Are You an Ignostic?

Are You an Ignostic? October 15, 2012

The Circle of Self-Justification

I received an email from a reader last week claiming that he is an ignostic, and he thinks I might be one, too. I’d never heard of ignosticism before, so I looked it up on Wikipedia and read,

Ignosticism or igtheism is the theological position that every other theological position (including agnosticism and atheism) assumes too much about the concept of God and many other theological concepts.

It can be defined as encompassing two related views about the existence of God:

  1. The view that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of God can be meaningfully discussed. Furthermore, if that definition is unfalsifiable, the ignostic takes the theological noncognitivist position that the question of the existence of God (per that definition) is meaningless. In this case, the concept of God is not considered meaningless; the term “God” is considered meaningless.
  2. The second view is synonymous with theological noncognitivism, and skips the step of first asking “What is meant by ‘God’?” before proclaiming the original question “Does God exist?” as meaningless.

What I like about what I’ve read in the definition of ignosticism is that it rejects any definition of God that is unfalsifiable because the truth of the definition is assumed in the definition. I’m currently on the quest of a coherent definition of God, most notably in my Questions That Haunt series.

So, are there any ignostics out there?


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