As an agnostic I have no belief system as such. To be sure, I have individual beliefs and they influence my choices, but I identify and apply them as they present themselves one by one; and I feel no need to align myself with any particular ideology. Perhaps one day as I look back I will discover an overarching theme; but in the meantime I feel no need to graft a larger purpose onto each decision, nor to script my daily life in accord with one political or theological school of thought or another.

And it's not only a question of whether I feel a need. I find the agnostic approach more conducive to growth. Many people regard agnosticism as a timorous abdication, but I feel that by actively choosing not to align myself with any particular body of thought, I'm more open to new insights and I'm better able to learn from that great teacher — life experience. By subscribing to no single faith or doctrine, I'm more open to taking wisdom wherever I might encounter it.

As the son of a Baptist minister, I have long observed how dogma affects people. Once a set of beliefs is codified into a structured frame of thought, and thereafter once it becomes a way of identifying oneself, it changes how we view the world. Suddenly it's all about the dogma, and that which was born as a means to an end becomes the end in itself. Once we are certain of the truth, we shut our eyes to the lessons experience can teach us; and overnight our leading preoccupation goes from living in community with each other to conforming to a strict and unforgiving code.

Of course, playing "Sieg heil" to a dogma is bad enough; but what's worse is reducing a whole theology to a simple formula of one-liners. By whatever name they may be known — truths, commandments, or precepts — these bite-size morsels of dogma make the perfect surrogate to theology because they are more accessible and suited for rote learning, recitation, and indoctrination.

This is but one reason I have come to eschew dogma in all its forms, and to eschew also its one-liner offspring of recipes for living, for nothing is the greater enemy of learning and the dynamism of growth.

Commandments and talking points are not dogma's only insidious progeny. Not content merely to subscribe to one dogma or the other, most people ultimately come to define themselves by it. Thus when their dogma is affirmed, they feel affirmed. When their dogma is attacked, they feel attacked. (Many people feel attacked when their dogma is merely questioned.) The act of defending a dogma quickly morphs into a visceral act of self-defense, thereby completing the grisly transformation from an individual with some beliefs into a member of the fold.

We humans so relish our boundless capacity to argue the finer points of theologies that it's not long before we factionalize into different branches of dogma. Like weeds, sects splinter off into sub-sects — each resting on a fulcrum of the most minute points of the orthodoxy. One sect will place more emphasis on the practice of rituals while the other will be more oriented to philosophy or theory. Still another will be more focused on community while yet another will be more individualistic. It's a futile game of "My dogma is more correct than your dogma."

And all this grief over something which the vast majority of people don't even choose to begin with but instead only inherit from birth. And yet don't we use our dogma proudly to set ourselves apart from each other and to justify our wars and our life of wasteful consuming.

So what would I have people do? Would I call upon everyone to renounce their beliefs? Of course not. Despite the foregoing admonitions, I have no problem with belief as such. We all have beliefs — myself included.

The difference is that I choose not to give my beliefs a name or to codify them and wrap them up in a tidy package. My beliefs are neither Jewish nor Christian nor Muslim. They are neither Buddhist nor Hindu. They are neither capitalist or socialist. Instead my beliefs originate in my own mind, in the insights of others, in the philosophies and theologies of the ages, and in the rich tapestry of life experience.

Though the proponents of dogma condemn this approach as "buffet spirituality," I see this as cause for optimism. It means, (unless I but flatter myself), that my eyes are open, that I don't stow away my truths like some trophy on a shelf. Instead my beliefs must continue to earn their keep and to prove themselves in the practice of my life. In short, I don't wish to serve my beliefs; rather my beliefs must serve me and my community. My beliefs take their validity from the impact of their practice. That is their daily test.

Most people find this prospect, (of the fluidity of belief) very troubling. They want a place to drop anchor, so they seek out scripture as the final benchmark. For my part, I'm not out of sympathy with the sentiment; it can be unsettling to feel adrift at sea without a home port. I'm certainly not opposed to the written word in any case, and I encourage anyone to write about the wisdom life has taught them, for we all are the richer for it.

The danger lies not in the written word itself but rather when a static text becomes sacrosanct and thereafter the touchstone for rectitude. It lies when our beliefs become immutable and impervious to the ongoing lessons of our lives. It lies when we attach such importance to this concept of rectitude that we come to see people outside the faith not merely as those who choose an alternate path nor even as those who are simply mistaken, but rather as the enemy for their having dared to "stray from righteousness."

This a great hypocrisy among believers of dogma and among Christians in particular. While Christian theology teaches us to love our neighbor — and of course this would include those neighbors whose beliefs depart from our own — in my experience prospective converts are the only persons Christians can really bring themselves to "love." Meanwhile, the unapologetic adherents of other belief systems can go straight to hell (along with their beliefs). (Most Muslims share this view as well.)

Now I understand this phenomenon characterizes some dogmas and religions more than others. Still, I know of none which does not make preeminent the correctness of its theology and teachings and which elevate this above all else — above even the outcome of the practice of those teachings.

All these perils of dogma, its static nature, its inevitable breakdown into oversimplified aphorisms, its stultifying influence on how people come to define themselves, its propensity to divide a community of people into antagonistic factions, and its inversion of means and ends, (i.e. its replacement of "love thy neighbor" with a robotic conformity and rectitude) — together make up an indictment which I cannot ignore.

And yet it doesn't stop there.

Dogmas and aphorisms are — at the end of the day — mere abstract ideas. And while ideas have power, people are moved more by a charismatic leader than by ideas alone. As a result, once people latch onto a dogma and begin to recast their identity around it, it's not long before a veneration of the dogma begets a veneration of teachers and masters of the dogma. In fact, I've not encountered a dogma yet that didn't have a guru lurking somewhere behind it — a personage whom the people could follow. Even where no such individual initially steps forward, invariably the people will anoint one.

Now of itself this is not a bad thing. I myself have been a teacher — it's a noble profession. But it's noble in no small part because the teacher always holds one thing paramount: the lesson he seeks to teach and the development of his students. And yet where dogma is concerned, in the transition from teacher to guru, more often than not it becomes less about the lessons than about the guru himself (or herself) until even the dogma itself is quickly forgotten.

Not surprisingly, dogma's gurus often become intoxicated with their adulation and their own (sometimes ill-gotten) power. To be sure, this is not true of all teachers or masters of dogma, but in my experience it's true of many of them. If a human is venerated enough, day in and day out, with a host of supplicants attending to their every need, it cannot but have a pernicious effect on the prospects of future growth.

After a guru dies, people will then tend to follow or align themselves with those would-be successors who carry a claim to the proper credentials, insignia, and symbols until these things come to be the preeminent litmus test for the validity of all new knowledge. (In this respect nationalism — with its flags and anthems — is not unlike religion.)

Meanwhile, the richness of life experience and the wisdom of ordinary people continue to surround us all, but our eyes are closed to everything but the proper insignia. And learning and growth promptly become frozen in place.

And all this grief for what?

Why are people so deathly afraid of the prospect of life without an allegiance to a prepackaged dogma or path? What is to fear from the freedom of living day to day, learning as one goes, taking fruit from different trees as we pass them, without knowing what lies ahead and without evaluating or endorsing one self-contained body of thought versus another? What do people fear in this alternative to a ready-made set of beliefs?

My answer is that people fear the loss of their moorings, the loss of handrails in life, the loss of having all truths spelled out for them, and the horrific prospect of being responsible to think and explore and take charge of their own development as individuals — perhaps for the first time in their lives. These are the fears which drive people to cling to their dogmas and in so doing to shut off any avenues of growth and to fossilize in their comfort zones.

This is why I blench at any mention of taking a path in life. I prefer instead to take a journey. I say that because a journey is more serendipitous and exploratory and largely self-initiated while in contrast a path has been laid out by others who presume to know what is best for us. Our own journey permits us to go where we will as shapers of our destiny, while the unforgiving predefined path steers us where it will and we can only follow.

So it's not that I find all paths unrewarding. It's only that the path I take must derive from me rather than be imposed on me, (even if the imposition is self-induced). I want both the seeker and the path to be organic and inseparable, and in order to achieve that, the path (or beliefs) must not be a hand-me-down.

By taking an allegiance to no predefined path or dogma, I am liberated to open my eyes and to embrace anything I encounter as holding a possible new source for growth. And in this way I follow nothing. In this way life itself becomes the path.

And I simply live.