I was raised in a Christian family but rejected the church of my parents as a teenager. For the next twenty-five years I was a true believer and a member of a benign Christian cult. As that cult began to change and splinter, I realized that it was based on falsehoods. My initial intention at that time was to find another Christian church where I could continue my spiritual journey.
Midlife was a difficult period in my life. My former belief system lay in ruins and many things no longer made sense. I decided to think for myself and re-examine everything I had taken for granted. I prayed to God for guidance and expected my prayers to be answered, but they were not.
I faced the important question “Does God Exist?” for the second time in my life, but with a very different attitude. What happened next came as an unexpected shock. I was unable to prove to my own satisfaction that God existed, although I tried. I remember reading Philosophers Who Believe: The Spiritual Journeys of 11 Leading Thinkers. I found good arguments for believing, but doubts remained.
And for the first time in my life I looked at the question from the atheist point of view. Again, I found good arguments, but doubts remained. I felt most comfortable with an agnostic stance.
My quest was not only cerebral. I looked back at my church experience and concleded that I had never had a personal relationship with God or Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit. At midlife I felt only silence from the Divine, a deeply disturbing silence.
After leaving the cult I read a considerable amount of material that had been previously discouraged or forbidden. My head was spinning with new knowledge and I was overwhelmed by the many ideas I wanted to explore. But after several years of severe cognitive dissonance I gained new clarity of thought.
At that time much of my energy was consumed by demanding jobs, family, friends, travel and other interests. I lightly adopted a new worldview but the process was highly intuitive. I began to think of myself primarily as a secular humanist and also as a skeptic and an agnostic. I remained comfortable with my new values and saw no need to question them.
My wife and I had decided to retire in Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico and we moved here in 2012. The area had much to offer and I began to add new activities to my life. I joined the Lakeside Freethinkers and began regularly attending the monthly meetings. Generally the members of this small group were very intelligent and most discussions were mentally very stimulating. Many members were also quite opinionated and could substantiate their positions on many matters of interest in a very thoughtful and forceful manner.
Almost immediately I noticed interesting differences amongst the members. Some were outspoken atheists and others were secular humanists. Of course, this is an oversimplification. Each member was unique and there was significant variation in the thinking within the apparent subgroups. I personally aligned mainly with the other secular humanists and my opinions often conflicted with those of some of the atheists. After a few years I stopped attending the meetings of the Lakeside Freethinkers.
As a retirement project I am writing the story of my life in considerable detail. My Spiritual Journey is a significant chapter with distinct phases, a story with eight parts so far. Perhaps the journey will continue with Celebratory Unknowings becoming Part 9, perhaps not.
I will now try to weave together some interesting threads of the influence of agnosticism in my life. I do this in the spirit of retrospective coherence, a concept I learned from Collective Presencing. I now sense that something new may be trying to emerge. But I want to hold this possibility lightly and avoid egoic attachment to this project.
Any event can trigger a host of different and often unexpected responses. Yes, there are always ‘some’ events with ‘some’ effects, but we don’t know where and when those effects will show up. It is only in retrospect, after the facts are known and the events have played out, that we can see what triggered what.
I have an unusual point of connection with Robert Lawrence Kuhn, but that is another story for another time. He is the host of Closer To Truth and I think he is an agnostic. Sometimes I browse the Content Guide on the website, exploring big questions with an openness to multiple possible answers. I do not know which answers are correct.
I was deeply impacted by two articles that Kuhn wrote:
Levels of Nothing - There Are Multiple Answers to the Question of Why the Universe Exists
Why This Universe? Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations
I was inspired by The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning by Marcelo Gleiser, who summarizes his book as follows:
Because much of Nature remains hidden from us, our view of the world is based only on the fraction of reality that we can measure and analyze… But as I will argue in this book, other parts will remain hidden, unknowables that are unavoidable, even if what is unknowable in one age may not be in the next one. We strive toward knowledge, always more knowledge, but must understand that we are, and will remain, surrounded by mystery.
Typical of me, I deepened my knowledge of agnosticism by finding and reading a book. My search led me to Agnosticism: A Very Short Introduction by Robin Le Poidevin. In 2019 the Spiritual Naturalist Society published my Book Review.
Also in 2019 I joined a private facebook group, InterSpiritual Agnostics & Seekers, where I feel very comfortable and occassionally post. This group is growing and developing a strong sense of community. I will make this group aware of this project.
The current coronavirus crisis teaches us something very important that we have always known. The future is unknown, but important to explore. We cannot extrapolate from the past, as I wrote in recent book report.
I was born in 1951. No one, not even the most knowledgeable historian, could have predicted what happened thereafter. No one on December 31, 2019, not even the most knowledgeable historian, could have predicted the world of December 31, 2020.
If Celebratory Agnosticism becomes anything, it must be good, true and beautiful, although I do not know precisely what these words mean. And it must be a beautiful experience, perhaps even a spiritual experience. Hopefully, it will be transformative, for me and others.
I captured my thoughts about Celebratory Agnosticism as best I could in a document. I shared this with about ten friends and acquaintances and requested feedback. One reaction immediately opened a door to changing the project name. Celebratory Unknowings was suggested as an alternative. Moving forward, the project should reflect a “we” name chosen by a group. Celebratory Agnosticism is definitely a “me” name, chosen by me alone.
I am now ready to move forward with this project, hoping to attract a small group of diverse people. I hope to “find the others” who are interested in learning how to practice collective presencing, interested in exploring and celebrating agnosticism, interested in creating something. By diverse I mean people not like me, a white, male, Canadian, a baby boomer. I have a serious personality and I hope to attract someone who brings an element of playfulness and someone with a good sense of humour. At the moment, two people I know have expressed some interest. I anticipate organizing a meeting when there will be at least five attendees. The optimum group size, in my opinion, would be about 11 people. Meanwhile, I also remain open to joining collective presencing groups intiated by others.