There is so much happening in our world right now, and everyone has an opinion about everything. Right now, there are those who say Covid-19 is a hoax. Others say vaccines are dangerous. An anti-parasitic drug is touted as the cure for the virus in spite of a contrary disclaimer coming from the company that makes it. It now seems to have come to this: everyone is entitled to his own facts.
Someone said that ignorance is the absence of knowledge and stupidity is ignoring the facts. And more often than not, it is the stupid and ignorant who are most vocal in stating their dead certainty about things.
My advice is not so fast, amigo. Don’t fall for any of it no matter how convincing. Be reasonably doubtful in all matters. Be uncertain about expressions or declarations of certainty by people, even from seemingly authoritative sources.
Truth to tell, nothing is certain. In the history of mankind, so many truths have been debunked. It was held for a very long time that the Earth was flat, until Galileo Galilei discovered a new truth. Charles Darwin’s evolution theory put a question on the long believed story of creation as told in the Book of Genesis.
One of the most personally influential book I have read is the Agnostic Christian written by an English pastor and theologian named Dr. Leslie D. Weatherhead. This book, which I revisit from time to time, encourages us to be maturely critical about many doctrines and beliefs of Christianity that I as a Catholic received without question as unassailable truths. Has it made me lose my faith? Has it lessened my belief in Christ’s teachings? Am I now disenchanted with Christianity? On the contrary, thanks to the book, I am now a Christian with a more grown-up religious outlook. My blind acceptance of Christian beliefs as a young man has now been replaced by a more enlightened appreciation of those beliefs. As Dr. Weatherhead puts it: “Many professing agnostics are nearer belief in the true God than are many conventional church-goers.”
In the 1930s Arthur Koestler used to believe passionately in the communist cause. He said it was akin to a religious conversion. For seven years, Communism was at the center of his life and work, and as expressed in his novel Darkness at Noon: “The party cannot be wrong. You and I can make mistakes—but not the party.” Koestler later wrote, he became aware of the gulf between Communist ideals and the reality they produced. His questioning mind led him to disillusionment and caused him to break free from his rigid belief in communism and seek a better ideology. Koestler’s hard-won conclusion: “A harmful truth is better than a useful lie, no movement, party or person can claim the privilege of infallibility.”
Some time ago, I was just watching Innocence Project, a mind-opening documentary series that depicts how many court cases of convicted criminals were overturned due to faulty and manipulative use of forensic science. In case after case, it is dismaying to see how juries and judges accepted testimonies from so-called forensic scientists without question, thinking that because they were experts and science-driven professionals they could not go wrong. But the new forensic science of DNA testing has shown again and again that these so-called scientific experts were deadly wrong. In more than one instance, faulty assessments by a highly reputable forensic orthodontist led innocent men to be wrongly convicted and spend long years in prison.
While watching the series, I was thinking: how many are now languishing in jail because of persuasive use of faulty science by experts who misperceive or misdiagnose with utter conviction and confidence in their expertise.
My wife was diagnosed as diabetic and took her medicines religiously for 5 years, but recently after another glucose tolerance test, she has been declared non-diabetic because even without the medicines her blood tests show that her blood sugar is within normal range. Just to be sure, she monitors her post-prandial blood sugar level. Were the tests wrong? Was the doctor wrong in her diagnosis? Or is diabetes reversible after all?
Over the years I become more hesitant or wary to readily accept teachings etched in stone. “Maybe so, I don’t know” is something I have now adopted as an attitude or perspective toward authoritative knowledge and tenets, not just in religion, politics, and medicine but also in other areas of life.
When someone says something with conviction, take the agnostic perspective. Unfortunately the word agnostic has taken a bad rap. It is seen as a negative term synonymous to “heretic” or “atheist.” Probably because it is a label confused with an ancient religious movement of Gnosticism, which the early Church considered as heresy.
But the root word really simply means “I do not know” from ancient Greek. I want to reclaim it for its original unadulterated meaning of “I do not know.”
To have an agnostic mind is to acknowledge that no one has all the right answers, which is why it’s imperative that we all develop a healthy questioning attitude in the first place. This to me is a humble acceptance or recognition that our human minds are limited that we can misperceive, misjudge, or misunderstand. The reverse of the saying “to err is human” is also true: “to be human is to err.”
A person who declares he is not wrong or is always right is a man who has enveloped himself in pride or arrogance. It is painful to be proven wrong and harder still to accept being wrong. Like the dentist in that Innocence Project documentary who still cannot admit that many men languish in jail due to probably wrong assessment of bite marks on bodies of victims. Some of which turned out they are not even bite marks. In contrast, another forensic orthodentist swallowed his pride and withdrew his previous testimony, which caused a wrongly convicted man to be set free.
Thomas Henry Huxley who first coined the word in 1869 said that agnosticism is not a creed but rather a method of skeptical, evidence-based inquiry.
This agnostic or skeptical attitude can be a powerful source for change because it gives us the method and energy we need to break free from destructive or hampering habits and practices and customs, as well as from long accepted conventional but suffocating empty ideologies and beliefs in order to search for something more and deeply enriching.
In fact, an agnostic attitude serves as a life giving and liberating grace because it alerts us to the danger of accepting too uncritically what others tell us we need. At first it can spark disenchantment, like what happened to Arthur Koestler, but then this confession of disenchantment is the seed for a new beginning. It leads to hope because it no longer allows us to be controlled by answers and certainties, which many times make no sense to us, as well as by practices that leave us feeling unfree and shackled.
Having spent years as a professional in creative endeavors, my favorite questions have always been “what if?” and “why not?” These questions have triggered the creation of fresh ideas and led to new ways of seeing, thinking and living.
So don’t believe too easily or too fast. At least, keep an open mind. We are all products of our cultures and we have built-in bias beliefs. They are deeply rooted and so it will be hard to accept that they may be faulty.
But in a post-truth era, it’s urgent that we vaccinate ourselves with doses of agnosticism. We need to build a more questioning culture to become immune to things like harmful propaganda and brainwashing from people trying to control us.
And it should start with us. Become okay with allowing our kids to ask why we believe things need to be done a certain way. Remember that we may not always be right, and if we never let anyone question us, we will never come to the truth.
The whole point is to teach as many people as possible to question what they’re told, so they can contribute to changing society for the better. This is what we need to achieve intellectual, social, religious, and political maturity as a people.
So in the cacophony of voices touting all kinds of opinions and beliefs, in a world now inundated by a tsunami of hoaxes, fake news, conspiracy theories, scams and wonder drugs, be a doubting Thomas and just take it all with an agnostic grain of salt: It may be so, I don’t know.