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I used to be an atheist, but as of a month or two ago, I'm agnostic.
The reason for this is that I had an outright, incontrovertible, literally-shaking kind of spiritual experience, in which I perceived something enough like God that -- well, let me put it this way. If you, as the result of either experience or faith or just hearing about it from other people or whatever, have a notion of a duck as something that quacks and swims and is roughly shaped like a duck, then, if you were to see something kind of duck shaped and hear a quack, you'd probably feel fairly comfortable inferring the rest.
The reason I'm still agnostic is that I don't entirely trust any particular concept of the underlying duck.
The other reason I'm still agnostic is that this particular concept isn't just about ducks, it's about God. Which is to say, it's intimately connected with a notion of morality (which I take seriously, no matter what worldview I'm interpreting myself through). It's not the sort of thing you want to get wrong. Indeed, there are good reasons to have strong feelings about not making moral claims lightly. Thus, there are good reasons to have strong feelings about not lightly making claims about God.
There are also, based on my perception, very good reasons to be incredibly cautious about making claims about ... that.
Whatever "that" is. I'm still sifting through all the things that I felt were connected to it. It's a lot. Like, I'm trying to make logical arguments based on the things that I'm fairly confident are definitely involved, but a lot of my feelings on the matter are more about the thing in itself, which resists definition and hence further logical inference.
Sorry about that.
Anyway, what this means is that I now have very strong feelings about blasphemy. Seeing double, in agnostic fashion, my feelings about blasphemy overlap with a lot of my prior feelings about atheism, actually. If I let my theistic side take over for a moment and describe my atheistic side in terms it might not agree with: my atheism is based on a dislike of blasphemy. That is one of its essential core feelings.
The other essential core feeling in my atheism (as described by the theistic side of my newfound agnosticism) is an equally strong dislike of idolatry. The part of me that is drawn towards goodness and rightness doesn't like the idea of placing something else between that and me. It never has! I have always been this way. I just -- interpreted it in different terms.
I have seen God and now I think there are blasphemers and idolators everywhere. What a cliche.
Mind you, I'm not actually saying I can definitively determine blasphemy from without. That would also be blasphemy -- I'd be claiming knowledge of other people's sincerity, and of their ability to perceive ... whatever that is ... that I simply don't have.
Moreover, I suspect that a great many things can be idolatry, or not, depending on whether you are coming or going. Are you using it to draw yourself closer to what is good and right, or clinging to it so hard that you blind yourself to what is good and right? I cannot necessarily be the judge of that. In most cases it would require a lot of knowledge about where you are, and where God is, to be really sure.
The thing I value -- and I value it highly enough that I distrust it -- is being able to describe myself and my own behaviour using these terms. No, I cannot affirm your creed, sorry; I take these things seriously and it would be blasphemy to me. It always would have been blasphemy, but now I get to call it that.
The sense of self-justification that I get from this wording is probably not to be trusted. I do not actually know for sure that it is blasphemy. I am, indeed, still agnostic. Deep down, this is still just about my feelings, and you don't have to believe my feelings and you don't actually have to respect them any more now than you would have, were I to use an atheist wording of the same feeling.
On the other hand, though, maybe this is a wording that might make my feelings make more sense to some people? That would be nice. That is what words are supposed to do, convey something of our experience to others. It's not wrong for me to be happy about that.
I do need to be careful with this, though. I've already discovered that telling people that you've just had a religious experience and now you realise you have strong feelings about blasphemy and idolatry is the kind of thing that gives people the wrong idea!
Ah, well. No language is perfect.
The reason for this is that I had an outright, incontrovertible, literally-shaking kind of spiritual experience, in which I perceived something enough like God that -- well, let me put it this way. If you, as the result of either experience or faith or just hearing about it from other people or whatever, have a notion of a duck as something that quacks and swims and is roughly shaped like a duck, then, if you were to see something kind of duck shaped and hear a quack, you'd probably feel fairly comfortable inferring the rest.
The reason I'm still agnostic is that I don't entirely trust any particular concept of the underlying duck.
The other reason I'm still agnostic is that this particular concept isn't just about ducks, it's about God. Which is to say, it's intimately connected with a notion of morality (which I take seriously, no matter what worldview I'm interpreting myself through). It's not the sort of thing you want to get wrong. Indeed, there are good reasons to have strong feelings about not making moral claims lightly. Thus, there are good reasons to have strong feelings about not lightly making claims about God.
There are also, based on my perception, very good reasons to be incredibly cautious about making claims about ... that.
Whatever "that" is. I'm still sifting through all the things that I felt were connected to it. It's a lot. Like, I'm trying to make logical arguments based on the things that I'm fairly confident are definitely involved, but a lot of my feelings on the matter are more about the thing in itself, which resists definition and hence further logical inference.
Sorry about that.
Anyway, what this means is that I now have very strong feelings about blasphemy. Seeing double, in agnostic fashion, my feelings about blasphemy overlap with a lot of my prior feelings about atheism, actually. If I let my theistic side take over for a moment and describe my atheistic side in terms it might not agree with: my atheism is based on a dislike of blasphemy. That is one of its essential core feelings.
The other essential core feeling in my atheism (as described by the theistic side of my newfound agnosticism) is an equally strong dislike of idolatry. The part of me that is drawn towards goodness and rightness doesn't like the idea of placing something else between that and me. It never has! I have always been this way. I just -- interpreted it in different terms.
I have seen God and now I think there are blasphemers and idolators everywhere. What a cliche.
Mind you, I'm not actually saying I can definitively determine blasphemy from without. That would also be blasphemy -- I'd be claiming knowledge of other people's sincerity, and of their ability to perceive ... whatever that is ... that I simply don't have.
Moreover, I suspect that a great many things can be idolatry, or not, depending on whether you are coming or going. Are you using it to draw yourself closer to what is good and right, or clinging to it so hard that you blind yourself to what is good and right? I cannot necessarily be the judge of that. In most cases it would require a lot of knowledge about where you are, and where God is, to be really sure.
The thing I value -- and I value it highly enough that I distrust it -- is being able to describe myself and my own behaviour using these terms. No, I cannot affirm your creed, sorry; I take these things seriously and it would be blasphemy to me. It always would have been blasphemy, but now I get to call it that.
The sense of self-justification that I get from this wording is probably not to be trusted. I do not actually know for sure that it is blasphemy. I am, indeed, still agnostic. Deep down, this is still just about my feelings, and you don't have to believe my feelings and you don't actually have to respect them any more now than you would have, were I to use an atheist wording of the same feeling.
On the other hand, though, maybe this is a wording that might make my feelings make more sense to some people? That would be nice. That is what words are supposed to do, convey something of our experience to others. It's not wrong for me to be happy about that.
I do need to be careful with this, though. I've already discovered that telling people that you've just had a religious experience and now you realise you have strong feelings about blasphemy and idolatry is the kind of thing that gives people the wrong idea!
Ah, well. No language is perfect.
