Thursday, April 10, 2014

Embracing My Wild God - 40/40

I am a theistic agnostic.

The Green Man of Winchester Cathedral.


This is not your typical agnostic... this kind of agnostic acknowledges that there is something... we just add that we are too mortal to understand what that might exactly be.

I do have a certain envy for my friends who claim and demonstrate a devotion to "God" (in terms of a global belief in a higher power). And I have the same envy for my friends who shared their path and practice (yet do not proselytize their path, they are just as bad as fundies to me) to atheism.

One atheist friend said "I just let go, and it felt good".

A devoutly Christian friend said "I just gave it to God, and it felt good".

I envy that kind of certainty.

However, I am also an anthropologist and for as much as religion is maligned in our modern western culture... I feel compelled to defend it, staunchly. Pretty much all of them. Yes, there are things that might be horrid and awful too, but that isn't something that is limited to religion... being awful is a human disease, not a religious one.

So, please take a moment to consider what it is like to be an anthropologist who claims to believe that there is something more, and unexplainable. Not an easy feat.

What are things that I think the idea of the divine might be?

  • Quantum mechanics
  • Animism
  • A Divine Spirit

I don't really know, and that doesn't bother me

As my mother says, "Don't quibble about matters of faith, no need to worry about the things that can't be defined (it is, after all, a matter of faith)".


Source for this post

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love that cathedrals use sculpture like the green man and gargoyles. They are so pagan. A hint of their roots perhaps. I loved the prior definition you gave about being a religious heretic.

Blair said...

Hopefully you see the point that it is because I am an agnostic theist that I am a heretic.

I deeply love religion.