Agnosticism

IT’S good that with all this bird flu scare upon us, we are doing everything, or at least many things, to prevent, if not combat and contain the dreaded disease in case it finally comes.

My fervent wish now is that more or less the same sense of alertness and preparedness be given to the far more dangerous and destructive spiritual illnesses and moral aberrations that threaten us just as much as the bird flu.

This, I believe, is a sensitiveness that we still have to develop in a more massive way among ourselves. More than our physical health, it is our spiritual and moral health that requires serious attention and concern from us.

We seem to be quite clueless, completely indifferent to them, ignorant of their causes and their silent ways and effective spread in our society. We take action only when things are already too late.

Among these spiritual and moral viruses that threaten us now is agnosticism. I have come to this conclusion when I recently read an article that clearly showed agnostic ideas. Perhaps the writer was not even aware of this.

Of course, I also have many other observations that confirm this suspicion. The sad thing is that hardly anyone is voicing any warning. Worse, our present environment seems averse to such warning.

Basically, agnosticism is the attitude or belief that one cannot be sure if God really exists. There may be God, and because of that, there may be some absolute truths, but these cannot be known for sure by us.

This is how the Catechism describes it:

“Agnosticism assumes a number of forms. In certain cases the agnostic refrains from denying God. Instead it postulates the existence of a transcendent being which is incapable of revealing itself, and about which nothing can be said.

“In other cases, the agnostic makes not judgment about God’s existence, declaring it impossible to prove, or even to affirm or deny.” (2127)

Still more: “Agnosticism can sometimes include a certain search for God, but it can equally express indifferentism, a flight from the ultimate question of existence, and a sluggish moral conscience.

“Agnosticism is all too often equivalent to practical atheism.” (2128)

The danger of this mentality is that it brings one to the road of relativism. Everything can be held to be more or less ok. The ultimate deciding factor is simply one’s personal judgment, without any objective, universal criteria to guide him.

Agnosticism is clearly against the nature of man, who with his intellect and will is capable of knowing the infinite, of knowing absolute truths, and of knowing and loving God.

No matter how imperfect this capability may be in a person, it already makes one open to the transcendent. He is not invincibly confined to the here and now, to the material and temporal. He can know God. He can know absolute truths.

Agnosticism takes place when one does not make any serious effort to use his spiritual faculties of intellect and will properly. Instead of focusing them on God, they are focused only on some purely material or human things.

This in turn can have many explanations. There could be an element of some human weakness and limitation that is left uncorrected, or laziness, or worse, pride, especially intellectual pride, or being dominated by vices and malice, etc.

In the practical side, it comes when one fails to pray, and to develop a truly personal relationship with God. This is true especially with many nominal Christians. They fail to contemplate God even as they work or play.

It is in these areas where the solutions to agnosticism can be devised and implemented. We need to come out with effective strategies to tackle the ever-present threat of agnosticism in our midst.