May 29, 2014.
If there's one topic that drives me nuts more than any other, it's this one. On my left side are atheist-minded people who refuse to believe me when I say I've received enough absolute proof in my life to confirm the existence of an afterlife and a higher power. And on my right side are religious-minded people who refuse to believe that science is telling us all the truth about the age of the Earth and the facts of the known universe. On both sides of the conversation, there are people who just refuse to listen to the other side.
You are not thinking clearly when you refuse to listen to scientific fact. You are likewise not thinking clearly when you refuse to open your mind to the many people worldwide who have had absolute spiritual experiences that cannot be explained away by science.
The wisest words any of us can ever say are, "I don't know." We can shake a bible or even a whole library filled with scientific books (that's a lot of shaking!) in people's faces, but if we cannot also admit there is so much more we still do not know, we're accepting a forever-cloudy view of existence.
It annoys me to no end when comedians like Bill Maher and Seth MacFarlane mock religious people incessantly and rudely. I totally understand when they are doing it to call out hypocrisy and hatred, but when they do so with hate and judgment themselves, they have completely fumbled the ball that is civilized conversation. When they reduce their argument to mean mockery, they are failing.
Likewise, it annoys me to no end when people care about a religious text more than another human being. When you choose doctrines over souls, you're doing it wrong. You're failing at being spiritual in every way, shape, and form. You may in fact be succeeding at being religious, but you may as well be worshiping a golden calf in the desert, such is your misguided love of the written word.
So who's the winner in the age-old battle between science and religion? The free thinker! The agnostic! The truth seeker who knows she does not know all the truth! The only possible winner is the soul, who may or may not call himself a soul, who stands in the middle of this age-old battlefield, and listens to both sides. The person who listens and learns, pursues all he does not know with humility, who survives without flinging mud at either side: he is the one who always wins.
The pursuit of Truth with a capital T is one best undertaken while wearing a t-shirt that says, "I'm with stupid" as the arrow points inward. I don't know, you don't know, none of us know even 1% of 1% of the answers to our questions.
We do know some things, and for those, we should listen to one another. In most matters though, we must always remind ourselves of the old Irish adage: we have two ears but only one mouth for a reason! An agnostic is someone who does not know what the answers are, and in that sense, we are all agnostics. We are, all of us, not on the left or the right of this or any debate, but all of us actually in the middle, together, forgetting all the time to use our two ears.
Am I right, though? I don't know.
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