h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I generally define my agnosicism as, 'I think there could be something out there, but I'm not sure what form it takes'. I pray occasionally, partly because I was taught to and partly for the comfort it brings. Usually, though, it's just a conversation with whatever's out there.

I'm an agnostic because I have problems with all the world's recognised religions. I have trouble with anything that recognises a pantheon of gods (Hinduism), prohibits any kind of food (Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddism) or places any restrictions on any section of the population (take your pick). I also have trouble with religions that advocate 'Holy Wars' (Christianity, Islam). Basically, I've always held that there's no point 'belonging' to a religious group unless you believe *everything* they hold to be true. I find this to be impossible for all the religions I have encountered. As the article says, I also have trouble with any group that claims to have all the answers, or that claims that its religious texts are 'gospel truth'. I guess I'll be an agnostic indefinitely!

But can you really be sure of your own uncertaintity? Or not?

The hindu pantheon is allegedly just a personification of the differing sides of ultimate reality - not literally seperate beings... kinda like those h2g2ers with 50 different logins to the system. Or so I've heard.

You could always invent your own religion...

I can honestly say the closest I ever got to God was watching Elvis in his '68 Comeback Special.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for making me giggle, Sam.

And to answer Livsy's question, it is indeed possible to be 'certain of your uncertainty.' Whenever I gravitate too close to religious belief or atheistic thought, I experience a backlash whereby I question whatever I'm gravitating towards.

This backlash experience can be very uncomfortable. And so, over a period of time, I have learned that my 'uncertainty' is the only balance that works for me. Anything else makes me obsessive and generally unpleasant.

Excellent article Fragilis, very well summarized

Just out of curiosity...

Why do you have a problem with polytheistic religions?

[bows respectfully]

--Caledonian

I'm sorry, Caledonian. Was your question addressed to me or someone else?

I think it was addressed to me, as I said that I have trouble with multiple gods. A lot of the religions that I have come across that are 'polytheistic' have gods that represent different facets of life. For example, the Ancient Greeks and the Romans, the Ancient Egyptians, the Norse people. It's the nature of the gods, as much as the fact that there are so many of them. The ancient peoples seem to have felt a need to deify things that I regard as natural and/or part of every-day life. That's why I couldn't be happy with a polytheistic faith. Similarly with any religion that worshiped a single god that was a deified (I've just noticed that's a palindrome!) natural thing, like the sun.

Sometimes multiple gods become the norm for a religion when humanity's expansion causes one group of believers to meet with another. If the God of each group is considered compatible with the other, the merging cultures might end up worshipping both gods. This is only possible when neither group claims their God is the 'only one.' To an extent, this was true of the ancient Greeks. A closer example might be early origins of the Hindu faith.

Interesting viewpoint...

Does that imply that God/Gods would, by their nature, need to be distinct from "everyday" life? What aspects of the world count as Divine?

[bows curiously]

--Caledonian

Congratulations, Fragilis. Quite the bang-up job.

I think my favourite one-liner from Zen thinking is "I know that I know nothing." A comment on the inherent limitations of our feeble capacity to figure anything out.

"Some agnostics believe future evidence will someday come to light that will clear up the confusion and make agnosticism virtually obsolete. Most agree that no such breakthrough is likely to happen within our lifetime"

I don't think agnosticism will ever be obsolete, but I think people searching for "God" in the Universe, or meaning, or purpose, or design, have a good deal of evidence for it already if only they'd pay more attention. I might point to the rather obvious fact that bits and pieces of the universe seem to go around organizing themselves into processes capable of reflecting on the system with consciousness, intellect, and emotion.

This leads us to an interesting problem with two possible answers. Is human cognition an adequate tool for measuring and interpreting the "real" universe?

One way to look at it is that the universe is infinitely large, and your brain is almost infinitely small. Thus, any amount of information stored in it is so close to zero as to be relatively meaningless to an understanding of the overall scheme of life, the universe, and everything. In this view, mankind is simply blind protoplasm trying to force an understanding of things forever beyond his ken.

The other way to look at it is that, since the universe has organized some parts of itself into sentient beings capable of reflecting and measuring itself, that the way in which it does so is probably adequate to the purpose for which it does it.

Religion is all about rebuilding a bridge between man and the Ultimate. I think Gnosticism might have something to do with realising that both man and the Ultimate have to be facets of the same thing.

I can think of yet another way to look at it. Perhaps the universe has organized itself into sentient beings capable of measuring itself, but perhaps the universe could care less whether any one individual sentient has the right measurement. Maybe the universe is more interested in averaging the combined totals itself rather than providing sentient beings with clues. Perhaps the universe is assembling a mosaic of measurements for its infinite aspects -- and taking one measurement or view out of context is entirely the wrong thing to do.

I dunno. The possibilities are endless.

> "One way to look at it is that the universe is infinitely large, and your brain is almost infinitely small. Thus, any amount of information stored in it is so close to zero as to be relatively meaningless to an understanding of the overall scheme of life, the universe, and everything."

Unless, of course, the infinitely large universe is actually very simple, but merely appears complicated on the outside. Which, until recently, was the rather pragmatic assumption of the scientific method. Then chaos, complexity theory, and self-organisation got onto the scene...

> "I might point to the rather obvious fact that bits and pieces of the universe seem to go around organizing themselves into processes capable of reflecting on the system with consciousness, intellect, and emotion."

It's probably hardly worth making the standard comment here, but it would seem to be fairly unlikely that we'd be having this conversation otherwise, isn't it?

The one major argument against an intelligent universe I've heard is that it's too darn big. If the speed of light is the fundamental limitation to communication that it is claimed to be, then you'd have huge problems trying to keep the various parts of the universe all having the same purpose and contributing to the same group intelligence. It all depends whether there's someway to send information faster than light...

The alternative is to suppose that the universe was intelligent at some big bang start, and will be intelligent at some big crunch finish, and that the bit in the middle is just data collecting and massively distributed data processing. Hmm. Could work.

I know God exists coz he's on the h2g2 pages!

Go and have a little surf through the community and search for God Almighty! He's here, you know!

I read once from a biography of Kahil Gibran a line of his that has stuck with me ever since, that 'Kindness is the shadow of God in man'.

Our quest to 'know' things sometimes obscures the issue. But by trying to be kind, by cultivating kindness to others, one unwittingly fulfills most of the best tenets of all the world's religions. We don't really have to 'know' too much. It's not necessary either to worry too much about the ideological twists and turns of most religious dogma (and it's the dogma that we have most trouble with). Everybody is trying to cope as best they can with their passage through this life, and being kind to others (though not always easy) is a good way to live. It just somehow lets in more light on your days when you try, as best you can anyway, to be kind. I know I'd much rather spend time with a kind person who was a bit 'thick', than hang out with a very 'clever' person who wasn't very kind.

It makes me think then that kindness to others is the highest form of intelligence. And that God is not for the 'knowing' but for the 'doing'.

Anyway, apologies for wittering. Just putting in my twopenn'orth

Sam

I too, am agnostic. Not through any active ehico-religious choice on my part. I don't have the abject, gibbering terror to seek Divine approval for my actions, or the smug, satisfied sense of self-belief to be an atheist.

Ultimately, I suppose, I'm too much of a Humanist to need to believe. My faith is in the innate goodness of people.

It's served me well so far.

Innate goodness of people??? Personally I'm more of a believer in innate badness of people. Which is what a lot of religions are based on, but in my case I think I'm just cynical anyway

That's the whole joy of free will. Humanity is capable of ultimate good and ultimate evil at pretty much the same time. However, it's the overall goodness which tends to shine through. Even in the midst of the worst atrocity, humanity tends to kindness and fellowship (take, purely as an example, the Christmas Day football match between Allied and German forces during WW1). I prefer to celebrate that.

You cynic.

(As everyone knows, cynicism is a romantic's air bag, protecting them from hurt when their ideological car crashes…)