Posted May 29, 2009
The Agnostic Review

The Origins Of Agnosticism:
How I Fell from Grace...

AGNOSTIC
Pronunciation: \ ag-näs-tik, əg-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek agnōstos unknown, unknowable, from a- + gnōstos known, from gignōskein to know
1. a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable: broadly one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god...

I really can't count the number of times I've been asked, "Do you believe in God?" There was a time I wouldn't have hesitated to answer yes. But I find the cynicism born of a half-century of experience (did I REALLY just say "a half-century?") coupled with the contradictions of religion, and the hypocrisy that follows behind as if it were the Pied Piper, has raised doubts and questions about the true existence of a God. A God that would allow His "children" to suffer through a world full of disgust and violence while at times appearing to reward the most vile among us. I've seen no physical manifestation of God in ANY form short of a sunrise and the birth of a child. I've personally witnessed no miraculous healings.
Most importantly though, I've found it increasing more difficult to justify the terms by which God allows up to spend eternity in paradise. I found the following recently that somewhat summed up the rational argument many agnostics and atheists alike share in common. In a roundabout way I want first to explain why I am NOT an agnostic. It may help in providing answers for those who are still confused:

I am NOT an Agnostic because...

I hate God
I prayed to God and my prayers weren’t answered
Militant/fundamentalist atheists converted me away from God
I worship science and the works of man instead of God
I’m rebelling against God like I rebelled against my parents & teachers in high school
I think I’m better than God
I had a bad experience with a priest or church or religious person
I can’t decide which religion to subscribe to
Agnosticism is my religion
I think religious people are idiots
I worship Batman
I worship Satan
I’m immoral/amoral and would rather do what I want
I want to destroy religion

Hopefully one can see that the reasons behind agnosticism are somewhat complex taken in definition beside each bullet. I didn't just wake up one day and say to myself, "Well, that was fun, let's be agnostic for a while", but rather slowly drifted without recognition that my mind was seeing things around me that were tipping the scales in favor of a universe created by something but not what mainstream Christianity may believe.
I have ALWAYS believed religion would be the death of Christianity. As I look around me I see more and more people becoming disenchanted with its interpretation, its abuse and its specific discrimination against individuals whose relationship with God as they see him is tantamount to a banishment from paradise. The reasons for me are not much more varied than those of others who have genuine concerns and questions, mainly...

• religious people often tend to pick & choose from, or “interpret” their holy texts, discarding what does not conform to modern standards of morality, law & political freedom; they then bizarrely imply that modern morality, law and political freedom rests on the foundations of their particular religion...
• many Christian churches seem primarily concerned with attracting money and keeping it rather than using it charitably, building huge monuments to themselves...
• as well as innumerable separate religions; there are so many separate & often violently opposed sects within each that it is more likely that none of them are correct rather than just one of them being so...
• there is such a wide spectrum of religious belief & adherence to dogma, ranging from light, barely-existent deism to the kind of rigid fundamentalism that oppresses and kills many, many people in its name, that it leads me to conclude that either their God wasn’t clear enough with his message, didn’t spread it to enough people or that humans have basically made their religions, and associated rules, up as they went along and have been in conflict with each other about them ever since...
• many religious people & groups attempt to cherry-pick science (as they do their scriptures) for those parts which conform to their belief system while actively denying others, e.g. creationists agreeing with “microevolution” while denying “macroevolution” (which is like believing that matches cannot start bushfires) or attempting to use the Second Law of Thermodynamics to debunk the theory of evolution (which is like adjudicating a baseball game with a cricket rulebook)...
• some religious groups deny the efficacy of modern medicine in favor of treating an ill person with prayer, a practice which has led to many preventable deaths, often of children...
• they all make extraordinary claims based on their scriptures, provide no evidence beyond referring to their (unsurprisingly) self-confirming scriptures and then insist that the onus is on non-believers to disprove their claims...
• many religions have become inextricably intertwined with the laws of the patriarchal or tribal cultures which spawned or adopted them, leading to divine justifications for such horrors as female circumcision and “honour killings”, which more often than not punish women, already under the thumbs of domineering males, for seemingly minute transgressions of law...

That, I hope, clearly sums up both why I am NOT an agnostic and some of the reasons why I find it difficult to have an across-the-board, blind-faith attitude in my beliefs about who God really is. And in a parochial defense, I'm exploring more reasons each day as to why I should return to the embrace of a belief I once held firmly and defended.

This is not an easy road. When you look into the mirror of belief, what you find staring back may not always be the person you want to see. I'm the only one that can make the decisions that cement the foundations of my relationship with God and while I have had unbiased support from a wide variety of people, its taken some time to sort out the contradictions.

Faith, in its purest form, is a blind dedication to an understanding that can't necessarily be proven by reason or intellect. There's no physical manifestation that confronts you with undeniable truth. Maybe that's my problem. Maybe I'm become, in the latter years, cynical of the world around me. Maybe I can't have faith in the deity of a god because I just don't have faith in myself...

Will there be some blinding light that strikes me as it did the Apostle Paul, waylaying my doubts and concerns? I tend to believe not. I believe everything I need to seek out the truth in undeniable terms is right in front of the my eyes already. But that distance between the heart and mind, as I've stated already, is one of the longest and most difficult journeys I have to make, blindly heading toward a destination that can't be zeroed in on with GPS.

The spiritual implosion that left me where I am today can only be restructured once the past has been bulldozed from the site and the groundwork laid for a new foundation. Only then can I begin to rebuild a relationship I once had. But I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, it will be an all or nothing proposition, no half-hearted hypocrisy, no half-ass efforts on my part... Maybe I should be glad there's a carpenter on my side.

Remembering Manuel: A Memorial Day Celebration
The Forgotten Lessons of Beirut

"Sir, it's just gone, blown up. It's not there
anymore!" the staff sergeant confirmed, not yet
knowing how or why...

On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a 19-ton truck loaded with the equivalent of over 20,000 pounds of TNT into the front door of the U. S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The bombing killed 241 Marines, representing the single largest loss of Marines in a single day since D-Day on Iwo Jima during WWII. Ironically, many of us deployed to Beirut arrived aboard the USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2), a Vietnam-era helicopter carrier. That incident some 25 years ago ushered in a new era of terrorism against the U.S. that is still being waged in the Middle East and the world at large today.
This Memorial Day fewer people will remember the sacrifices of Beirut, reflecting instead on the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Everyday I remember a young man who was not only a friend, but a hero in every sense of the word. He never held his newborn child... he never had the chance to say goodbye to his wife whom he loved without reservation. He never knew how much his sacrifice meant to those of us who loved him as a brother and trusted him with our lives. And he would never know the lessons he taught us about unselfish sacrifice.
I first met Manuel Cox after transferring from the White House in 1982. I'd been deployed previously to Lebanon to facilitate the evacuation of Yaser Arafat and radical members of the PLO and had come to know some members of Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines. When I was finally transferred permanently to Camp Geiger, I was walking into not unfamiliar territory.
Though he and I were both in the same platoon, it was some time before Manuel and I became friends. It was only through our off-duty forages with friends we had in common that a bond began to form. By the end of the year, we were as close as brothers. Manuel was a devoted husband and friend... and what none of us realized at the time was that he was about to redefine heroism amongst a generation that vaguely remembered the lessons of Vietnam conflict.
The Middle East at this point was becoming a time bomb between Israel and the various warring factions in Lebanon and the Marines were about to be cast in a very uncomfortable, and unfamiliar, role. Defined by its mission statement, the Marine Corps was an offensive unit, an advanced tactical force never designed for peacekeeping operations. That was about to change... with tragic consequences.
Reagan's decision to send us into Beirut soon became a nightmare. UN mandates prohibited us, for the most part, from carrying chambered weapons. Years later, in the last memoir he wrote before his death, he lamented...

"Sending the Marines into Beirut is the single source of my greatest sorrow and deepest regret."

At 6:30 A.M. on a quiet Sunday morning, a lone suicide bomber sped through the barriers surrounding the barracks and headed straight for the front door. The sentries, whose weapons were unloaded, managed to load and get off several rounds but to no avail and within seconds, the four-story building was reduced to rubble. Nearly two weeks later, Manuel would find himself fighting for his life, a fight he lost, but one that became a study in courage, determination and sacrifice.
On December 4, 1983, Manuel and his team manned Observation Post 74 near the site that had previously been the Marine barracks. That was the same day the United States lost two fighter-bombers in air strikes against Syrian targets, with one pilot killed and the other captured.
Manuel's squad came under fire by Shiites hell-bent on killing them all and stealing weapons and ammunition. By all witnessed accounts the fighting was incredibly ferocious... lasting for hours well into the night. Survivors testify that Manuel and his team conducted themselves in a manner described by one observer as "simply awesome."

"(Manuel) called for and adjusted artillery and mortar, gave fire commands to his Marines, the whole deal. He and his Marines fought like hell that night," said Mike Ettore, a fellow Marine who said he was monitoring the fight on radio. "Somebody got an hour of the fight on a tape recording. I've always believed they should have that tape in squad leader school and say, 'OK, listen to this. Here's how Marines should be led in combat.' "

Tragically, the last enemy round of the night made a direct hit on OP 76, killing Cox and seven of his Marines. Lance Corporal Harold Clayburn crawled 300 meters on his belly, as Shiite militants tried to shoot him, to get to Cox's position to assess the situation. The scene at OP 76 was, in his words, "utter carnage." I was by this time in Germany awaiting transfer back to a medical facility in the States. It would be nearly a month before I found out what had happened to Manuel and how that one act of unselfish sacrifice and courage would reinforce America's integrity and determination to stand against those forces hell-bent on destroying the principles and ideals that form the very foundation of America.
I have faith in this country, however divided we may be at times, and I pray we never forget not only those who have died, but those who stand ready to defend our freedoms. For it is only because of them that we can sleep under a blanket of security without fear or surrender.
On this Memorial Day weekend, reach out to someone you know who has served this great country and thank them for the sacrifices they withstood and pray that God will keep his arm around us safe in the knowledge that our strength is in unity and nothing will tear us apart.