I think atheists and agnostics are brave.
I mean, I’m agnostic myself, so I suppose I’m mostly saying this to myself😁, but it's remarkably brave having to live without the comfort of knowing that someone or something has the whole thing figured out.
Human beings have such an intense need for meaning that we will practically manufacture it out of thin air.
We want our existence to belong to some larger order and our deaths to mean more than the simple fact that a living organism eventually stopped living.
And when you’re scared or exhausted or completely fucking helpless, believing that there is a God who knows what you don’t know is an incredibly powerful thing.
እግዚአብሔር ያውቃል።
You don’t understand what is happening, but someone does. You don’t know where this is going, but someone does.
There is a plan, even if you can’t see it. I understand why that would feel like relief.
What I find difficult is that I can’t use that relief anymore (ዌልፕ).
I can’t throw እግዚአብሔር ያውቃል at something I don’t understand and feel like I’ve actually answered it. I’m agnostic precisely because I don’t know, and there is a difference between genuinely admitting uncertainty and filling that uncertainty with whatever answer makes it easier to sleep at night. Once you become aware of that difference, it becomes difficult to unsee.
Perhaps faith reveals less about what exists than the human need for existence to signify something. Contingency is difficult to endure which is the possibility that things simply happen, without reason or design. Meaning becomes a way of placing finite consciousness within an intelligible order, transforming chaos into something that can be understood as belonging to a larger whole and not just temporary arrangements of matter trying desperately to convince themselves that they matter.
And I don’t think becoming agnostic kills that need. That would be too easy. I still have it.
I still want there to be something. I still want the universe to have an answer tucked somewhere inside it.
I just can’t make my wanting the answer into evidence for the answer.
So when I’m frightened, tired, grieving, or simply overwhelmed by the fact that I have absolutely no fucking idea what I’m doing, I’m left with uncertainty.
There is no cosmic customer service desk where I can submit a ticket and ask what the hell all of this is supposed to mean.
There is no guaranteed explanation waiting behind the curtain.
There is just the question, and then me, having to decide what to do with it..
It boggles my brain hehe.
Perhaps the greater courage lies in remaining within uncertainty. refusing to manufacture a cosmic meaning where none is known, or confuse consolation with truth, while still accepting the task of making a finite life meaningful. Meaning becomes less a discovery than a responsibility, which is, frankly, an inconvenient one.
🧍♀
#notcrashingout
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