Agnosticism Rev. Roger Fritts Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota May 26, 2013

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1 There are many jokes about agnostics. Agnosticism Rev. Roger Fritts Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota May 26, 2013 An agnostic is defined as a person who has a very lively sustaining faith in she doesn t quite know what. An agnostic may have no invisible means of support. An agnostic prayer: Dear God, if there is a God, if you can, save my soul, if I have a soul. Amen A dyslexic agnostic lays awake at night wondering if Dog exists. A theist sings, PRAISE GOD, FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW. An Agnostic sings, PRAISE BE TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. The story is told of an athletic director at a liberal arts college who decided to organize a football game where one team would be made up of atheists and the other team made up of theists. She needed neutral referees, so she asked the agnostic students. However, the game had to be canceled because the agnostics could not make up their minds what the rules should be. I find it easy to make jokes about agnostics, because agnostics have a healthy sense of humor. Lacking a self-righteous conviction that they know the truth, they find it easy to laugh. The bumper sticker that reads Militant Agnostic, I Don t Know and You Don t Either is funny because agnostics, by their very nature are not militant. The word agnostic was invented in 1869 by the English biologist, Thomas Huxley, grandfather of the author of the book Brave New World. Born in 1825, by the age of 12 Thomas Huxley was reading advanced works on geology and logic and recording the results of simple, self-conducted scientific experiments. In his twenty-first year he became an assistant surgeon on a cockroach-ridden boat called the Rattlesnake. For the next four years Huxley traveled the world and studied marine specimens. From each port he sent his observations back to England. When he returned home in October 1850, the leading biologists of the day were anxious to meet this young researcher. Thomas Huxley was able to secure a lectureship at the tiny Government School of Mines in London. For the rest of his life Huxley stayed with this institution, gradually transforming it into the Royal College of Science. In 1859 Charles Darwin's Origin of Species burst like a bombshell onto the nineteenth century. Huxley was one of the scientists whose blessing Darwin sought before publication. A close attachment developed between the two men, and, while Darwin kept as far as possible out of the

2 fray, Huxley became his bulldog for the next decade, acting as Darwin s chief public supporter. The most notable occasion of the Darwinian debate came in 1860 at the meeting in Oxford University of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce asked Huxley if he believed his ancestors were apes. We are lucky to have Thomas Huxley here this morning to read to us his reply to the Bishop. If... the question is put to me, would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence, and yet who employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape. The significance of this occasion was not merely that it secured a somewhat fair hearing for Darwin's theory but that science had made its declaration of independence from theology. The word agnostic was first used by Huxley at a party in London in Mr. Huxley can you tell us why you invented the word? When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations,... The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain gnosis had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration.... Do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.... That which is unproven today may be proved by the help of new discoveries tomorrow. This new English word Agnosticism spread to America where a man named Robert Ingersoll took it on as a description of his own belief. Ingersoll was born in 1833, the son of a congregational minister. His mother had died when he was two, so Robert Ingersoll spent his early life traveling with his father from one ministerial post to another. His father preached the Calvinist doctrine of innate human depravity and impending damnation. Ingersoll became a lawyer and eventually was appointed Attorney General of Illinois. However, deeply impressed with the writings of people like Thomas Paine, Ingersoll developed a lifelong commitment to questioning the religious orthodoxy he had learned from his father. A brilliant

3 speaker, Ingersoll moved to Washington D.C. and became nationally famous as the most controversial and most sought-after lecturer in America. In 1896 he wrote the essay "Why I Am an Agnostic." We are lucky to have Robert Ingersoll with us this morning and he had agreed to read from that essay. Is there a God? I do not know..... Let us be true to ourselves true to the facts we know, and let us, above all things, preserve the veracity of our souls. If there be gods we cannot help them, but we can assist our fellowmen. We cannot love the inconceivable, but we can love wife and child and friend. We can be as honest as we are ignorant.... when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know. We can tell the truth, and we can enjoy the blessed freedom that the brave have won. We can destroy the monsters of superstition, the hissing snakes of ignorance and fear. We can drive from our minds the frightful things that tear and wound with beak and fang. We can civilize our fellow-men. We can fill our lives with generous deeds, with loving words, with art and song, and all the ecstasies of love. We can flood our years with sunshine with the divine climate of kindness, and we can drain to the last drop the golden cup of joy. In the 19th century Ingersoll spoke to audiences as large as 10,000 and earned as much as $3,500 per lecture. When he died of a heart attack in 1899 his ashes were buried under a granite monument in Arlington National Cemetery. One ministerial critic said of the Great American Agnostic, Instead of erecting a monument over the beast, the very soil that has been fouled by his hideous carcass should undergo some process of disinfection. Only snakes will grow on his grave. Today few people remember Ingersoll s name. Only a few historians are interested in his life. Nevertheless, the ideas he expressed survived. The defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow carried the idea of agnosticism into the 20th century. Darrow s 1925 defense of a science teacher named John Scopes was a major event in the history of American religion. Religious freedom gained millions of friends because this agnostic attorney entered into combat with uncritical, intolerant religion. To explain his own religious views Darrow wrote an essay he called Why I Am An Agnostic. We are blessed this morning to have Mr. Darrow with us: An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds of faiths. Everyone is an

4 agnostic as to the beliefs or creeds they do not accept. Catholics are agnostic to the Protestant creeds, and the Protestants are agnostic to the Catholic creed. Anyone who thinks is an agnostic about something, otherwise he must believe that he is possessed of all knowledge. And the proper place for such a person is in the madhouse or the home for the feeble-minded. In a popular way, in the western world, an agnostic is one who doubts or disbelieves the main tenets of the Christian faith. Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document? We now know pretty well where the various books came from, and about when they were written. We know that they were written by human beings who had no knowledge of science, little knowledge of life, and were influenced by the barbarous morality of primitive times, and were grossly ignorant of most things that men know today. For instance,... What of the tale of Balaam's ass speaking to him, probably in Hebrew? Is it true, or is it a fable? Many asses have spoken, and doubtless some in Hebrew, but they have not been that breed of asses.... When asked for advice on jury selection, you said, The best jurors for the defense are Catholics, Unitarians, Congregationalists, Universalists, Jews, and Agnostics! The great lawyer died in 1938, but the cause of Agnosticism was taken up in England by the philosopher, Bertrand Russell. Born in 1872, Russell is best known for his work in mathematical logic and for his advocacy of both pacifism and nuclear disarmament. His essay What is an Agnostic? is one of the clearest, simplest statements on the subject. And again, I am honored to welcome Mr. Russell who will read from his essay. An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as God and the future life with which Christianity and other religions are concerned. Or, if not impossible, at least impossible at the present time.... An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial.... An Agnostic does not accept any authority in the sense in which religious people do. He holds that a man should think out questions of conduct for himself. Of course, he will seek to profit by the wisdom of others, but he will have to select for himself the people he is to consider wise, and he will not regard even what they say as unquestionable.... The Agnostic is not quite so certain as some Christians are as to what is good and what is evil.... As for `sin', he thinks it not a useful notion. He admits, of course, that some kinds of conduct are desirable and some undesirable.... A man's antisocial wishes may be restrained by a wish to please God, but they may also be restrained by a wish to please his friends, or to win the respect of his community, or to be able to contemplate himself without disgust.... Most

5 agnostics admire the life and moral teachings of Jesus as told in the Gospels, but not necessarily more than those of certain other men. I think that if I heard a voice from the sky predicting all that was going to happen to me during the next twenty-four hours, including events that would have seemed highly improbable, and if all these events then produced to happen, I might perhaps be convinced at least of the existence of some superhuman intelligence. I can imagine other evidence of the same sort which might convince me, but so far as I know, no such evidence exists. Bertrand Russell died in 1970 at the age of ninety-eight, still agnostic, having never heard the voice of God from out of the sky. Of course there are also women agnostics, but it has only been in recent years that women thinkers have been able to attract the attention of publishers. One example is a Unitarian Universalist woman minister by the name of Joy Atkinson. In a 1995 sermon Rev. Atkinson wrote: I believe that at the heart of existence is a great mystery.... It is not given to us to know for certain the answers to the ultimate questions the questions I call Window ledge questions, because as a child I used to sit on a window ledge and gaze at the stars, pondering: What is the true nature of reality, and of God, if indeed there is a God? Why is there matter, why is there not nothing? Where is the edge of the universe? How and why did it all begin and how will it end?...it is not given to us to know for certain the answers to these ultimate questions. Rev. Atkinson s words reflect a fundamental humility, which is what I find most powerful in agnosticism. When I was a teenager I thought that the most important requirement for a religious life was courage, the courage to speak the truth and to work for justice. Later, when I studied to be a minister, I came to believe that the most important requirement to lead a religious life was wisdom, to be able to understand the ideas contained in the great works of religion and philosophy. Still later, when I became a minister, I came to believe that the most important requirement to lead a religious life was diplomacy, to help many different kinds of people work together in a caring community. Now, after thirty-five years as a minister, having discovered that I am imperfect in courage, wisdom, and diplomacy, I have come to suspect that the most important quality for a religious life is humility. This humility is what I like most about agnosticism. The willingness to recognize our limits makes it possible for us to forgive ourselves and to forgive others. Knowing and accepting that we do not have all the answers, makes it possible to love ourselves and to love

6 others. If, with humility, we accept that at the center of our lives, the center of existence there is a great mystery, we can be more at peace.