On theism, gnosticism and agnosticism

[unixronin]

Through a chain of thought that started out with the FDA rejecting an artificial blood substitute because it had a higher chance of adverse effects than real blood (an issue which I shall discuss separately), cymru and I ended up talking about mental rigidity and knowledge.

From that discussion came the insight that part of my problem with accepting organized religion relates to knowledge. The way I see it, knowledge and the ability to learn are vital. The universe contains many questions, and enlightenment comes through finding the best answers to them (and in particular, ferreting out the more interesting questions and finding the answers to them). At the same time, though, it’s OK to say “We don’t know yet”, or just “I don’t know.”

But many people, particularly many Americans, have a strange and irrational aversion to ever saying “I don’t know”. It’s as though they think saying you don’t know something is an admission that somehow makes you a lesser person.

Plato, I believe, talked about this. (Or it might have been Aristotle; I don’t have the original quotation handy. I need to make a note of it if I can ever find it again.) He said something like this:

“He that knows, and knows that he knows, is a wise man. He that knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool. But he that knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a scholar.”

There’s a similar quote here, variously attributed to Confucius or to some unknown Persian. There’s also a related Japanese proverb: “Kiku wa ittoki no haji, kikanu wa matsudai no haji.” Perhaps the best semantic translation into English is, “While asking others something that you don’t know is a temporary shame, not asking at all causes a lifetime of shame.” Or, more pithily, “If you ask a stupid question, you look stupid; but if you don’t ask, you remain stupid.” The key point in all the forms is constant: There is no shame in being able to say “I don’t know”. You can never learn something until you first acknowledge, at least to yourself, that you don’t know it, because you can’t learn something that you believe you already know.

And that’s a big problem with the majority of organized religion. Because organized religions tend to have a bad habit of deciding that there is only one possible version of the truth, and it is exactly as set down here and beyond any further question — even when it contradicts logical sense, and worse, even when it contradicts itself. Any question whose answer is not set down in the Official Truth then becomes one to be answered with “God did it” or “Because Allah said so”. Let’s generalize that to “A Wizard Did It.”

The reason this is a problem is because once you’ve declared that A Wizard Did It, instead of acknowledging that We Don’t Know Yet, you have halted inquiry into the question. You’re presented an answer that isn’t really an answer at all, and written off the question as answered. Instead of answering the question, you’ve passed the buck, pushed the question off to a higher level of abstraction and, by implication, forbidden pursuing it there. That proscription can fall anywhere from “That answer should be good enough for you, just accept it”, to “It’s impious and presumptuous to continue pursing that question”, to branding the questioner as outright heretical.

That’s the big problem with declaring that A Wizard Did It. Not only have you not answered the question, you’ve now actively discouraged any further attempts to answer it — and often solely because you were too vain, too arrogant, too insecure, or simply too doctrinally rigid to be able to say “We don’t know.”

There are many ways to answer a question, particularly a philosophical question, to which you don’t know the answer. “A Wizard Did It” is among the worst of all possible answers.

Possibly the best is, “We don’t know the answer to that question yet. Why don’t you see if you can find out?”

Comments

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

This is exactly why I believe in a Higher Power of some sort, but don't follow any organized religion.

[lebo-superman.livejournal.com]

I agree, and also observe no organized faith or discipline.

[rosencrantz23.livejournal.com]

thirded. This is why I admire the scholastic tradition of Judaism, but reject its hide-bound insistence on living in the past.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

I am a member of an organized religious movement — the Episcopal Church of the United States of America (ECUSA).

We do not claim to have answers. We claim instead to have a couple of thousand years of philosophy and theology connected to the search for answers, and some good ideas from long ago which some people believe to be the Word of God delivered from the Word Made Flesh. (Speaking for myself, I’m not sure how much I buy that — and yet I’m readily welcomed in the ECUSA.)

Stanley Fish once observed that religion has the same relationship to science that ballet has to physics: the former is informed by the latter, but does not coexist with the latter. We dance because we are human and because something in us compels us to dance — likewise with religion.

I agree with you absolutely that doubt and uncertainty are part of the human condition, and there ought be no shame or derision directed at someone who confesses their ignorance. My remarks here are only to disagree with how you seem to be painting all of organized religion with that brush — and I do not think that’s a supportable statement.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I wasn't intending to apply the comment to all organized religions. I probably didn't phrase it as well as I could have, though. I was trying to get it all down before I lost the thread of what we'd been talking about. (Buddhism, with its underlying idea that there can be no such thing as a wrong path to enlightenment, because any path that leads to enlightenment must by definition necessarily be right, is another example that falls into this class.)

I should revisit that specific part of the wording and revise it slightly.

(Revised, by the way. And see also the reply below to ithildae.)

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

I like to think of it as everyone has unique experience and outlook in this life. If there is a single point on a page that everyone needs to travel to, and we each start at some random location on the page, each person's path will be very likely unique to achieve the destination point. Some start closer, some have further to travel. That doesn't lessen the value of "enlightenment". (That works for me, except I think of it in terms of solid space.)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yup. Even if we start out in the same place, there may not necessarily be a single "best path" that applies to both of us. In this field, the shortest route is dependent not only upon the starting point, the desired ending point, and the intervening terrain, but also upon the traveler. What's more, other people you meet upon your journey can either shorten your journey by assistance, or lengthen it through either malicious or well-intended misdirection.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Precisely!

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

It takes a large part of security in knowing one's self to admit to ignorance. Too many people (Especially Americans) have no grounding in their own strengths to be willing to admit ignorance. My father never admitting not knowing, in my hearing, until I had teenage children. My favorite uncle, in contrast, seldom did not know the answer to any of my questions, but he did say, "Let's find out." more than once, in answer to my questions.

I really can't agree with the classic argument of Philosophy, that states, As soon as you admit a God, science and thought cease. I can't see any reason that would eliminate questioning How God did it, even if I acknowledge that God did it.

I freely agree that there a many organizations, not all religious, that attempt to limit the quest for knowledge. Whether by orthodoxy (as in the case of Global Climate Change) or Forbidden knowledge (as in some of our Ethics Restrictions) our outright ban (Embryonic Stem Cell research), there is always someone that feels threatened by new information. Blaming it all on organized religion is a type of tunnel vision.

I belong to an organized religion. I like it. Part of the observance of that religion is to seek for knowledge. Not just religious knowledge, but all knowledge. It teaches that the end point of our existence is to know all that God knows. We have a long time to learn it, but getting started early is a plus. In that viewpoint, there are no mysteries. Period. There is nothing that God does, or has done, that is not comprehensible and discoverable. (Some prerequisites may be required before final answers can be found.) I have never felt discouraged from asking oddball questions, on any topic (within the cultural norms of good taste.)

While I agree that religion, especially static religion, have been regularly used to foreclose avenues in man's search for understanding, it does not always have to be that way. Judaism is a prime counter example, because the Jews have been learning, and growing, for many millennia. It all comes down to how secure people feel with God. Does God speak symbolically, or absolutely. If your worldview insists on, God Spake, but does not speak, you cannot leave the bounds of what you believe. Innerrency is the enemy to learning, not God.

For the record, I believe that the expansion of the Universe is one of the positive proofs that God lives, and that the work of the creation continues to this day. Who says that God stopped doing, just because some people stopped listening?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I freely agree that there a many organizations, not all religious, that attempt to limit the quest for knowledge. Whether by orthodoxy (as in the case of Global Climate Change) or Forbidden knowledge (as in some of our Ethics Restrictions) our outright ban (Embryonic Stem Cell research), there is always someone that feels threatened by new information. Blaming it all on organized religion is a type of tunnel vision.

Oh, I agree entirely. And I wasn't attempting to suggest that it's all the fault of organized religion. It's simply that religion was the context of the discussion that it all came out of. You see, we were talking about synthetic blood replacements, and blood transfusions, and religious proscriptions on same, and cymrullewes wondered aloud why it is that so many religions are not satisfied simply to have you believe, but demand that you believe exactly as they do. My train of thought was to address and discuss this specific shortconing, this particular rigidity of thought, without intending to suggest either that it occurs in all organized religions or that it occurs only in religions. (Indeed, no other institution ever invented thus far by the diabolically fertile mind of man is so dedicated and ruthless in enforcing Right Thought as totalitarian secular governments.)

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.

I think the religious problem is that people really don't believe, they just want to. If they really believed, a different viewpoint would not challenge their own security and sense of self quite so much.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

That's it, almost exactly. They haven't the faith to back up their beliefs.

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

amen (eville grin)