My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of questioning beliefs and being open-minded about all topics.
Robert Anton Wilson encourages a mindset of generalized agnosticism, which means not just being uncertain about the existence of God, but applying that same critical questioning to all beliefs and knowledge claims. This perspective fosters intellectual curiosity and a willingness to explore diverse viewpoints, rather than accepting dogmas without scrutiny.
In practice
During a debate about religion, you could use this quote to advocate for questioning all beliefs rather than accepting them blindly.
There is no governor anywhere. You are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. If anybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.
I see anarchism as the theoretical ideal to which we are all gradually evolving to a point where everybody can tell the truth to everybody else and nobody can get punished for it. That can only happen without hierarchy and without people having the authority to punish other people.
To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.
The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics).
If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind.
If you read the 13th Amendment, it doesn't talk about narratives of racial difference. It doesn't talk about ideologies of white supremacy. It only talks about involuntary servitude and forced labor.
If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris.
War is both the product of an earlier corruption, and a producer of new corruptions.
One war, such as that of our Revolution, is enough for one life.
Those who dare to interpret God's will must never claim Him as an asset for one nation or group rather than another. War springs from the love and loyalty which should be offered to God being applied to some God substitute, one of the most dangerous being nationalism.
Only in England is the perversion of language regarded as a victory for democracy.
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