Ignosticism

[dybmh]

The theists' god can mean a lot to the theist but it can mean little or nothing at all to the igtheist

therefore, it's a matter of taste, a preference, an affinity vs. an aversion. igtheism then is not logical, not rational, it's just a description of what a person 'dislikes'. I remember saying this earlier.

 

[lukethethird]

therefore, it's a matter of taste, a preference, an affinity vs. an aversion. igtheism then is not logical, not rational, it's just a description of what a person 'dislikes'. I remember saying this earlier.

God can be wonderful when reading mythologies, gods can make for good stories. In reality, come Monday morning, not so much, which is in fact not a matter of liking or disliking but a matter of practicality, to the igtheist God ceases to entertain, and thereby ceases to provide meaning. No different than any other story when we close the book on the protagonist and get on with life. If believers want to play a role in the big story and pray to God just like Jesus did or break bread and drink wine just like Jesus did, they can knock themselves out but not everyone wants or has a need to play the role and not everyone wants to be forced to, or be told they are not rational by those that do.

 

[Tomef]

Personally I don't see it as redefinition, but rather definition.

It is a necessary if often neglected first step for any meaningful discussion about god-related matters.

That seems to assume there should be one definition for god. I don’t think it works like that. As a fictional character, god takes a lot of different forms. Beyond that, everyone’s idea of who god is is quite personal, so if you want to discuss god with someone, the only realistic starting point is understanding what the people involved in the discussion mean by god. The Christian teaching that god is love illustrates the point, there isn’t any one definition of love either.

 

[LuisDantas]

That seems to assume there should be one definition for god.

Does it?

For what it is worth, I don't think that there should be.

But there is a need for clarity, or at least for diminishing contradiction and ambiguity. Which is what exists now when entities that are wildly unlike are all treated as if they fit under the same word with no qualification.

I don’t think it works like that.

It certainly does not work. Not in the real world, not without a lot of ambiguity, contradiction, obfuscation or huge unsupported reductionism.

As a fictional character, god takes a lot of different forms. Beyond that, everyone’s idea of who god is is quite personal, so if you want to discuss god with someone, the only realistic starting point is understanding what the people involved in the discussion mean by god. The Christian teaching that god is love illustrates the point, there isn’t any one definition of love either.

Quite.

 

[Heyo]

Loosely speaking, meanings are bundles of associated experiences that are common to the speakers of a language. Conventional usage shapes what a word means, and that is something which I believe @LuisDantas agrees with. Every word carries some ambiguity and none are devoid of meaning. Otherwise, they simply would not be useful to speakers of the language. So it cannot be right to say that the word God is devoid of meaning. Nor does the fact that its meaning is complex and messy render it any different from other common words such as dog, book, fingernail, or unicorn.

And if a word is so ambiguous that no two people can agree upon what the meaning of the word is? When there are just as many contradictory definitions of a word as there are people using it? When a word does not have a "bundles of associated experiences that are common"? Has not that word failed it's purpose of carrying meaning, can't we say that it is "meaningless"?
That is the Agnostic/Ignostic position, that the word "god" does not conjure up "common experience" the same as "dog", "book", "fingernail" or "unicorn" do.

 

[John D. Brey]

"Ignosticism or igtheism is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless because the word "God" has no coherent and unambiguous definition."


It strikes me, at first glance, as a bit of a cop-out, @LuisDantas. At this stage of the game, I don't think we have to redefine what God is.
To what end are current definitions not suitable for continued discussions?

Ironically, the rather famous Catholic scholar, Jean Luc-Marion, turns this definition of Ignosticism around to serve theism:

What disqualifies the attempts of theoretical atheism is found not in the weakness of their arguments, but in the senseless ambition that arguments, whatever their form, might grasp what is at issue when the issue is God. Theoretical atheism believes, with a rather irrational belief, that we could have done with the hypothesis of God through concepts, when in fact through such concepts we are by definition unable even to get that far. If God is the issue, the issue is never one of demonstrating his existence (and still less his non-existence), because his (possible) essence remains, and must remain, inaccessible to us. If one believes he understands God, it isn’t God: this rule remains inviolable.​

​

Marion, Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, p. 116.​

We could (should) add to Marion's statement the concept that to save ourselves from living inside a meaningless closed-system, a simulacrum, where no true novelty, no true, original, thought, Being-ness, life, can exist, no real knowledge can be gained (only infinitely regressive illusions), we must, as the foundation of our epistemology, accept that everything that can be known requires a singular something that can't (the unmoved mover, the unthought thinker). Judaism and Christianity are founded on this heremeneutical truism and it's for that reason that the modern, Western, industrialized, educated, rich, democratic, technological, world, is an outgrowth of Judeo/Christianity.

. . . And, as they say, we've only just begun . . ..



John

 

[dybmh]

God can be wonderful when reading mythologies, gods can make for good stories. In reality, come Monday morning, not so much, which is in fact not a matter of liking or disliking but a matter of practicality, to the igtheist God ceases to entertain, and thereby ceases to provide meaning. No different than any other story when we close the book on the protagonist and get on with life. If believers want to play a role in the big story and pray to God just like Jesus did or break bread and drink wine just like Jesus did, they can knock themselves out but not everyone wants or has a need to play the role and not everyone wants to be forced to, or be told they are not rational by those that do.

Agreed! This childish cycle of "you're irrational and incoherent" "nuh-uh, YOU'RE irrational and incoherent" stops when the two children agree "I don't care about rational and coherent, let's go get some burritos"

Sadly this thread, and the theological positions of ignosticsm and non-cognitivism prioritize rational vs. irrational, and coherent vs. incoherent. But. ignosticsm and non-cognitivism can be shown to be both irrational and incoherent. So those two positions are propogating the childish cycle and instigating it.

I think, it's best to abandon them, unless a person prefers "you're irrational and incoherent" "nuh-uh, YOU'RE irrational and incoherent" ad infinitum.

Neither atheism nor agnosticsm suffer from the, imo, obvious hypocrisy of ignosticsm and non-cognitivism.

 

[lukethethird]

Agreed! This childish cycle of "you're irrational and incoherent" "nuh-uh, YOU'RE irrational and incoherent" stops when the two children agree "I don't care about rational and coherent, let's go get some burritos"

Sadly this thread, and the theological positions of ignosticsm and non-cognitivism prioritize rational vs. irrational, and coherent vs. incoherent. But. ignosticsm and non-cognitivism can be shown to be both irrational and incoherent. So those two positions are propogating the childish cycle and instigating it.

I think, it's best to abandon them, unless a person prefers "you're irrational and incoherent" "nuh-uh, YOU'RE irrational and incoherent" ad infinitum.

Neither atheism nor agnosticsm suffer from the, imo, obvious hypocrisy of ignosticsm and non-cognitivism.

Igtheism is not about that. Igtheism is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless because the word "God" has no coherent and unambiguous definition. You are the one that has turned this discussion into name calling.

 

[Copernicus]

And if a word is so ambiguous that no two people can agree upon what the meaning of the word is? When there are just as many contradictory definitions of a word as there are people using it? When a word does not have a "bundles of associated experiences that are common"? Has not that word failed it's purpose of carrying meaning, can't we say that it is "meaningless"?

No, because no two people have the same experiences or the same exact meanings for any word. The concept of a word like "landing" is not the same for the engineer who writes operating instructions for the aircraft and the pilot who actually lands the aircraft. They will be roughly the same--overlapping--but not the same. Definitions only highlight specific parts of the meaning relative to an active discourse, not everything that goes into the meaning of the word "landing". (A few years ago, I actually watched pilots and engineers debate the meaning of the word, and one got so angry that she left the room. We were trying to define the concept for nonnormal conditions while landing.) Ambiguity is natural, and it is a property of every word in every language. The idea that a word can have just one sense is an illusion.

That is the Agnostic/Ignostic position, that the word "god" does not conjure up "common experience" the same as "dog", "book", "fingernail" or "unicorn" do.

Not true. You and I have different experiences for "dog", but the image of a prototypical dog that we conjure up in our minds will likely be different, depending on interactions we've had with dogs in the past. One person's prototype could be more like a collie, and another person's can be more like a German Shepherd. However, those same too people will have a lot of overlapping attributes for dogs--tail, four legs, fur, barking, snout, biting, etc. Meanings are bundles of experiences and what is common is the overlapping bits. So people can still talk about dogs, even though no two people will have exactly the same bundles of experiences associated with the word. It's the same when two people use a word like "god" in a conversation. People can disagree about individual attributes to associate with the concept, but they will have the same core of overlapping experiences.

I note that you treat "agnostic" and "ignostic" as synonyms, but that is not something that everyone here will stipulate to. It's fair game to disagree and debate word usage, but be aware that terminological disputes aren't very interesting in the end. They are just rhetorical gambits, not real conceptual disagreements.

 

[Heyo]

No, because no two people have the same experiences or the same exact meanings for any word. The concept of a word like "landing" is not the same for the engineer who writes operating instructions for the aircraft and the pilot who actually lands the aircraft. They will be roughly the same--overlapping--but not the same. Definitions only highlight specific parts of the meaning relative to an active discourse, not everything that goes into the meaning of the word "landing". (A few years ago, I actually watched pilots and engineers debate the meaning of the word, and one got so angry that she left the room. We were trying to define the concept for nonnormal conditions while landing.) Ambiguity is natural, and it is a property of every word in every language. The idea that a word can have just one sense is an illusion.



Not true. You and I have different experiences for "dog", but the image of a prototypical dog that we conjure up in our minds will likely be different, depending on interactions we've had with dogs in the past. One person's prototype could be more like a collie, and another person's can be more like a German Shepherd. However, those same too people will have a lot of overlapping attributes for dogs--tail, four legs, fur, barking, snout, biting, etc. Meanings are bundles of experiences and what is common is the overlapping bits. So people can still talk about dogs, even though no two people will have exactly the same bundles of experiences associated with the word. It's the same when two people use a word like "god" in a conversation. People can disagree about individual attributes to associate with the concept, but they will have the same core of overlapping experiences.

I know that people have different experiences, I never said they have to be the same. But with a dog they are pretty close and can be easily corrected as we are able to recognise that the other person might have thought about some other breed.
I think that is not the same with "god". Perceptions of gods are irreconcilable. They are also frequently very hazy and self contradictory.
Evidence for that is that even religions and denominations which have existed for centuries or even millennia can't agree to this day.

I note that you treat "agnostic" and "ignostic" as synonyms, but that is not something that everyone here will stipulate to. It's fair game to disagree and debate word usage, but be aware that terminological disputes aren't very interesting in the end. They are just rhetorical gambits, not real conceptual disagreements.

I treat Agnosticism (capitalised to denote that I mean the philosophical definition, not the colloquial one, which I write with a small "a") and Ignosticism as synonymous as I have explained in my first posting on this thread.

 

[dybmh]

Igtheism is not about that. Igtheism is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless because the word "God" has no coherent and unambiguous definition. You are the one that has turned this discussion into name calling.

" ... because the word "God" has no coherent and unambiguous definition." is false. "has no" is where it fails.

People create things, that much is clear.

This ^^ is you admitting that "creator" is niether ambiguous nor incoherent. And as I said, it's doubtful that those who speak like this about theism even know what the word coherent means.

This childish cycle of "you're irrational and incoherent" "nuh-uh, YOU'RE irrational and incoherent" stops when the two children agree "I don't care about rational and coherent, let's go get some burritos"

So, Luke, do you like burritos? There's this burrito cart down town. It is so good. I don't know how they do it. I think maybe they use really good sour cream. wow.

 

[Copernicus]

I know that people have different experiences, I never said they have to be the same. But with a dog they are pretty close and can be easily corrected as we are able to recognise that the other person might have thought about some other breed.

Actually, there is psychological research to back up my point about meaning and so-called Prototype Theory by psychologist Eleanor Rosch. It is discussed at length in George Lakoff's book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Obviously, I don't expect you to read that book, but you might be interested in the short description of Prototype Theory.

I think that is not the same with "god". Perceptions of gods are irreconcilable. They are also frequently very hazy and self contradictory.
Evidence for that is that even religions and denominations which have existed for centuries or even millennia can't agree to this day.

Well, in one sense, it is trivially true that different religions don't agree on a lot of things, including the nature of God or gods. OTOH, there is also a considerable amount of overlap. So it really doesn't make sense to claim that the concept of God is meaningless because people debate it a lot. The meaning of God isn't the only word whose meaning people debate, and it would be absurd to claim that all debatable arguments over meanings render the words associated with them meaningless, wouldn't it?

I treat Agnosticism (capitalised to denote that I mean the philosophical definition, not the colloquial one, which I write with a small "a") and Ignosticism as synonymous as I have explained in my first posting on this thread.

AFAICT, there is no single philosophical definition of agnosticism. Remember that definitions are heuristic statements that people make up to narrow down usage in a discussion. They aren't really comprehensive descriptions of a word's meaning. Thomas Huxley coined the word agnosticism, in part, because he did not want to claim he could know for certain that God did or did not exist. In practice, he was fairly clear that he did not think it likely that there was a God, so, AFAICT, he was an atheist who was trying to avoid being seen as dogmatic in his discussions with theists. The fact is, one cannot have absolute knowledge of the existence of anything at all. But that is very different from claiming that the word God has no meaning at all. Igtheism had its roots in eliminativist theories of meaning associated with the now defunct philosophical school of logical positivism. Most of those theories are taught in philosophy courses, because they predated a lot of progress that linguistic philosophers made in the mid to late 20th century regarding theories of meaning.

 

[dybmh]

But there is a need for clarity, or at least for diminishing contradiction and ambiguity. Which is what exists now when entities that are wildly unlike are all treated as if they fit under the same word with no qualification.

No, YOU may need clarity. But clarity is not needed for everyone. Regarding contradiction, I frequently try to explain the so-called contradiction, but, online-atheists cannot seem to tolerate the explanation. It seems that resolving the contradiction produces cognitive dissonance, which is painful.

• "God is supposed to be a contradiction, you're showing me it isn't, OUCH!"
• "I have resolved not to be Christian, you're showing me it's not so stupid after all, OOF!"
• "I hate Islam, it must be bad, you're showing me it isn't. WHAM!"
• "I'm supposed to be smarter than you, but you're showing me I haven't thought this through. MAKE IT STOP!"

It certainly does not work. Not in the real world, not without a lot of ambiguity, contradiction, obfuscation or huge unsupported reductionism.

It doesn't work if one of the individuals is so arrogant to claim "there is no defintion of ... that will saticfy me" before they ever hear any words that are spoken.

Quite

This ^^ is an admission that comprehensible defintions exist. This confirms that non-cognitivism is false.

 

[lukethethird]

" ... because the word "God" has no coherent and unambiguous definition." is false. "has no" is where it fails.



This ^^ is you admitting that "creator" is niether ambiguous nor incoherent. And as I said, it's doubtful that those who speak like this about theism even know what the word coherent means.



So, Luke, do you like burritos? There's this burrito cart down town. It is so good. I don't know how they do it. I think maybe they use really good sour cream. wow.

What does the word creator have to do with ignosticism?

Provide a coherent and unambiguous definition of God and I will concede.

 

[dybmh]

What does the word creator have to do with ignosticism?

Provide a coherent and unambiguous definition of God and I will concede.

"Creator" is a coherent unambiguous defintion.

You brought a defintion for ignosticism which asserts that there is no coherent unambiguous definition. It doesn't need to be correct. It doesn't need to be realistic, or believable, or complete. All that's needed is comprehension of what the words mean. Creator satisfies those conditions.

If you were to open up your phone, and see a silk screened label on one of the chips that says "Qualcomm" on it, you don't need to know anything about "Qualcomm" to understand that Qualcomm created the chip. You may assume, correctly, that there is a semi-conductor company named Qualcomm, that created it. But you don't need to know any details of the fabrication.

Qualcomm the creator is not ambiguous. It is easy to understand this is not Samsung. That is a different semiconductor manufacturer.

Even if it was magically defecated by a wombat named "Qualcomm", "Qualcomm is the creator of the chip" is a coherent and unambiguous defintion of "Qualcomm". Again, it doesn't need to be complete. It doesn't need to be a perfect defintion to defeat ignosticism as you defined it.

 

[Tomef]

How often have you heard of Ignosticism?

Do you feel that it is a sufficiently clear stance?

How useful do you feel it to be, and for which purpose?

Do you expect it to become less or better known in the future? Why?

I’m not sure if you can totally get away from the idea of gods as concept if trying to understand people. I mean all of that stuff came out of the human imagination, so it must relate to something in our experience. Unless there’s some point at which it can be entirely re-framed as some aspect of our collective mental life in some definitive way, there’s still a need for gods as a point of reference, insofar as that part of human behaviour is being looked at. Like to understand how people come to follow other ideologies a comparison to religious belief is relevant.

 

[LuisDantas]

I’m not sure if you can totally get away from the idea of gods as concept if trying to understand people. I mean all of that stuff came out of the human imagination, so it must relate to something in our experience. Unless there’s some point at which it can be entirely re-framed as some aspect of our collective mental life in some definitive way, there’s still a need for gods as a point of reference, insofar as that part of human behaviour is being looked at. Like to understand how people come to follow other ideologies a comparison to religious belief is relevant.

Seems to me that you are arguing against your own conclusion.

 

[Tomef]

Seems to me that you are arguing against your own conclusion.

How so?

My conclusion in other words is that whether you’re dealing with belief in some ideology or in a god, the same element of grasping for something unknown is there. You can’t define what that it, but it’s still the crux of the question, if you don’t address that you lose a pathway to understanding why people do it. What is irrelevant is not the question about can gods (slash perfect ideological solutions) be fully defined, what’s irrelevant is the idea that that is question is irrelevant. It’s irrelevant because it ignores a basic reality of human behaviour, or at best tries to claim that there is something essentially different about belief in gods vs other kinds of ideological beliefs. That might be true sometimes but not usually.

 

[LuisDantas]

How so?

My conclusion in other words is that whether you’re dealing with belief in some ideology or in a god, the same element of grasping for something unknown is there. You can’t define what that it, but it’s still the crux of the question, if you don’t address that you lose a pathway to understanding why people do it. What is irrelevant is not the question about can gods (slash perfect ideological solutions) be fully defined, what’s irrelevant is the idea that that is question is irrelevant. It’s irrelevant because it ignores a basic reality of human behaviour, or at best tries to claim that there is something essentially different about belief in gods vs other kinds of ideological beliefs. That might be true sometimes but not usually.

Ideologies can be defined, and often are. What that means for ignosticism, I am just not seeing.

Are you somehow seeing a choice to be made between ideologies and gods or god-beliefs? Why?

 

[Tomef]

Ideologies can be defined, and often are.

You can define religions too, in words. In reality though no-one agrees on anything much once you get past the most basic of ideas.

Not a choice, just that a lot of people, the majority perhaps, have beliefs in ideas, systems, people etc that they are unable to coherently explain or justify. If you dismiss questions about whether this or that not fully definable thing is true or real as meaningless, you lose any basis for understanding much of human behaviour. I don’t see any difference between asking ‘is political ideology X true’ and ‘are there gods’ in terms of strict definition. Once you start trying to define either you’ll only get any real agreement on the most basic of notions.

Of course it isn’t necessary to subscribe to some idea or belief, but lots of people do.