God. Who knows? - Former Anglican Vicar Now Athiest

[Pastor Dale Morgan]

*
Perilous Times*

*God. Who knows? - Former Anglican Vicar Now Athiest*

With religion increasingly polarised, is there any benefit in not
knowing if there is a higher power? Mark Vernon - an ex-vicar - explains
why agnosticism is his creed.

We are in a period of intense debate about religion. It seems there are
believers, secularists and atheists - in their manifold varieties -
arguing over their various concerns. Veils. Intelligent design v
evolution. Ordaining gays and women. Contraception and Aids.

But there is one voice that is squeezed out, partly because it can
equivocate, partly because it tires of the tit-for-tat that the debate
is so often reduced to. That is the agnostic.

AGNOSTICISM

Philosophical view that truth of claims like the existence of gods is
unknown or unknowable
Word from Greek a, meaning without, and gnosis, meaning knowledge
Noted agnostics include Francis Crick, Sir David Attenborough, Carl
Sagan and Warren Buffet

It is a position that interests me because I used to be a priest in the
Church of England. Then, to cut a long story short, I left - and I left
a confirmed atheist. After a while, I found unbelief as dissatisfying as
full-blown Christianity. It seems to entail a kind of puritanism, as if
certain areas of human experience must be put off-limits, for fear that
they smack of religion. So I became an agnostic.

Now, many atheists and believers alike think agnosticism weak. Atheists
would bundle us in with them; liberal believers likewise. But this does
us a disservice. In fact, I have become really quite evangelical about
the need for a passionate, committed agnosticism.

Why? How else to deal with something that lies at the heart of the human
condition: uncertainty. Thus, a corresponding "lust for certainty"
characterises many of the debates currently doing the rounds. In
religion, fundamentalism is the obvious case in point.

New Jersey courts opened the way for Alicia Heath-Toby, left, and
Saundra Toby-Heath to marry
New Jersey women who sued for the right to marry - and won
A similar lust for certainty also increasingly characterises mainstream
religion, such as the crisis about homosexuality in the Church of
England. For conservative evangelicals, what you think about gay
love-making is a test of what you think about the truth of the Bible. To
be for one is to be against the other.

When it comes to the scientific worldview, a lust for certainty is
manifest in different ways. Think of the way that some atheists go on at
great length about the need to throw off superstitious belief and don
the freedom and reason of the Enlightenment.

What they will not accept is what the inventor of the word "agnostic"
sought to highlight. TH Huxley meant his neologism as a rebuke to all
who peddle their opinions as facts - notably their opinion, scientific
or religious, about God. For whether or not God exists is neither proven
nor, he thought, provable. God just isn't that kind of concept.

Einstein, another agnostic, looked at the universe and saw the workings
of a "spirit" beyond our understanding, an intuition the atheist would
stubble over.

Fear of unknown

The lust for certainty spills over into other walks of modern life too.
Take the so-called politics of fear - the constant reference to risks,
from hoodies on the street corner to international terrorism.

Armed police patrol at Heathrow

Scared yet?

Whatever the truth of these risks and the best ways of dealing with
them, the politics of fear plays on an assumption that people cannot
bear the uncertainties associated with them. Politics then becomes a
question of who can better deliver an illusion of control.

Being agnostic can amount to little more than a shrug of the shoulders.
But can it be a weighty way of life? It can, because it has great
traditions to draw on - no lesser traditions than those of philosophy,
religion and science. At their richest, all three are riven through and
through with an agnostic spirit.

Take philosophy. Socrates was a genius because he realised that the key
to wisdom is not how much you know, but how well you understand how
little you know. That is why he irritated so many powerful people in
ancient Athens; his philosophy burst the bubble of their misplaced
confidence.

Similarly, Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) said that to be human is
to be "between beasts and angels". He meant that we are not ignorant
like the animals. But we are also far from wise. Faith for Augustine was
about deepening the capacity to enter this cloud of unknowing, rather
than opting for the shallow certainties that religion can deliver.

Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes
convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe - a
spirit vastly superior to that of man-Albert Einstein

Finally, in science, the best sort - in the sense of the most humanly
enriching - is that which answers questions by opening up more
questions, and in particular links to questions that are beyond science
alone answer.

This is the spirit that you see in cosmology. On one level, cosmologists
understand an extraordinary amount about the universe. But
simultaneously, this only deepens the sense of the universe's
tremendousness. The science keeps pointing to the big question of why we
here at all.

The revival of a committed, passionate agnosticism in philosophy,
religion and science is vital for our age. Without it religion will
become more extreme; science will become more triumphalist; and our
politics increasingly based on fear.