Author: Andrew Sullivan

The Spiritual Center, Ctd

Reacting to this defense of agnosticism, a reader makes a vital point on the distinction between non-fundamentalist Christians and agnostics:

In many ways the agnostic is in an interesting place sociologically and dispositionally, which he shares with certain Christians, of being "between" the fundamentalists on either side, whether religious or atheist. At the functional level, and here I suspect that AGNOSTIC really means at the level of politics, the agnostic and the non-fundamentalist Christian can share a great deal. Both will be humble, aware of all that they do not know, and probably open to compromise as well as given to a political ethic of empiricism, prudence, and an acknowledgment of limits. The agnostic and the grace-sustained Christian might both be conservatives of doubt.

I have been thinking a great deal about this lately, and despite the above, have been more impressed by differences between the agnostic and the non-fundamentalist Christian — especially existentially. I can't help but think that the agnostic, at the end of the day, reads all the great old books that dwelt on all the great questions self-aware man has posed to himself, and shrugs. He acknowledges mystery but does not seem to care about the source of that mystery, or even if he is responding to something "real" when curious moments of spiritual transcendence actually occur. There is, of course, a certain sanity in this response — at the least he won't end up an ideologue. I wouldn't mind having an agnostic for my neighbor. Yet all this seems to amount to a form of evasion. Its a form of studied non-observance.

The non-fundamentalist Christian experiences doubt within the framework of faith, and above all hope.

We see through a glass darkly; but one day we will see Him face to face. Our unknowing is intrinsically related to eschatology — we experience doubt but dwell within it hopefully, waiting humbly and patiently for the day when all things will be made new. In other words, the uncertainty and humility of the Christian is not a mere admission that we "just don't know," but instead is given intelligibility by our hope. It Hope might be better to put it this way: the Christian acknowledges that we don't know right now. I also suspect — or at least this holds for me — that humility is related to original sin, our flawed and fallible post-lapsarian natures. It is not that our questions are unanswerable, or meaningless, it is that we can't answer them as finite, fallible beings with minds that still bear the imprint of our aboriginal catastrophe. So we hold our beliefs with some critical distance, knowing that a belief in any God that does not slip into utter anthropomorphism will be aware of the limits of language, of marking with mortal words immortal things.

I'm not sure a simple agnosticism ever can really be sustained. I'm not sure why, apart from a kind of existential self-positing, and thereby probably delusional willfulness, it does not turn to cynical despair. I'm not sure it is ever non-parasitic on more robust forms of faith (including non-fundamentalist religious faith). I'm not sure why you would continue to attend to questions that you think are not open to some kind of provisional answer, even the answer of humble faith. The Christian who doubts has reasons for both believing and struggling, and the two are held together and given intelligibility by sustaining hope. Ultimately I think the agnostic and non-fundamentalist believer are occupying two very different existential positions, whatever the resonances that exist between them politically or otherwise.

Cool It

An antidote to the fear behind climate change in Bjorn Lomborg’s upcoming movie:

Money quote from a review:

The way Lomborg explains it, current commitments are to spend $250 billion per year to combat the effects of Global Warming. And, if we continue to spend that same amount for the remainder of the century, in the end the temperature of the planet will have decreased by only a fraction of a degree. So, instead of wasting money on methods that aren’t providing results, Lomborg suggests the money should be spent to combat poverty and to provide education and health care in developing countries. Of the $250 billion, a portion should also be allocated to research and development for more efficient technologies such as renewable energy and geo-engineering.

The movie opens this Friday.

A Government Google

Alan Jacobs annihilates Micah White's case for a "public search engine" similar to a public library, without advertising:

What exactly is White asking for? A universal prohibition on internet advertising, brokered by the U.N.? An international tribunal to prosecute Google for unauthorized indexing? Yes, it would have been wonderful, as Robert Darnton has pointed out, if universities and libraries had banded together to do the information-indexing and book-digitizing that Google has done — but they didn’t.

So here we are, with an unprecedented and astonishing amount of information at our fingertips, and we’re going to complain about ads? — the same ads that give us television, newspapers, and magazines? Please. Why not just come right out and say “I want everything and I want it for free”?

Two Heads

Ken MacQueen profiles two four-year old conjoined twins:

Tatiana and Krista are not just conjoined, but they are craniopagus, sharing a skull and also a bridge between each girl’s thalamus, a part of the brain that processes and relays sensory information to other parts of the brain. Or perhaps in this case, to both brains. There is evidence that they can see through each other’s eyes and perhaps share each other’s unspoken thoughts. …

The way their heads are joined, they have markedly different fields of view. One child will look at a toy or a cup. The other can reach across and grab it, even though her own eyes couldn’t possibly see its location.

(Hat tip: Kottke)

One Human Heart

Patrick Kurp relives the "almost indecent" genius of Keats' poetry, prose, and his letters. It's amazing to think he did it all before dying at 25. A short excerpt from one of his letters:

I go among the Fields and catch a glimpse of a Stoat or a fieldmouse peeping out of the withered grass – the creature hath a purpose and its eyes are bright with it. I go amongst the buildings of a city and I see a Man hurrying along – to what? the Creature has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it.

But then, as Wordsworth says, `we have all one human heart’ – there is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify – so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it: as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.