Agnosticism Defended

Just for the record, in case no one's really figured it out by now, I consider myself, for lack of a better term, agnostic. Years of cautious and earnest moral inquiry have put me in a position where I find it impossible to reconcile the idea of a loving and benevolent creator with the inconsistencies that seem so apparent to me in the dogma of religion. That's not to say I haven't tried; when you're raised in the church, I think the hardest thing you'll ever have to do in your life is to admit to yourself that maybe it isn't exactly the perfect answer to everything that you grew up believing it was. It's far easier, really, to look for the loopholes in your own objections that will reinforce what you really want to be true. Religion simplifies your life. It codifies morality. It provides a social support system that, sadly, the secular world seems to be lacking. The idea of admitting the possibility - while by no means the certainty - that it might not be true is horrifying at best, because doing so also takes away that structure and the certainty, however misguided it has the potential to be, that there is meaning in life. Of course I miss those things. I dislike feeling like an outsider in my family because I hold a different belief system. And sometimes I yearn for the simplicity of having an entire world viewpoint already laid out in front of me. But if I am honest - an attribute we normally credit to morality, so a lack of effort toward that end would seem counterproductive - I have to admit that I simply cannot accept a dogmatic, monotheistic religion, no matter how convenient or comforting it may be. A complete explanation of the reasoning behind this would be pretty elaborate and take more space and time than I have for this post. For the time being, I'll simply say that I think by and large human beings take themselves far too seriously. What could possibly possess us to think, should an omnipotent and omnipresent being actually exist, that we would in any way pretend to comprehend his/her/its nature? Or at least that we would be able to do so to the point that we were so sure of ourselves that we were willing to kill for our beliefs? Do we really believe that those who believe the way we do are the only people endowed with any sort of capacity for the discernment of truth, and that those who believe in other religions are somehow spiritually stunted? And if so, what would possibly possess a supposedly benevolent creator to create the majority of the world to be what would essentially amount to a mass of spiritual retards?

By the same token, though, I have a great deal of difficulty swallowing the idea of atheism. The belief that there is no god is still a belief, and one that in my view has an equally small body of supporting evidence as does theism. I'll admit that the atheist's viewpoint seems slightly more logical to me at the moment (a stance which I reserve the right to change as life experience warrants it), but that in no way means that I'm prepared to make the staunch and unwavering assertion that there is no god at all.

There's been a slew of books in the past couple of years out of the atheist/secular humanist camp, written by intensely intelligent people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. The most recent is a book called God is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens, which I just today finished reading. I think the trend and the growing popularity behind it is largely a backlash against the fundamentalist right, and what might have been relegated to the fringes of heretical left-wing society a few years ago has become a major movement as more and more people are growing disillusioned by the idiocy that inflexibility often tends to bring about. (God is Not Great, for instance, has raced onto the bestseller list in the short time it's been on the shelves; walking in downtown Seattle yesterday I saw no fewer than three people reading it as they waited for the bus). And by and large I agree with the general principle behind what these men are saying: religion, and its underlying attitude of I'm-right-and-you're-wrong, often does more harm than it does good, and if you're interested (which most of my readers probably aren't), these books are chock full of historical and modern-day examples. But the problem I see is that, for all of their railing against the evils of religion, they offer little in the way of an alternative. Building a belief system on the disproving of another belief system seems oddly circular and hollow to me. Alright, educated liberals, we know what you're against. But what are you for? It seems to me that we're pulling away the rug and not replacing the floor paneling underneath. Eventually we're going to fall through the hole.

What is wrong with not knowing? Maybe not even "not knowing" so much as admitting the possibility, however small, that we might not know? Is it simply too frightening to admit that we don't know completely what's going on around us, and that that lack of knowledge basically amounts to a lack of control? Maybe we're afraid of what happens after we die. Fair enough, but if I were God I really wouldn't want a mass of people following me - and killing and proselytizing in my name - with no motivation other than fear. Maybe we think that morality can only come from religion. But kindness to others seems to lose some of its moral weight when it's borne of coercion, supernatural or otherwise. When we force a child to share his toys, we are merely passing along proper rules of social interaction so the whole of society doesn't end up going to pot. When we see a child share his toys out of his own volition, we are watching real kindness, the kind that comes from nothing other than simply wanting to love another person. Do we really believe that there is no moral difference between the two?

My question is this: why can't kindness be enough? Why can't we simply teach that loving our fellow man is the pinnacle of morality, and leave it at that? Why do we need religion to reinforce the idea with dogma on one side, and the theory of self-interested altruism on the other? Doing so really just robs us of the satisfaction of loving other people because loving other people is a good thing to do and cheapens the idea of kindness for kindness' sake. One might argue that human nature prevents this kind of utopic idea from taking shape. But I can't help but wonder how much of this idea of human nature has been pounded into us by religion in the first place. We're constantly being told that people are bad, that they tend toward evil more often than good. Our media is constantly showing pictures of murderers and thieves. But do we really believe that these people are in the majority? Isn't it possible that we simply have our cameras pointed the wrong direction? And then we have to ask ourselves who created the conditions under which these "bad" people's personalities were shaped. I'd be willing to place money on the idea that what we refer to so condescendingly as "human nature" ultimately owes far more to human nurture, or lack thereof. Might we not fear other people simply because we fear what's inside of ourselves? And wouldn't that fear be mitigated if we could convince ourselves that we are capable of the kind of altruism that goes beyond self-interested motivation? Can we create a "religion" that is founded on nothing more than the belief in the good in people? This is, after all, the one thing in life that I've seen more than my share of evidence for.

Another Year Older

Today is my birthday. Again. I'm another year older. Again. This might seem like the most obvious outcome of having a birthday, getting another year older, but I'm really rebelling. Maybe by the time I'm 24 + 6 (see last year's birthday post on Lindsey's brilliant math for old people) I will have succeeded in overthrowing the oppressive tyranny that is the onward march of time. Or at least the onward march of the persistent gray hairs that have suddenly started popping up on the top of my head lately. They're tenacious little soldiers, too, let me tell you; every time I think they're eradicated, more pop up. They're like roaches. I'm too young for this nonsense. It must be stopped.

Isn't it illegal to get gray hairs before you're thirty-five?

At any rate, the fact remains that today I am a very annoying 24+2. This is not a good number. This implies that I'm on the near side of thirty - or 24+6, for those who are adapting to the new and much more geriatric-ally friendly system - and the fact that I am on the near side of 24+6 also implies that I am on the near side of 24+death. This disturbs me greatly. I have not yet published my novel, finished my Ph.D., composed my symphony, run my marathon, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, or done anything else of note on my list of things to do before I die. Well except go to China, maybe, and I'm afraid that that might have actually helped to move me a little closer to old age by causing me to age prematurely. You try riding in a taxi cab in Shanghai and coming away without at least one new gray hair. I don't think it's been done. It might, in fact, be impossible.

And yet with as much as I joke about my impending demise, in reality I'm finding that in some ways this year my birthday is giving me a lot of opportunity to reflect on my life. So much has happened in the past year, it's absolutely incredible. I may not have run a marathon, but I did run two 5K's. I haven't finished my Ph.D., but I've been accepted to grad school and gotten a fairly decent fellowship to help pay for it. I may not have climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, but....ok, admittedly I don't have anything for that one. But I'm working on it.

My point is, God, I love my life. I love waking up in the morning. I love breathing in and feeling the air pass through my lungs. I love the sunrises and the sunsets and the rain and the sunshine. How could anyone believe that life is anything but incredible? How could we not cherish every passing moment as the perfect miracle that it is? And along with it, cherish every person that passes through those moments? What if heaven is actually right here in front of us, and we're just not looking at it? I have been so, so blessed. I have so many people who love me and care for me, so many really close and beautiful friends. I was born into a world of limitless opportunities, where I've never gone hungry and I'm allowed to be educated and I have freedoms that most of the people in the world only dream about. I've seen so many things and places and met so many people. Sometimes I feel like the luckiest person alive.

The only thing that depresses me is how powerless I feel sometimes to share that, to reach out to others who haven't had the same opportunities, the same love, the same enough-to-eat that I have. Am I doing enough? Am I doing everything I can to make the world a better place? This is the one thing that really does make me feel like I'm aging, I think: this feeling of impotence. There's so much good left to be done in the world, the thought of it exhausts me.

Spare some change?

Part of my uber-monotonous job at King County has recently been to courier documents to the courthouse down the street from my office. A couple of days ago I was passing the tiny convenience store in the lobby when I noticed a sign posted in the window.

No Change Without a Purchase, it said.

The wording struck me as being a little ironic, and the more I thought about it the more overly philosophical I became about it. I know it's a little melodramatic and backwards on my part, but my life of late has been nothing but change. The idea that I might have to make a purchase in return struck me as odd, if only for the fact that I had never considered it before.

Being back in Seattle has been simultaneously deeply gratifying and emotionally exhausting for me. I longed to come "home" - the semantics of which I have questioned before and, for considerations of length and reader boredom will ignore in this particular post, although I do reserve the right to return to the issue at a later time - but it's become painfully obvious to me that the Seattle I left in the summer is not the same Seattle I returned to in the wintertime. Or maybe it's a little more accurate to say that the Becca I left in last summer is not the same one I returned to in the winter. Everything is different now: Lindsey's not here, I'm strangely and quite frighteningly single, and - maybe the most horrifying thing of all - I've grown up in ways that I neither expected nor in many cases necessarily especially enjoy.

All that, and the emotional roller coaster of waiting for graduate school decisions is starting to wear me thin. I've been accepted back to the University of Washington but still haven't heard from them on funding, and I've been placed on a waiting list at Princeton. The result of this scenario is that it is well past March 15th, the technical deadline for most schools' admissions decisions, and I still don't know where I'll be living in six months. This was supposed to be over by now. I am tired. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that no matter what happens I have no option of standing still in my comfort zone. If I go back to UW, it won't be the same as when I was there before. Lindsey and Andy won't be there, the school work will be of a drastically different format, and my personal life will have drastically changed. On the off-chance that Princeton actually offers me admission there are a host of life changes involved with that situation as well, not the least of which would be a move across the country to a mind-numbingly different culture. I'm more scared of living on the east coast than I was of living in China. Roy, my friend in Taiwan, used to always give me the same advice: "Just keep walking." As great as that advice is, it appears that at this point I have no choice but to keep walking, and that makes me slightly resentful of the path. Sometimes I look around me and get so jealous of the "normal" people, those who can be content to stand still.

At the same time, though, I know that in the end I could never be truly satisfied with that kind of a life. I can't make copies for the rest of eternity. I could never be content with myself if I sat here wondering what it was I could have been. I have to grow up, because everything inside of me still screams that there are things I need to do, that there's a reason I'm here, and that it is absolutely vital that I find out what that reason is. That I keep walking. And so I make the choice to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and to pay the price that entails.

No growth without sacrifice. No change without a purchase.

Sometimes I just wish they took returns.

The Ghetto Starbucks

I am at Starbucks.

This is probably not surprising. I go to Starbucks almost daily, and sometimes even more frequently than that. I lug my oversized laptop here to think and to write, because nothing stimulates the brain like a half-decaf no-whip sugar free cinnamon dolce soy latte - a drink which, when the barista announces it at the bar, never fails to elicit a response from one of the other waiting customers.

"Whew," they whisper, almost invariably. "That's a mouthful."

What is a departure today, however, is the fact that instead of going to the Starbucks near Seattle University like I normally do, I headed the opposite direction from my apartment and ended up at a Starbucks that is much closer to my apartment, but at the same time sits precariously perched on the border between the posh newly-remodeled townhomes of the Capitol Hill neighborhood and, for lack of anything better to call it, the Ghetto.

The Starbucks near the University is always virtually silent, full of trust-fund kids who'd rather not talk to one another and law students huddled over piles of books that look really thick and really boring. But here it's bustling and noisy. Everyone is talking to everyone else. They're strangers, but they're not. I find this unsettling.

I'm sitting in one of the plush oversized chairs by the window so typical of Starbucks everywhere, my laptop in my lap, headphones in my ears. I'm enjoying the energy, but I'm not entirely sure I want to be a part of it. A large woman in a thin coat comes over and waves at me dramatically.

When I take my headphones out she motions to the chair next to me and says, "Is anyone sitting here?" I say no, and she sits down. I return my headphones to my ears and my attention to my computer. The woman next to me starts talking to a man at a nearby table.

Five minutes later she waves at me again. She asks me if I'm a student. She asks me what I study. She asks me what I'm doing sitting at Starbucks with a laptop. She tells me I'm a very nice lady.

I say thank you. I go back to my writing.

Another wave, and the lady motions to the man at the table. "He's drawing you," she says. And he is. He's got pastels and brushes and paints spread out around him, and he's going back and forth between studying me intently and scribbling furiously. I'm blushing. From time to time people are stopping to look over his shoulder. A man stops and looks at the drawing, motions to his own chin, and says something in a language I can't understand.

I love this place.

The artist asks me what my astrological sign is.

"Taurus," I say.

"Oh, you were born in April then," says the woman.

I correct her and say no, the early part of May.

"Hm," says the artist. "Do you know anything about your sign?"

"Not much," I say. And he says, "I think it's the money sign."

"Oh, is it?"

"I think so. Well I don't really know, but that's what my friend said. She said Tauruses are good with money."

I laugh because I am not good with money. Money involves numbers. Numbers are not my friends.

The woman has gotten up and gone across the street to Taco Del Mar where, after prodding me for every manner of information as to the nature of the food there, she has decided to purchase a hard taco. She's been replaced by a tall skinny man who sits holding on to the arms of the chair like it's a roller coaster car. The artist at the table just handed me a drawing of myself.

I think we miss a lot in life by putting up walls, by burying ourselves in books, by looking at everyone around us in suspicion. It's striking how much the atmosphere here, where in theory I might have reason to be frightened of the people around me, is so much more alive and friendly than it is in the "good" neighborhood a half a mile away. Right now I am the opposite of frightened. It's a good feeling.