Old stuff: Confessions of a Seventh Day Agnostic

Sam Smith, 2017 - When someone noted a horseshoe over Einstein's door and asked, "You don't believe in that, do you?" the scientist responded, "Of course not, but they tell me it works."

My own sloppy view of such matters stems in part from having been an anthropology major. Anthropology teaches you, among other things, the power and significance of mythology even as one is examining rationally the culture that embraces it. Myth is universal and exists even if what it claims doesn't. Myth can either strengthen a culture or weaken it, but it doesn't go away. 
I am partially the product of a Quaker education, a religion that shares with existentialists the notion that action is more important than faith. Or as I sometimes put it, I don't give a shit what you believe; just what you do about it, 

This mushy approach towards religion has stood me in good stead. During the 1960s, for example, I had quite a few good friends who were priests or ministers in part because we had too many things to do together to even talk about the possible theology behind it. 

And despite my agnosticism, attending a service last Sunday raised some minor issues in my own mind fostered by having been brought up in the Episcopal Church…So there I was, a non-believer, non-practitioner, being irritated by what seemed the incorrect ritual of a religion in which I no longer had any part. It was one of the things you were taught about religion: you had to do it right. And it was a lesson that apparently survived belief. After all when I was a kid my grandfather, senior warden of his church, had scolded me after a service: "Young man, in the old prayer book, it said, 'And take thy humble confession, devotedly kneeling ON YOUR KNEES!'" I merely had my butt on the pew. But now parishioners were taking communion while standing. 

The irony of this heretic concern about such matters was a reminder of how tradition and myth can hang on even with a Seventh Day Agnostic. The fact that we aim to pursue reality does not mean that we shouldn't have read Winnie the Pooh when we were growing up, sung hymns on Sunday, or prayed for a friend in need. We still need some magic; we just need to know when to call upon it and when to call 911 instead.