The 5 ½ Epiphanies
'The Dead Sea Scrolls' of things that aren't from the Dead Sea, or scrolls...
The Epiphanies were the earliest existing Pō Light Agnostic written text. They pre-date The Agnostic Bible itself by several years and were intended to form the initial tenets of the Agnostic (non)faith.
The 5 ½ (or 5.5) Epiphanies have been compared to the Ten Commandments. This is a poor comparison. For one thing, there are only five and a half of them. Secondly, they’re not commandments. They are more like vague notions of things you might like to do or think about, provided you’re not too busy. Lastly, they weren’t handed down from God, a burning bush, or even a hot-house flower. They were simply made up. Cynics have stated this makes Agnostic doctrine typical, rather than atypical. Calling an Agnostic typical, of course, is like calling a Lutheran dull. What follows here are those epiphanies, in their original text. Since their first posting, they have been copy-pasted by candlelight by monks in monasteries around the world.
They have been shared, re-tweeted, liked and turned into animated gifs. They have also been machine translated, and retranslated into hundreds of different languages and, in some instances, into entirely new religions.
NOTE: The 5.5 Epiphanies were first put into print in an appendix of the (unauthorized) novel, Chaos Theory, Colin J. Robertson, 2016, Gin & Tonic Press, available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. However good and well-reviewed this book is, you shouldn't read it. It misrepresents Agnostics and the current existence-state of the Universe.
Epiphainein
1
We are not the chosen people. While there may be people chosen by God(s) who are better than the rest and postmarked for salvation, it’s almost certainly not us. We have no reason to believe we’re special, but that’s okay. We were created this way. Recognizing this frees us up to look past ourselves to find the true religion and the true chosen people. If you don’t see them nearby, try elsewhere, in the next room perhaps. In the meantime, be nice to people. There’s a fifty-fifty chance they’re better than you, and even if they’re not, it’s nice to be nice anyway.
2
We are all (increasingly) imperfect clones of our former selves.
3
There is at least one other force in the world besides Good and Evil, and that force is ‘Jerry’. Jerry is my neighbour and he is this thing, so I’ve named it after him. Jerry, is not good or evil or even neutral. He’s just, well, Jerry. Jerry is the umami of being. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know what it’s not. If evil is black, and good is white, then Jerry is chartreuse. When you meet someone like Jerry, you’ll know what it is. Until then, it’s like trying to explain what B-flat tastes like to a mollusk. It’s quite possible that Good and Evil don’t really exist, that they are constructs of the human mind. Jerry, on the other hand, is definitely real. I’ve met him. He still has my weed whacker.
4
Numbers are meaningless, but they’re better than nothing. Nothing, on the other hand, is better than anything. If we can’t understand the meaning of words, how can we possibly understand the meaning of life? Once you know this, you’ll really be onto something.
5
The only truly honest experiment is a triple-blind study. This is similar to a double-blind study in that both the subject and those conducting the experiment don’t know what is going on. The difference is that, in a triple-blind study, no one looks at the results either. If you think this doesn’t apply to you because you’re not a scientist, think again.
5 ½
There is a truth in the world that can lead to real, lasting happiness and that is *
* Editor’s Note: Ed explained that he was writing this down on a cocktail napkin when his pen ran out of ink. By the time he had the waitress’s attention and she gave him another pen, which also didn’t work, and she had to go find another waitress and borrow her pen, Ed had forgotten what it was. Nevertheless, he kept it here in the hope that, someday, it will come back to him. At times, he thinks really hard about it but, so far, no dice.