Even prominent agnostic thinkers like the late Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins accept that logically the existence of a spiritual creator can be neither be proven or disproven. So to call oneself atheistic in not so much the belief in an absence of God, but more precisely the refusal to venture any position except that One Cannot Know, or agnosis (non-knowledge). So if we travel down the road that supposes a supreme being for a moment, what supports that view? (relying on mortal syllogism and the visible spectrum that amounts to the distance across a dime, say 1.6 cm, on the complete electro-magnetic continuum if scaled from coast to coast of the continental USA)
LIke the story of the five blind Indian wisemen each touching a different part of the elephant, our own senses are small and limited, even when helped by technology to extend our thinking, sorting, and pattern-finding. [partiality]
Our lifetimes are relatively short and thus we can discover and mature a finite amount while striving to comprehend something that is infinite and an expanding universe that appears from our position to be expanding at an accelerating rate. [mortality]
LIke the wind, there are powers that we can't touch or see, but whose effects we accept as real. [indirect signs]
As in algebra, one can insert a place holder (call it X) in order to complete the equation and arrive at answers. Similarly of God, we can suppose the creator's abiding presence and with that understanding conduct our lives 'as if' such teachings were true; at least the impetus or root of the teaching may be true, even if the outworking by generations of clever people have allowed customs and spurious matter to creep in and clutter the source idea and meaning.
However, placing one's faith in a given denomination or spiritual teacher does not mean that one's work of searching and vigilance is done. Humans feel an urge to make sense of things, even when that logic is self-reinforcing, small or partial. Yet two conditions must be acknowledged when taking part in a faith community and the traditions it has inherited: one is that God and creation are infinite, so by definition any summary or grasp will impose a boundary on something that is boundless, the other is that things built by humans, including religious institutions and bodies of thought, are prone to falseness whether intended or not. And so one is obliged forever to guard one's trust in any teachings or practices; scrutinize them critically at the same time that you own or accept them on this trial, probationary basis.
No comments:
Post a Comment