Agnosticism Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==== Bernard Iddings Bell ==== Canon [[Bernard Iddings Bell]] (1886–1958), a popular cultural commentator, Episcopal priest, and author, lauded the necessity of agnosticism in ''Beyond Agnosticism: A Book for Tired Mechanists'', calling it the foundation of "all intelligent Christianity".<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=http://anglicanhistory.org/usa/bibell/goodnews/02.html|title=The Good News, by Bernard Iddings Bell (1921)|website=anglicanhistory.org|access-date=2019-02-21}}</ref> Agnosticism was a temporary mindset in which one rigorously questioned the truths of the age, including the way in which one believed God.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The religious roots of postmodernism in American culture: an analysis of the postmodern theory of Bernard Iddings Bell and its continued relevance to contemporary postmodern theory and literary criticism.|last=Brauer|first=Kristen D.|publisher=University of Glasgow|year=2007|location=Glasgow, Scotland|pages=32}}</ref> His view of [[Robert G. Ingersoll|Robert Ingersoll]] and [[Thomas Paine]] was that they were not denouncing true Christianity but rather "a gross perversion of it".<ref name=":0" /> Part of the misunderstanding stemmed from ignorance of the concepts of God and religion.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Unfashionable Convictions|last=Bell|first=Bernard Iddings|publisher=Harper & Brothers|year=1931|location=New York and London|pages=20}}</ref> Historically, a god was any real, perceivable force that ruled the lives of humans and inspired admiration, love, fear, and homage; religion was the practice of it. Ancient peoples worshiped gods with real counterparts, such as [[Mammon]] (money and material things), [[Nabu]] (rationality), or [[Baal|Ba'al]] (violent weather); Bell argued that modern peoples were still paying homage—with their lives and their children's lives—to these old gods of wealth, physical appetites, and self-deification.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Beyond Agnosticism|last=Bell|first=Bernard Iddings|publisher=Harper & Brothers|year=1929|location=New York and London|pages=12–19}}</ref> Thus, if one attempted to be agnostic passively, he or she would incidentally join the worship of the world's gods. In ''Unfashionable Convictions'' (1931), he criticized the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]]'s complete faith in human [[Sense|sensory perception]], augmented by scientific instruments, as a means of accurately grasping Reality. Firstly, it was fairly new, an innovation of the Western World, which [[Aristotle]] invented and [[Thomas Aquinas]] revived among the scientific community. Secondly, the divorce of "pure" science from human experience, as manifested in American [[Industrialisation|Industrialization]], had completely altered the environment, often disfiguring it, so as to suggest its insufficiency to human needs. Thirdly, because scientists were constantly producing more data—to the point where no single human could grasp it all at once—it followed that human intelligence was incapable of attaining a complete understanding of universe; therefore, to admit the mysteries of the unobserved universe was to be ''actually'' scientific. Bell believed that there were two other ways that humans could perceive and interact with the world. ''Artistic experience'' was how one expressed meaning through speaking, writing, painting, gesturing—any sort of communication which shared insight into a human's inner reality. ''Mystical experience'' was how one could "read" people and harmonize with them, being what we commonly call love.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=Unfashionable Convictions|last=Bell|first=Bernard Iddings|publisher=Harper & Brothers|year=1931|location=New York and London|pages=4–5}}</ref> In summary, man was a scientist, artist, and lover. Without exercising all three, a person became "lopsided". Bell considered a [[Humanism|humanist]] to be a person who cannot rightly ignore the other ways of knowing. However, humanism, like agnosticism, was also temporal, and would eventually lead to either scientific [[materialism]] or [[theism]]. He lays out the following thesis: # Truth cannot be discovered by reasoning on the evidence of scientific data alone. Modern peoples' dissatisfaction with life is the result of depending on such incomplete data. Our ability to reason is not a way to discover Truth but rather a way to organize our knowledge and experiences somewhat sensibly. Without a full, human perception of the world, one's reason tends to lead them in the wrong direction. # Beyond what can be measured with scientific tools, there are other types of perception, such as one's ability know another human through loving. One's loves cannot be dissected and logged in a scientific journal, but we know them far better than we know the surface of the sun. They show us an indefinable reality that is nevertheless intimate and personal, and they reveal qualities lovelier and truer than detached facts can provide. # To be religious, in the Christian sense, is to live for the Whole of Reality (God) rather than for a small part (gods). Only by treating this Whole of Reality as a person—good and true and perfect—rather than an impersonal force, can we come closer to the Truth. An ultimate Person can be loved, but a cosmic force cannot. A scientist can only discover peripheral truths, but a lover is able to get at the Truth. # There are many reasons to believe in God but they are not sufficient for an agnostic to become a theist. It is not enough to believe in an ancient holy book, even though when it is accurately analyzed without bias, it proves to be more trustworthy and admirable than what we are taught in school. Neither is it enough to realize how probable it is that a personal God would have to show human beings how to live, considering they have so much trouble on their own. Nor is it enough to believe for the reason that, throughout history, millions of people have arrived at this Wholeness of Reality only through religious experience. The aforementioned reasons may warm one toward religion, but they fall short of convincing. However, if one presupposes that God is in fact a knowable, loving person, as an experiment, and then lives according that religion, he or she will suddenly come face to face with experiences previously unknown. One's life becomes full, meaningful, and fearless in the face of death. It does not defy reason but ''exceeds'' it. # Because God has been experienced through love, the orders of prayer, fellowship, and devotion now matter. They create order within one's life, continually renewing the "missing piece" that had previously felt lost. They empower one to be compassionate and humble, not small-minded or arrogant. # No truth should be denied outright, but all should be questioned. Science reveals an ever-growing vision of our universe that should not be discounted due to bias toward older understandings. Reason is to be trusted and cultivated. To believe in God is not to forego reason or to deny scientific facts, but to step into the unknown and discover the fullness of life.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Unfashionable Convictions|last=Bell|first=Bernard Iddings|publisher=Harper & Brothers Publishing|year=1931|location=New York and London|pages=25–28}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page