How to respond to agnostics who say that God can’t be known?

How to respond to agnostics who say that God can’t be known?

Question, how do we respond to an agnostic who says that God is unknowable? Answer, three steps. First is, based on that very philosophy, that if one is agnostic truly, then maybe one can be agnostic about one’s agnosticism also. That means, if we are considering the unknowability of God and we are considering that unknowability is so important, then maybe we should consider the unknowability of the unknowability.

Is God really unknowable? Can we know that for sure? So, agnosticism implies a certainty that itself is problematic based on the very essence of agnosticism, that we can’t know about God. But can we be sure, can we know for sure that we can’t know about God? So, applying agnosticism to agnosticism can open our minds a bit to explore further. Second is that, in general the quest for knowledge, the human quest for understanding has been premised on the broad, almost axiomatic assumption within science that reality is knowable for us in the domain of physical sciences.

If the pioneering scientists had been agnostic about nature, that, oh, we can’t know how nature works, then we would have had none of the advancement of scientific knowledge or the technological facilities and utilities, many of which have become necessities in our life today. And throughout history there have been, there will be naysayers who say that these things are too complicated for us to know. And there is some truth to what they say.

As we have dived deeper and deeper into the complexities of nature, for example, quantum physics has brought human knowledge to an often baffling stop, where not only is, according to some prominent quantum physicists, not only is it weirder than what we imagine, it is weirder than what we can imagine. Even though that is the present understanding right now, the journey to this understanding has had benefits, and quantum physics and in general the knowledge of the quantum world has significantly transformed the way we live. So the point is, even if there is an inability to come to a conclusive understanding, the quest for understanding itself can increase our understanding and can contribute to well-being in various ways.

So, the quest for knowing God need not be subjected to a standard different from what we have subjected other seemingly incomprehensible fields of knowledge. The human spirit of knowing need not be deterred or blocked by the philosophical premise of agnosticism that the ultimate reality is unknowable in principle. The ultimate reality may be unknowable in practice to a complete degree, but the attempt to know that may well help us survive forbidden human curiosity from exploring in that particular direction.

Of course, if some particular people do not wish to explore that particular domain, that is fair enough. Each individual has the opportunity to decide where they want to direct their curiosity and they have the autonomy for that. But just as they have the autonomy to decide not to explore, shouldn’t others have the autonomy to explore? So the first point is a logical challenge to agnosticism in terms of it.

Can we know for sure it is unknowable? Second is that even if there is ultimate unknowability, if there is incremental knowledge, might that not be beneficial and might human curiosity in that direction lead to something constructive? So this is more of a historical experiential approach that has been used elsewhere. And the third is more of a psychological approach. Agnosticism is often a reaction and a valid reaction to the certainty that certain religious traditions and especially competing religious traditions have about the conclusiveness about their revelation of divinity and the resulting conflicts from there.

One tradition may claim for sure that this is what the nature of the ultimate reality is based on their sacred books. Another tradition may have a completely different conception of the divine and when such traditions argue and go beyond argument to religious intolerance and violence, then they end up making the world worse in many ways. And agnosticism can seem to be a much safer bet for the well-being of humanity.

However, that reasoning is based on the questionable assumption that the quest for knowing God has to result in a certainty that will lead to intolerance and violence. In the broad Vedic tradition and in the tradition of the Bhagavad Gita, spiritual growth is seen in two different pathways. One is the growth in faith, which brings about certainty, but the other trajectory is the growth in humility based on understanding that God or the ultimate reality, however one names and conceives or realises that reality, is far bigger than me and far bigger than my capacity to conceive or realise.

Therefore, that profound humility brings about an acceptance of uncertainty and even comfort with uncertainty. In my particular tradition, this is conveyed by the idea that the ultimate reality is achintya, inconceivable. That in the Bhagavad Gita 10.15, Arjuna, after hearing from Krishna about the message of the nature of reality culminating in the glory of divinity, Arjuna makes two seemingly contrasting statements.

On one side, he declares with conviction that it is Krishna who is the ultimate reality and he accepts Krishna’s words in full and in that same breath, even without a pause apparently he says that, you, O Lord, are unknowable, that no one, neither beings more powerful than me or greater than virtue and wisdom in me can know you. That the ultimate reality is knowable only by the ultimate reality. So God will always remain greater than whatever conceptions we may have of God.

God will always remain greater than whatever revelations we may have of God. God will always remain greater than whatever traditions may have evolved in the search of God and the service to God. God will always remain greater than the religions that may have sprung in His name and God will always remain greater than any leaders or seers who claim to know God.

And this is the categorical conclusion of the Gita where it is said that we need to go beyond even the religions that may be devoted to Him to become devoted to Him. Sarva Dharmaan Parityajya Maam Ekam Sharanam Vraja. So, therefore, the true understanding of God as explained in the broad Bhakti Yoga tradition and in the Bhagavad Gita is not an understanding of an intolerant certainty.

While there is certainty about the way one has realised God, there is an implicit acknowledgement that God is greater than one’s realisation. And in the Vedic tradition, this is enshrined in the statement, Ekam Sat Viprabhoudhavadanti. There is one truth, but that truth is known and addressed by different sages in different ways.

So how exactly the revelations of one particular tradition or one particular teacher may reconcile with the revelations of another teacher may well be inconceivable for us. This does not create a theological free-for-all where any and every revelation may be considered to be a right revelation and we end up with unlimited and often mutually irreconcilable conceptions of the Divine. The principle of spirituality is that knowing is not just a matter of information, it’s a matter of transformation.

And so, how one conceives of God is important, but what is more important is what is the consequence on oneself of that conception of God. If one truly knows God, the result would be that knowledge and experience of God would be so enriching that one would not crave for any other experiences. And that is why this is one of the aspects of perennial philosophy also, which is very much in harmony with the teachings of the Gita that if we become authentically God conscious in the sense of coming to know something about God, the result would be that we would become attached to God and we would become detached from the material world.

And being detached from the material world also means being detached from wanting to force others to accept God as we have conceived Him. We may want to persuade, but we will be open to understanding that God may reveal Himself in different ways to different people. So, the metaphor often used here is that we are trying to climb up a mountain and there is a peak, but we come closer and closer to the peak, but we never actually reach the peak.

And the way the peak is seen by people climbing up in one path will always be different from the way the peak is seen by those climbing from the other side. Now, all these climbers may meet at the peak, but that peak is ultimately reached in another domain of reality and therefore arguing about whether one particular revelation about the nature of that peak is final and another is not, is ultimately not an optimal utilisation of time. Just as there are objective criteria that a person climbing up a mountain will be moving further away from the ground and coming closer to the peak and becoming increasingly captivated by its beauty.

Similarly, the objective criteria for spiritual growth is that one becomes more and more attached to God and becomes less and less interested in trying to… in material things, including the material notion of wanting to force one’s conception of God on others. So spiritual growth is centred not so much on proving, but on improving, not on trying to fight to categorically establish that one’s own revelation of the ultimate is the ultimate, but on letting that revelation bring about an existential transformation of our own heart and a redirection of our own life from the mundane to the divine. So to summarise three points.

The logical challenge with the claim that God is unknowable. How can we show that the unknowability of God is knowable? The second is a historical experiential that we haven’t given into the principle of unknowability in any other area of the search for human understanding. And third, Gnosticism’s concern that a certainty about God can lead to intolerance is valid, but knowledge of God doesn’t have to necessarily lead to an intolerant certainty.

It can lead to a profound humility that fosters commitment to one’s own revelation while also fostering openness to other revelations with a focus on improving oneself rather than proving to others.