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agnosticism
December 2008 
A-gnostic
Posted on Nov 14th, 2007
by 
Rich
Rich
Agnosticism . . . the honest, noble, non-conflict provoking stance of answering some of the deep questions in life with a shoulder shrug and "I dunno".
While the position of being agnostic is open-minded, not overly taken in by mythic tales of religion nor by the exclusivity of a scientific world-view it is also not a very strong base on which to grow into a deeper place of self or philosophical understanding. It is understandable in many ways that one does not have the time to explore all the debates and so it is very honest to conclude "I haven't studied enough so I can't say one way or the other". There are many things I am agnostic about in this sense.
However when I look at the word and see it's two components "a" and "gnosis" it looks too much like "no knowledge" or "no insight" to me. This "no knowing" does not seem to be something like the Christian "cloud of unknowing" or the "no-knowing" of Bodhidharma but instead simply saying "dunno". The no-knowing of mind does not exclude thoughts or, for that matter, discrimination between thoughts that make sense and are more or less accurate and other thoughts that are pretty much non-sense or very limited.
Is agnosticism therefore the same phenomoenon in relgion as the apathy that's shown in politics? Are intelliegent people becoming more and more afraid to actually say what they think based on evidence? If this is the case then, to be blunt, dumb people rule the debate and public space . . . a scary thought indeed.
On a soemwhat related but seperate stream there is a fun story told by Genpo Roshi about a Zen teacher who was talking to a Tibetan lama. The sensei asked held up an apple and asked "what's this?" The lama looked a bit puzzled and turned to his translator saying "doesn't he know what an apple is?!"
While the position of being agnostic is open-minded, not overly taken in by mythic tales of religion nor by the exclusivity of a scientific world-view it is also not a very strong base on which to grow into a deeper place of self or philosophical understanding. It is understandable in many ways that one does not have the time to explore all the debates and so it is very honest to conclude "I haven't studied enough so I can't say one way or the other". There are many things I am agnostic about in this sense.
However when I look at the word and see it's two components "a" and "gnosis" it looks too much like "no knowledge" or "no insight" to me. This "no knowing" does not seem to be something like the Christian "cloud of unknowing" or the "no-knowing" of Bodhidharma but instead simply saying "dunno". The no-knowing of mind does not exclude thoughts or, for that matter, discrimination between thoughts that make sense and are more or less accurate and other thoughts that are pretty much non-sense or very limited.
Is agnosticism therefore the same phenomoenon in relgion as the apathy that's shown in politics? Are intelliegent people becoming more and more afraid to actually say what they think based on evidence? If this is the case then, to be blunt, dumb people rule the debate and public space . . . a scary thought indeed.
On a soemwhat related but seperate stream there is a fun story told by Genpo Roshi about a Zen teacher who was talking to a Tibetan lama. The sensei asked held up an apple and asked "what's this?" The lama looked a bit puzzled and turned to his translator saying "doesn't he know what an apple is?!"
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