I've heard many Unitarian Universalists say they were agnostic. But I have my doubts. Agnostics address the question: What can we know for sure -- about God, heaven, etc.? Agnostics answer, "nothing" -- but our Unitarian Universalist tradition is one which does not answer that question at all, at least not without reinterpreting it. We won't answer that question (at face value) because for us religion is not about what we know or believe. For us -- as well as for Jewish and Eastern traditions -- religion is about how we live. The essential Unitarian Universalist move is to take the question "What can I know?" and replace it with -- or interpret it as -- the question, "What shall I live my life as if were true? What shall I take as my basis (for now, until I learn better) for acting and speaking and loving?" To that question, agnosticism is not possible.

Alternatively, we might say that the question "what can I know?" actually is the question "how shall I live?"

Many of us have come to see that nothing is provable. Scientific understanding is good for controlling and predicting, but that's not proof. Logic and mathematics have proofs, but the proofs rest upon optional assumptions. We cannot even be certain of the veracity of our immediate perceptions -- we might be dreaming, no?

Religious agnosticism depends upon a contrast between knowledge about God or religious matters and knowledge about any other area. But that's a contrast that can get fuzzy. If we are comfortable being uncertain about everything -- if we look forward to the further evolution of our beliefs about scientific matters in the same way that we look forward to the evolution of our religious beliefs -- then agnosticism loses its contrast. With uncertainty covering all areas of human experience, we must either say there is no such thing as knowledge, or else adopt a conception of knowing that allows for uncertainty and growth. Fortunately, such a conception is available. Some philosophers, notably John Dewey, have conceived of knowledge as doing -specifically, as effective doing (while ignorance is ineffective doing). We act, and our action's effectiveness is the embodiment of what we know. So, no, Unitarian Universalists are not agnostic, and we do not profess ignorance. Indeed, our knowledge is displayed in all our doing; and our religious knowledge is manifest as our way of living in community, with care, and for justice.

In faith,

- Meredith