Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Born Again Agnostic

A friend of mine pointed out today that all agnostics are born-again, that becoming agnostic would normally come from a strong introspection on our belief system, and on what it means to be part of a religion just because our parents were part of that religion. So this kind of introspection is the revelation that makes us agnostic and can even be said that we are reborn through it. In my case it came when I was 15 and got exposed to the religions of the Mayans through the Popol Vuh, then I had a very different comparison point for the need of an explanation of our existence.

True agnostics could have much stronger sets of morals than a large number of the members of established religions, and in some cases (myself included) became agnostic precisely because we find many of the religious practices amoral and denigrating of the human condition, and of the same principles they claim to represent.

However being agnostic also means that our "religion" is kept in the inside, is very private and only revealed to the closest of our friends, and it coexists, without conflicts, with reason and understanding. We don't try to impose it on anyone, though it guides our everyday actions.

It is because of this being private that our views are characterized by many of the so called religious people as amoral, as we don't follow their religious precepts. Because we see the clear disconnect between their words and their actions. I privately howl every time that I hear the name of Jesus Christ being used by the same people to justify actions that Jesus himself would have rebelled against.

After all, back in his time, Jesus himself became the best known Born Again Agnostic. But in his case, he decided to spread his own religion.

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