sin of certainty

The most severe "sin" (maybe the only real one, actually) is to draw a line between yourself/your group and the rest of humanity/life.  This sin is committed by most people who adhere to ideology.  Religion is an easy target, but I'm talking about ALL ideology.  We are all swimming in contradictory, confusing experiences.  The whole task of living is to experience this maddening life fully, admit our fear and weakness, and learn to sympathize with each other in our suffering and confusion.  This tender, raw place is the only thing of value in this whole big stupid life.  Most adherents to ideology exempt themelves from this condition of uncertainty.  "We have the REAL truth/scripture/doctrine.  Search is over, just stick to the script.  If only those poor (everyone else) knew about this!"  Listen- there is nothing concrete or literal that can be known about the afterlife or the nature of god or spirit as long as we are bound to this monkey flesh, embedded in time and space.  All religious speculation is, at best, metaphorical.  All literal claims to knowledge of divinity are guilty of the sin of certainty.  

The same is basically true of the secular community.   "Oh those silly religious people, if only they would accept the simple explanation for everything…"  It's the same trembling in the face of overwhelming tragic / ecstatic mystery.  This kind cowardice of isolating your group in a bubble of certainty and pitying all others is deep in the roots of human societies and is the basis for most or all forms of malice and discrimination.  "Us civilized white people understand life and how to live it; if only we can educate all those poor, savage brown people!"  And so the bloodshed goes on and on, always coming down to this basic prejudice of viewing The Others as more ignorant than the group you belong to.  

This prejudice is wrong, not because god said so but because it is incorrect.  No one is any more privileged to truth than anyone else, no human culture is any more ignorant than another.  There is no privileged location in history from which to understand the human condition.  

I see you object to the fact that I'm asserting all of these things as true, while asserting that nothing is true.  Well, I'm certain of uncertainty.  And anyways, I don't believe any of this.