The Courage to Say “I Don’t Know”

English editorial adaptation of Ricardo Maldonado’s Spanish reflections “Cual es mi religión?” and “Cual es mi religión actual?” This is an adaptation, not a literal translation.

What if the most honest answer to a question about existence is “I don’t know”? Ricardo Maldonado calls this posture his religion of not knowing. In his original reflection, he imagines how differently he might have believed if he had been born in other places and eras. He does not offer that exercise as a proof that any one tradition is wrong. Its force is more personal: the place where we begin shapes which answers first feel natural to us.

That thought can be unsettling. An inherited belief may be tied to parents, neighbors, celebrations, and the language in which a person first learned to ask for help. Questioning it can feel like questioning people we love. Yet curiosity does not require contempt for them. We can be grateful for what a community gave us and still ask how we came to accept its explanations. We can listen to someone whose life led them to a different conclusion without assuming that either of us stopped thinking.

Maldonado’s phrase is deliberately plain: not knowing. It does not mean pretending that everything is equally uncertain. We can learn a great deal about the natural world by testing ideas against observations. We can also admit that some questions remain open, and that a scientific account of a process does not automatically settle every philosophical question about meaning. A clear boundary between what we have measured, what we infer, and what we hope may leave us with fewer confident sentences, but better ones.

There is a temptation to turn even uncertainty into an identity that looks down on everyone else. “I don’t know” can become another way to announce that we are wiser than believers, skeptics, or scientists. That would miss the humility in Maldonado’s reflection. The useful version leaves room for correction. It asks: Which part of my view rests on evidence? Which part came from where I grew up? What would change my mind? The questions apply just as much to a new hypothesis as to an old teaching.

Not knowing also gives us permission to keep living while the biggest questions are unresolved. We do not have to postpone kindness until we have settled the origin of the universe or the fate of consciousness. A person may find purpose within a religious tradition; another may build it without one. They can still meet over a shared question and examine a claim together. Neither person has to surrender their dignity to enter the conversation.

Maldonado’s invitation, as this adaptation understands it, is to stay curious without dressing uncertainty as defeat. We can say what the evidence supports today, name what it does not settle, and return tomorrow with a better question. That is a demanding kind of honesty. It also keeps the door open.