agnosticism « The Accidental Theologist

A Comment on Comments

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

Since this blog casts an agnostic eye on religion, politics, and existence, it sometimes attracts a lot of comments, some of them quite impassioned. But many of the longer comments threads have now reached the MEGO stage – “my eyes glaze over” – so it’s time for me to establish some guidelines, be a good [...]

Filed under: agnosticism, existence | Tagged: comments policy, spam, trolls | 18 Comments »

Believing in Peace

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

“I can’t believe you don’t believe in anything!” someone wrote on this blog a while back, commenting on my agnosticism (actually, she used capital letters and lots of exclamation marks, but I’ll refrain). And I was a bit shocked by that. What kind of human being can I claim to be if I don’t believe [...]

Filed under: agnosticism, existence, Middle East | Tagged: Bahrain, belief, conflict, Egypt, faith, Gaza, Germany, imagination, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Libya, nihilism, Palestine, peace, Tunisia, West Bank, Yemen | 15 Comments »

An Agnostic Manifesto: Part One

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

For the last two weeks, I’ve been deeply engaged in what I know to be a futile pursuit. It’s called writing: in this case, part of the biography of Muhammad I’m working on. Specifically, this agnostic Jew has been trying to ‘understand’ the pivotal gnostic moment of Islam – what happened the night on Mount [...]

Filed under: agnosticism, existence, Islam, Judaism | Tagged: Allah, Freud, God, knowledge, Muhammad, mystery, mysticism, oceanic consciousness, Sistine Chapel, unknowability | 27 Comments »

The 100th Post: a Non-Mission Statement

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

The tyranny of round numbers has me in its grip. A decade birthday or a centennial seems to insist on comment, whether we are ready for it or not. Usually not. Today my ‘dashboard’ informs me that this is the one-hundredth post since I began The Accidental Theologist nine months ago (note how I even [...]

Filed under: agnosticism, existence | Tagged: accidental theologists, mission statements, missionary position, Rebecca Solnit, round numbers, truth | 8 Comments »

The ‘Obvious’

Posted on December 28, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

You’ll find none of the comfort of received opinion here. No claim to truth, let alone Truth (that capital T always makes me nervous). None of that astounding confidence (aka hubris) that cloaks ignorance and prejudice. The aim is to question, to explore, to keep my mind — and yours — open, raise some sparks, [...]

Filed under: agnosticism, existence | Tagged: certainty, faith, obviousness, R.D.Laing, truth | 4 Comments »

Faith, Falsehood, and Fiction

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

Here’s Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, the newly crowned Nobel literature laureate and a proud agnostic, talking about truth, lies, and fiction in a piece called “Is Fiction the Art of Living?“: THE lies in novels are not gratuitous – they fill in the insufficiencies of life. Thus, when life seems full and absolute, and [...]

Filed under: agnosticism, art | Tagged: accidental theologist, faith, fiction, lies, literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel prize, truth, uncertainty | 2 Comments »

Delicious Ignorance

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

Okay, so it’s hard not to crow in ironic delight about this one: turns out atheists and agnostics score higher than religious Americans on a test of religious knowledge. Howzat for un-believable! A new survey released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows that one of the most deeply religious countries in [...]

Filed under: agnosticism, atheism, Christianity, fundamentalism, Islam, Judaism | Tagged: Bible, Pew Forum, quiz, Quran, religious ignorance, religious knowledge | 1 Comment »

Wagering on Peace

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

Is it rational to believe that peace is possible in the Middle East? Sometimes it seems not. A good friend in New York, a long-time Middle East peace activist, confided that the Israeli use of deadly force against the Gaza-bound flotilla had brought her close to despair. Yet historian Tony Judt in an op-ed today [...]

Filed under: agnosticism, atheism, Christianity, Middle East | Tagged: Anwar Sadat, Camp David, despair, Egypt, Eric Rohmer, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Menachem Begin, Pascal's wager, peace, Tony Judt | 2 Comments »

The Insult of Oil

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

Every few months, there’s a minor oil spill on Seattle’s Lake Union – a boat’s bilge pump goes haywire, or a fuel line leaks. I wake with a headache, the houseboat full of fumes. Outside, the water around my raft is an iridescent swirl of red and green and yellow and purple, glinting maliciously in [...]

Filed under: agnosticism, ecology | Tagged: big oil, dead zones, deregulation, Gulf of Florida, Jordan River, oil spills, Pacific garbage gyres, pantheism | 4 Comments »

Kaddish for my Mother

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

The day we bury my mother, the rabbi surprises me. He asks if I’d like to lead the Kaddish prayer alongside my brother. He’s new to this orthodox Anglo-Jewish congregation, but perhaps he’s heard of “the scene” I made at my father’s grave thirteen years ago. In insult at being excluded when the shovel was [...]

Filed under: agnosticism, Judaism | Tagged: accidental theologist, Kaddish, Mothers Day, mourning, women in Judaism | 7 Comments »

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