us. And that soul may or may not be eternal.
For agnostics, philosophy — whether it be various schools of philosophy or the philosophy of religion — ought to account for two basic facts: 1. we exist in time and space, and 2. we exist as humans who require community and meaning. Traditionally, religion supplied communities with a meaningful explanation of time and space. Yet because our understanding of time and space was uprooted by Modern science, religion entered a phase of instability. It became unable to reconcile rationality with unprovable doctrines (such as God's love for humans) or with disproven doctrines (such as the belief that Earth stands still in space).
For agnostics, religion is an open sea they explore, not a sea into which they drop anchor. Agnostics gravitate away from doctrines which insist on fixed meanings or beliefs, and drift toward others which allow for exploration, shifting perspectives, and radical questioning. They even explore unprovable doctrines, for who knows, these may be right after all.
Agnostics belive in the physical world, and don't spend much time questioning whether or not we exist. One of the reason for this is that the physical world and our existences are so patently obvious. A second reason is that agnostics focus more on what it means to exist, and in this exploration there is enough room for speculation to last them their entire lives. Why question if you are when what you are is more intriguing, and what you can understand and experience is even more intriguing again.
For instance, I look back at this photo my wife took forty years ago on a sand dune in Western China. I think, What a wonder, that we can go from one side of the globe to another. And what a wonder, this sand, this ability to move, the curved trajectory against the massive curve of the sand…
Thomas Henry Huxley, who coined the term agnosticism, writes that the immortality of the soul sounds like a good idea, although he can’t say if it’s true or not. In any case, “It is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force or the indestructibility of matter.”
Instead of seeing nature as a mechanical force which is necessarily indifferent to us, agnostics test the notion that nature may have delightful surprises in store. It may be a conduit to greater insights, or it may be an expression of greater truths. Or, of course, it may come from and lead to itself, without any greater insight or truth whatsoever. Even if this were the case, the wonders of nature seem almost infinite, which makes sense since the universe appears to be unlimited both spatially and temporally. Perhaps the physical infinities of time and space connect in some way with the metaphysical infinity ascribed to God in religions developed before the rise of science. Quién sabe? Qui sait? Who knows?
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Infinities
On the most basic level of space and time, agnostics see two types of infinity: 1. physical and natural, and 2. metaphysical and supernatural. The first type is non-negotiable, while the second type is subject to endless debate. The first is full of speculation & hypothesis, experiments, and facts. In other words, it's verification-based and scientific. The second is full of speculation & imagination, experience which is emotional and mystical, and narrative which is considered sacred. In other words, it’s text-based and religious.
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Non-Selective Infinities of the Physical or Practical World
This type of infinity isn't optional. We don't select it, but live in it by default. We can of course select different ways of looking at it, but it remains the same whatever we think about it.
This infinity is the real world that stretches from a grain of sand (and the atoms and angstroms within it) to outer space. Its dimensions are suggested by the expanding enormity of our knowledge, which is unveiled year to year by nuclear physics and astrophysics, and moment to moment by the curiosity of the human imagination, whether this be of a child, scientist, poet, artist, or anyone with an explorative bent.
In our perception of the largest and smallest physical objects, we've gone historically from 1. what we can see with the naked eye, to 2. what we can see if we put a curved glass in front of our eyes, to 3. what we can see though highly mediated technology, where we aren’t so much looking at where an object is as at how we represent the object in numerical, graphic, or symbolic form. It's quite possible that this third way of ‘looking’ at the world will take new forms as electron microscopes, space-based telescopes, theoretical physics, as well as art and philosophy, urge us to look deeper and further into the matter of the universe.
The physical world has much of the rich deep mystery we traditionally ascribe to religion. There’s an ineffable strangeness and beauty in the forms and processes of life. There’s mystery in the most basic physical phenomena like gravity and light and in the emotions and consciousness that spring from the most complex thing we know: the human body and brain. There's also the mystery of whether or not the physical world is finite or infinite, both in its largest and smallest dimensions. Perhaps the cosmos curves back into itself, or perhaps it ends and there's absolutely nothing beyond the end. Perhaps matter is infinitely small, containing particles and waves much smaller than bosons or leptons. Or perhaps matter has a solid, indivisible core which can’t be divided further.
Democritus believed that a grain of sand could only be divided so many times until a minimum dimension was reached. In modern physics, Planck's smallest size is 1.616255 meters times 10 to minus 35. Yet this smallest of sizes is determined by our concepts of time and space, which are subject to change. Moreover, we can imagine a space inside or outside any given space. Math can divide or multiply spaces infinitely, and nothing is more spatially and temporally clear or quantifiable than math.
As a result, there are good reasons to suspect that physical or practical space may be infinite. Yet this is a tentative proposition, and neither science nor agnosticism has a vested interest in making it seem any more than that. Scientists and agnostics aren't like Christian theologians of old, who asserted that Earth was 1. created in 4004 BC and 2. never moves. Yet the vast stretches of outer space and the minuteness of molecular space are so mind-boggling, and so far are so never-ending, that they may as well be infinite.
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Selective Infinities of the Metaphysical or Theological Realm
The other type of infinity is far more theoretical, since it doesn’t start from the naked eye or from an observable stretch of time. Rather, it starts from poetical, mystical, or mathematical conceptions, often wrapped in arcane symbolism and narrative.
Many elements in these narratives make sense, and often there’s a historical framework to the narrative. Yet the assertions about the largest spaces (Heaven & Hell, other dimensions, etc.) or about the smallest spaces (people disappearing into thin air, deities appearing from thin air, universes beneath quantum states, etc.) is entirely theoretical, at least as far as we can see — or can't see!
The more supernatural versions of infinity there are, the more likely any one of them will be seen as an illusion. For instance, if there was only one version of eternal life, it would be easier to adopt it. But because there are at least two — 1. karma-samsara and 2. Heaven & Hell — we're obliged to choose which one is true. Unless, of course, we exist in two physical universes simultaneously, or unless we can chose from two metaphysical universes after death. This is an interesting prospect, yet it lays an even more speculative possibility upon two already speculative possibilities.
Even if we leave inter-religious concerns aside, the problem of multiple interpretations of the same religion makes belief in One True Religion very difficult, at least for those with a strong historical sense.
Prior to the Great Schism and the Reformation, one version of Christianity allowed for general agreement in the West — that is, after the early Church councils weeded out all the alternatives of the Classical world. Yet the more versions of Christianity that developed, the more it was possible to spot differences and discrepancies, and to question how it was that one version came to be accepted as the highest doctrinal Truth. By the 17th century there were Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant churches, and also the many sub-divisions of the Dissenters. In the 16th century edicts were required to stop Catholics and Protestants from killing each other, and in subsequent centuries secular laws were required so that dissenters had the freedom to practice their very specific versions of doctrinal Truth: Baptist, Anabaptist, etc.
Each new version that claimed to be true introduced one more version that was possibly true or untrue, until we ended up with something like a Christianized version of the philosophical profusion that existed before the early Church councils weeded out what they considered false or heretical versions.
Add to these all the other otherworldly grand narratives that were either already there or that were developed along the way: Mesopotamian and Egyptian religions, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Gnosticism, Classical Greek & Roman religions and philosophies, Islam, Deism, agnosticism, existentialism, etc.
By the 20th century writers and intellectuals were all too aware of the multiplicity of belief systems. They could no longer look at the Jewish tradition without seeing the Mesopotamian behind it (if, that is, they looked closely enough and were aware of the philological and Assyriological revolution of the 19th century). Nor could they read the assertions and miracles in the Bible without wondering how these could be reconciled with scientific and historical records.
In order to maintain a time-honoured religious belief, it became necessary to do either of two things: 1. become a fundamentalist; stick to your guns about one version and believe that the other versions are wrong; 2. become an ecumenical or mystic; abandon fixed truths and believe that the apparent divisions are only aspects of a Whole. This second option works by altering the nature of the relation between religion and this world by making the concepts of deity and soul more vague and open, and by making rationality an intimate partner of emotion.
Because of the diversity — and clash — of grand religious narratives, the less specific or selective a notion of metaphysical infinity is, the closer it comes to being rational in the sense that no one can say it’s specifically contradicted by something else. To agnostics, the more vague and all-encompassing a religious narrative is, the more it can be correlated with the infinitely small and infinitely large world of nature, and the more likely it is to make sense to people of a rational bent.
One drawback to vague religious concepts is they can appear indifferent to human needs, desires, aspirations, suffering, etc. For this reason vague theological structures work best when paired with community and morality, and with an openness to the possibilities of universal intelligence, benevolence, and love.
This second vision of the universe jives with reason and science, and also maintains the time-honoured vision of human justice, order, and love. From an agnostic perspective, this approach extends our rational and emotional appreciation of nature into a realm previously reserved for religion.
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Next: The Mysterious Heavens
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