Agnosticism is the view that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural, is unknown or unknowable. Basically, human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the belief that God does not exist. Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word ‘agnostic’ in 1869, in his speech at the meeting of the Metaphysical Society.
What many people get wrong about agnosticism is that they consider it as a religion, when in fact it is anything but that. It doesn’t align with religion nor with the complete rejection of it. However, the etymology of the word is a bit ironic. ‘Gnostic’ was used to describe spiritual knowledge by early Christian leaders. Today, it opposes the complete acceptance of religion. Some say that agnosticism is just a safe word used for atheism and that agnostics are basically
people who are on the fence between religion and atheism. Yet some others say agnosticism is not possible practically, as one can only live in the strong belief that god either exists or doesn’t.
In a multi-religious country like India, the relevance of agnosticism should be popular but sadly isn’t. Only a small amount of the Indian population are agnostics, or at least those that are brave enough to admit so in a country where religion is over-hyped and is prioritized way higher than it needs to be, mostly ending in disastrous results.
There are several celebrities, however, who has openly admitted to being agnostics like Farhan Akhtar, Jawaharlal Nehru, Barkha Dutt, etc. But hey, they are powerful influential beings, and it is not the same as common citizens being able to call themselves agnostics. They may face a lot of backlash for that, especially from extremely religious family members and relatives.
In India, agnosticism has a large impact. Most Indians belong to the sect of people for whom religion and only religion comes first. Reason comes only second and anyone that stands in the way will be extremely criticized. Not all of them are like that, sure, but the majority nonetheless. In this uplifting of religious interests, many life decisions are dependent on it, mainly marriage.
Honour killings are one such disastrous outcome of placing religion high on a pedestal, without thinking about the life of the person at hand. The major problem of religion is that its followers fail to think reasonably. They are blinded by the extreme euphoric feeling religion offers and thus fail, or rather, withdraw from questioning it. The issue of the ‘Tanishq’ advertisement is a great example of this intolerance. It’s almost funny that people who aren’t offended by the major issues that can have a massive impact on our country’s future are offended by a made-up issue like this. I needn’t say more, need I?
The religious intolerance within India is frighteningly coming to a stark height, which genuinely scares me. I feel as if we are going backwards in thinking as we progress forward in other fields. Here comes the importance of agnosticism. While religion pressures its followers to follow it blindly, agnosticism doesn’t ask anything from its followers, and one shouldn’t get the idea that it is a religion from this phrase.
It isn’t a religion at all, but rather a way to look at God or any such omnipotent powers in the universe, or its absence. Agnosticism is based on concrete facts—it says that we can only accept the existence or dismissal of God based on the given information, but that is inadequate for our general understanding of God.
Thus, we mere mortals have not progressed enough to determine whether such a power exists or not. How beautiful of a belief! I feel as if this is the most practical, appropriate thinking regarding an omnipotent power in the world. No fights over God, as even his (or her?) existence is doubtful. People can exist together without fighting over the number of Gods, how that God came to be, and other such petty issues.
This is not a praising of agnosticism, as it has its own vagueness, but that is microscopically small when compared to the gullibility of religion. So I ask you this. Keep in a small corner of your mind that such a possibility exists, that the existence of God may or may not be true, and that it’s a complete waste of time fighting over it.
