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I wouldn't say that ignosticism is close to atheism. Atheism generally involves assertions regarding the existence (in this case, non-existence) of supernatural deities. Ignosticism, however, seems to disapprove of any assertions regarding such manners, hailing them as incoherent. I would say it is closer to agnosticism, because it does, in a sense, claim that knowledge regarding the existence of supernatural deities is unknowable, in the sense that any assertions, or knowledge, regarding such matters would be incoherent. As it is, I think the term "ignosticism" is a bit shaky, and think it should revert back to a form of agnosticism (i.e. "logical agnosticism", or otherwise...) Kevin L. 19:11, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
This is article is nothing more than a definition of a neologism. If we can't use them in our editing then we certainly shouldn't have an entire article on one. Delete -- metta, The Sunborn ☸ 07:56, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Why does the article imply that ignosticism is an agnostic position ? From what the page says, ignostics do not claim "not to know" but simply reject the issue as valid. It seems to me to be very close to theological noncognitivism, which is an atheistic argument. Franc28 20:56, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
"...it appears that both terms are barely mentioned often enough to merit articles: "ignosticism" gets 636 hits on Google" Please don't ever use the number of hits a term 'gets on google' to determine the merit of an article's existance! Homtail 03:26, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
On a topic apart from whether to delete the article, I wish to give my opinion on it, although this may also further prove ignosticism's uniqueness. I only recently discovered the name of my belief, but these thoughts have developed in my mind long before.
I agree with the argument that a childish, passive definition of god is too vague to have any real meaning, and so I will ignore it. As for the "theologian's" definition, I also agree that it is self-contradictory, or at least irrelevant. Now I give my reasons. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, I see no definition of God that fits other than that God embodies the entire universe (or, if M-theory is correct, multiverse). If this is so, than God can hardly be omnibenevolent, because that would mean that everyone is happy, and the universe is Heaven. That is certainly not the case, as shown by so many recent earthquakes and hurricanes (what benevolent god lets millions die and suffer?) and so I reject the omnibenevolent Christian depiction of God as being self-contradictory. (Also, I am agnostic, because I do not believe that "benevolence," or any moral, is determinate, since "good" and "bad" are relative.) Even if God were omnipresent, God becomes irrelevant, because we live within the universe, or we all become Buddhists, worshiping the universe as a whole. Since I have a sort of a "come what may" stance on life, I don't see a point in doing so, and thus I remain ignostic. -- Rovenhot 03:40, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
I (129.33.49.251) created this article from its redirection to agnosticism last October (2004), argued against its deletion, and made a few more additions later that year. This gives me no special influence, etc, but the content of this article beginning with "I don't know what you're talking about when you talk about God." is not ignosticism. The statements becomes "I ignore what you're talking about when you talk about God, because there are no verifiable consequences".
This underlies the form of the word: ignosticism, indicating an ignorance of what is meant by a claim of God's existence.
Not the case. Ignosticism is not ignorance of what is meant by a claim of God's existence, but instead an ignorance of the consequences of believing or not believing in God.
The consistent ignostic, therefore, awaits a coherent definition of God (or of any other metaphysical concept to be discussed) before engaging in arguments for or against.
Not the case. The consistent ignostic awaits verifiable consequences for believing or not believing in God.
The majority of these insertions comes from the user from 67.94.0.46 and began in August of this year. Perhaps I am wrong (I have been before and I will likely be again) but I don't like the current state of the article at all.
Perhaps now the damage has already been done enough that since Wikipedia has defined it so, those who have read it since hold ignosticism to be what the article currently says it is. In which case, ah well.
Lastly, this user's insertions also deleted something meaningful from an earlier version of the article (from user 24.170.23.26):
The defining question for an ignostic (apathetic agnostic) is: How would you behave if it were proved beyond a doubt that there is - or is not - a God? The answer would be, "I would have no reason to act any differently."
This is more the essence of ignosticism as I understand it and why I created the article. Simply proving that god exists or doesn't exist is not important, neither is arguing simply that god exists or doesn't exist. Neither is this nebulous (and non-ignostic notion) of begging the question of "I don't know what you're talking about when you talk about God.". Only debate around the idea of verifiable consequences of such belief are important. Restrust 13:10, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
————
This concept is extremely well written and I would love to contact the author. I have incorporated Ignosticism into the docrtine of the Church of Reality. I invite that author to contact me about anything else you've written. -- Marcperkel 16:24, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, as to the points addressed above it pertains, I believe that it is irrational to attack the validity of the claims of Ignosticism just because the article stresses the importance of the term. Remember that atheists, agnostics define themselves as such when faced with the mayority of people that are theists. If there wasn't a debate about God and infidels, there would be no need for people to write articles about it, don't you think? The same goes for theists - Why use organised religion, if you can go around life with apathic theism (if you believe in God, and everyone else knows he/it's there, why use churches, rituals and the bible?) This argument can be countered by taking it ad absurdum. There is a need to define the different forms of disbelief, and the very concept of its importance isn't debatable I believe. Besides, what do you expect us to do? To write counter-arguments against everyone else's particular definition of God? When theists reach an agreement as to what God is, then call the atheists to counter that argument. The question of Ignosticism remains relevant because there are so many definitions of God (both epistemological, philosophical, religious and so on) that some people (like me and many others) find the question of God plain irrelevant, useless and daft. -- Rodrigo Cornejo 21:12, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Just wandered onto this article and wanted to leave a kudos for those that have done work on it. I hope to be able to contribute to this article in the future! Nemilar 13:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I've removed some text that appeared to be original research, and I removed the {{verify}} tag as well. Please feel free to request additional citations for the article's current content or to add additional material with appropriate sources. — Elembis ( talk) 23:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
The references section is now woefully incomplete and oversimplified after a few days of somewhat careless edits by too many cooks - one person removing the full citation templates because of a section at the bottom, and another person removing the section at the bottom because of the existence of the (now incomplete) citation templates. I would really recommend that this be cleaned up if possible. Esn 09:00, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
I just restructured the article with some content changes that probably deserve mention outside of my edit summary. Among them are that:
If any of these changes need discussion, this is the place. =) — Elembis ( talk · contribs) 05:51, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Ignosticism according to Rabbi Sherwin Wine: "finding the question of God's existence meaningless because it has no verifiable consequences."
Current introduction, cited to Kurtz: "a form of nontheism that believes no conclusion can be reached about the existence of God because the statement "God exists" is incomprehensible since theism lacks a coherent definition of what god is."
Are those two really the same thing, or are we mixing up two different beliefs here? The first version says that it is meaningless, while the second just says that it is unknowable. The first version gives the reason as the lack of verifiable consequences. The second gives the reason as the lack of a coherent definition of God.
Now, the last point does overlap to an extent; if there's no coherent definition, there can't be verifiable consequences. However, the link between "meaningless" and "unknowable" requires a bit more work.
(Also, the zdnet page shouldn't be used as a source. It's nothing more than a copy of an earlier version of this article.) Esn 19:35, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
I think I've figured out the major difference, and have changed the intro accordingly. The big problem now is that a lot of the article must now be moved into the theological noncognitivism article, because many of the views are actually noncognitivist in nature rather than holding off judgement until "God" is defined (and noncognitivist only if the definition is found to be incoherent). The Drange explanation should stay, as well as the sentence comparing it to atheism and agnosticism. Some things will have to be moved, of course... Esn 10:42, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
From the definition given by the good Rabbi, it sounds like he simply misspelled agnostic. Neither can be said to be nontheist because neither denies the existance of a God, both say that God might not exist. 199.125.109.27 15:26, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, but I fail to see any distinction. 199.125.109.11 21:37, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
I took a stab at clarifying and cleaning up the wording in the first three paragraphs. For example, it used to say:
If the chosen definition cannot be verified empirically, the ignostic believes that it is not coherent.
This statement wasn't sourced, so I assumed equating unfalsifiability with incoherence is not actually a tenet of ignosticism. In fact, a statement can be completely coherent, but still unfalsifiable. The rest of it was just cleaning up sentence structure and attempts to make it read a little easier. I don't think I changed anything material. -- Skidoo 03:19, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
User Edwin McCravy completely butchered the first section. I reverted it. -- Skidoo 20:41, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
--I deny butchering anything. I merely said that no coherent definition has been given to "Yahweh" or "God" (capitalized), thus this sound has no more literal significance than the sequence of letters "Fod" or "Zxcvbnm". --- Edwin McCravy — Preceding unsigned comment added by Edwin McCravy ( talk • contribs) 14:28, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Skidoo is offensive and dumb. He can make his point without criticizing theism
I'm not sure that all of those changes were for the better. The "sources" in question were actually deleted by someone from this page. I'm not sure why. Does anyone object to restoring that big chunk of yellow text that was removed?
Unfalsifiability was not equated with incoherence in those sources, this is true (this was Kurtz's definition for igtheism, which we found above in the "Are ignosticism and igtheism really the same thing?" discussion to be distinct from ignosticism. But apparently some trace of the definition still remained by oversight). Rather, unverifiability was equated with lack of meaning. So the current sentence can stay as is, except that "falsifiability" should be replaced with "verifiability".
Overall, this article has become somewhat muddier since I was here a year ago... I'd like to fix it up a little. The very first paragraph for example is pretty muddled, I think. And the sentence "In this case, the concept of God is not considered meaningless; the term "God" is considered meaningless." simply makes no sense to me. What is the difference between "term" and "concept"? Esn ( talk) 05:29, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone else feel the phrase "either of" might be more appropriate than "one of" here? If not, the opening section still isn't clear to me. Sardanaphalus 21:28, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:08, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the ActiveDiscuss tag, because the last significant discussion on this article was from Sept/07, and it was favorable. If anyone objects to this, feel free to revert, but please leave justification comments here. Thanks. -- Skidoo ( talk) 22:48, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
One can vouch or dis-vouch their positions on God depending on the definition of God.
A God that is a separate entity from the universe that made us for his 9th grade science project - I do not believe. A God that IS the universe - Maybe A God that is me (or you, the reader,) watching himself, maybe also true. God is Earth and the Sun - perhaps. That would be cool.
So an Ignostic is just a different word for just plain undecided. Anyone, theist or not, can be an ignostic.
My $0.02 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.180.212.212 ( talk) 05:25, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't even understand what this means:
"The view that 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."
It sounds like "The view that is synonymous with theological noncognitivism, which asserts that skipping ... is meaningless." If this is correct, it needs to be rewritten. If this is not correct, it needs to be rewritten. Ergo, it needs to be rewritten. 131.107.0.73 ( talk) 17:51, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
These various concepts of non-theism have fuzzy borders and there is dispute over their meanings. If a concept can't be used to predict or describe the world then what use is it? I would love to see specific examples of each non-theistic view. A person who goes about not thinking about gods and the supernatural, who changes the subject when others bring it up is ????? soft atheist? Strong agnostic? A person who shops around all the various concepts of deities and rejects the unprovable ones but may accept the one that appears that is testable and proven is ????? ignostic? Going down the list of all non-theists with a specific example of each person and their life practices would be so appreciated. 71.86.152.127 ( talk) 16:55, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
As was necessary in the past, I have corrected several grammatical errors, specifically regarding when it is appropriate to capitalize the word god. Upon reading, I found no such instances (excepting where someone is being quoted and their quote contained a capitalized 'God'. That is obviously appropriate).
It is improper to capitalize the word god (excepting the beginning of a sentence of course) unless referring to the Judeo-Christian god specifically, as they tend to use the word 'God', as their god's 'name'. It becomes a proper noun in that case. There were many uses of the word here (nearly all of them), that referred to anything from the 'word god' to the 'concept of god', yet all were capitalized.
The rules for usage can be found at the following Wiki page;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization
from that page;
"The names of gods are capitalized, including Allah, Vishnu, and God. The word god is generally not capitalized if it is used to refer to the generic idea of a deity, nor is it capitalized when it refers to multiple gods, e.g., Roman gods. There may be some confusion because the Judeo-Christian god is rarely referred to by a specific name, but simply as God (see Writing divine names). Other names for the Judeo-Christian god, such as Elohim, Yahweh and Lord, are also capitalized."
Noisforme ( talk) 18:52, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
"An apatheist may see the statement "God exists" as meaningless, yet they may also see it as meaningful, and perhaps even true.[9]"
They may see it as meaningless as well as meaningful and true? Even the citation seems strange to me, especially when comparing it to the Wikipedia article on apatheism.
173.11.33.161 ( talk) 08:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
I was bold and removed the infobox [2] for a few reasons. 1) The graphic did not give any meaningful information and its meaning had to be described to be understood. This means that the graphic was ineffectual. 2) As noted in the infobox, the definitions provided are not cited and not agreed upon. 3) I found the "inquiring layman" term to be condescending. In the end, I found nothing redeemable about the infobox and felt the article was better without it at all. 98.247.53.229 ( talk) 03:00, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
Are there any reliable sources for the idea of Soft vs Hard Ignosticisms? This would roughly be as follows:
This is rather similar to the difference between Soft vs Hard Agnosticisms, roughly Soft="I don't know whether a God or gods exist" vs Hard="Nobody knows(or Nobody can know) whether a God or gods exist".
I'd be perfectly happy to describe myself as some kind of Soft Ignostic, but the article as currently written ('the term God is meaningless', etc) sounds very much like it is defining an Ignostic as roughly what I call a Hard Ignostic, and I wouldn't wish to have anything to do with such a position. In other words I'm happy to say to a theist that I don't understand what theists are talking about, but I would think I was being grossly arrogant, ignorant, and insulting if I claimed that what theists are talking about must therefore be meaningless - indeed I think I would feel I was being guilty of the usual "I'm right and those who think different are wrong and stupid, etc" that has probably been fuelling religious wars for millenia, though quite likely there are Hard Ignostics who would disagree and give any number of reasons why I'm misrepresenting them, etc (and some or all of them may well be right, for all I know, especially if this article is currently somewhat misrepresenting their position, which wouldn't greatly surprise me). I suspect I may not be alone in feeling as I do, but presumably none of that can go into this article, unless there are reliable sources saying something similar. Tlhslobus ( talk) 01:45, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Like Ayer, Theodore Drange sees atheism and agnosticism as positions that accept "God exists" as a meaningful proposition: atheists judge it to be "false or probably false" while agnostics consider it to be inconclusive until further evidence is met. [1] If Drange's definitions are accepted, ignostics are neither atheists nor agnostics. A simplified maxim on the subject states "An atheist would say, 'I don't believe God exists'; an agnostic would say, 'I don't know whether or not God exists'; and an ignostic would say, 'I don't know what you mean when you say, "God exists" . However, this is false because an atheist would say "There is no god," not "I don't believe in God." 63.247.160.139 ( talk) 03:07, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
References
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I think the question is even more difficult; not only should you need to define what you mean exactly by "God", but also what "exists" exactly refers to in this context. -- Zzo38 ( talk) 16:22, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
It used to mean: "Ignosticism' is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless, because the term "god" has no unambiguous definition" Or the statement 'God exists' is cognitively meaningless.
now it means: "It claims that knowledge regarding the reality of God is altogether unprofitable."
If it's the later what corresponds to the first definition?
--
OxAO (
talk)
20:28, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
This recent deviation towards a new definition goes against everything i have ever known about Ignosticism. As it stands it seems to be more congruent with Deism. The proper meaning was removed at some point this year, it used to mean: "the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless, because the term "god" has no unambiguous definition". It seems to me that editors are trying to redefine the term in such a way that it would contrast more with theological noncognitivism and in doing so brought the term closer to Deism. Why this redefinition? Is there some agenda being put forward?
128.61.111.162 ( talk) 20:43, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
An excerpt from a recent (2013) book on Ignosticism starts with the fundamental question that is missing in Wikipedia's definition:
What if the question "Does God exist?" proved to be meaningless? What if the very definition of "God" was incoherent? Could you still, in good conscience, believe in something if it was incoherent and meaningless? Would it even be possible to talk about an incoherent and meaningless thing meaningfully? If not, then what consequences would follow from this realization? These are the questions which the branch of philosophy known as ignosticism concerns itself with... [1]
That basic question "Does God Exist?" now has given way to "What are the properties of God?" That is not a version of Ignosticism that I would recognize.
128.61.111.162 ( talk) 21:50, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
References
I've removed the section about Eckhart Tolle because it's original research and was added presumably to promote that research [3]; it has (to my knowledge) absolutely nothing to do with ignosticism and the author has not taken any stance or even commented about ignosticism or related subjects in a significant or notable way. It was, in fact, basically promoting misinformation (as can be inferred here from a simple search engine query: [4] ;the poster was led to believe Tolle had a viewpoint or position specifically about ignosticism (not misleadingly) because there was a section entitled "Eckhart Tolle" on the Wikipedia page, which is the first result in a query) for an absurd amount of time (from September 2017 until now, it seems). Removing original research, basically.
The source from Peter Boghossian et. al is a much better source for the article since it actually mentions ignosticism and deals with theological noncognitivism and related philosophical subjects rather than spiritualist self-help subjects (and how they might possibly be related to the subject of ignosticism...?), but may not meet notability standards. There are several sources dealing with the history of the term on the Sherwin Wine article that would be of much better use listed here. 184.88.250.165 ( talk) 07:12, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
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I wouldn't say that ignosticism is close to atheism. Atheism generally involves assertions regarding the existence (in this case, non-existence) of supernatural deities. Ignosticism, however, seems to disapprove of any assertions regarding such manners, hailing them as incoherent. I would say it is closer to agnosticism, because it does, in a sense, claim that knowledge regarding the existence of supernatural deities is unknowable, in the sense that any assertions, or knowledge, regarding such matters would be incoherent. As it is, I think the term "ignosticism" is a bit shaky, and think it should revert back to a form of agnosticism (i.e. "logical agnosticism", or otherwise...) Kevin L. 19:11, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
This is article is nothing more than a definition of a neologism. If we can't use them in our editing then we certainly shouldn't have an entire article on one. Delete -- metta, The Sunborn ☸ 07:56, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Why does the article imply that ignosticism is an agnostic position ? From what the page says, ignostics do not claim "not to know" but simply reject the issue as valid. It seems to me to be very close to theological noncognitivism, which is an atheistic argument. Franc28 20:56, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
"...it appears that both terms are barely mentioned often enough to merit articles: "ignosticism" gets 636 hits on Google" Please don't ever use the number of hits a term 'gets on google' to determine the merit of an article's existance! Homtail 03:26, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
On a topic apart from whether to delete the article, I wish to give my opinion on it, although this may also further prove ignosticism's uniqueness. I only recently discovered the name of my belief, but these thoughts have developed in my mind long before.
I agree with the argument that a childish, passive definition of god is too vague to have any real meaning, and so I will ignore it. As for the "theologian's" definition, I also agree that it is self-contradictory, or at least irrelevant. Now I give my reasons. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, I see no definition of God that fits other than that God embodies the entire universe (or, if M-theory is correct, multiverse). If this is so, than God can hardly be omnibenevolent, because that would mean that everyone is happy, and the universe is Heaven. That is certainly not the case, as shown by so many recent earthquakes and hurricanes (what benevolent god lets millions die and suffer?) and so I reject the omnibenevolent Christian depiction of God as being self-contradictory. (Also, I am agnostic, because I do not believe that "benevolence," or any moral, is determinate, since "good" and "bad" are relative.) Even if God were omnipresent, God becomes irrelevant, because we live within the universe, or we all become Buddhists, worshiping the universe as a whole. Since I have a sort of a "come what may" stance on life, I don't see a point in doing so, and thus I remain ignostic. -- Rovenhot 03:40, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
I (129.33.49.251) created this article from its redirection to agnosticism last October (2004), argued against its deletion, and made a few more additions later that year. This gives me no special influence, etc, but the content of this article beginning with "I don't know what you're talking about when you talk about God." is not ignosticism. The statements becomes "I ignore what you're talking about when you talk about God, because there are no verifiable consequences".
This underlies the form of the word: ignosticism, indicating an ignorance of what is meant by a claim of God's existence.
Not the case. Ignosticism is not ignorance of what is meant by a claim of God's existence, but instead an ignorance of the consequences of believing or not believing in God.
The consistent ignostic, therefore, awaits a coherent definition of God (or of any other metaphysical concept to be discussed) before engaging in arguments for or against.
Not the case. The consistent ignostic awaits verifiable consequences for believing or not believing in God.
The majority of these insertions comes from the user from 67.94.0.46 and began in August of this year. Perhaps I am wrong (I have been before and I will likely be again) but I don't like the current state of the article at all.
Perhaps now the damage has already been done enough that since Wikipedia has defined it so, those who have read it since hold ignosticism to be what the article currently says it is. In which case, ah well.
Lastly, this user's insertions also deleted something meaningful from an earlier version of the article (from user 24.170.23.26):
The defining question for an ignostic (apathetic agnostic) is: How would you behave if it were proved beyond a doubt that there is - or is not - a God? The answer would be, "I would have no reason to act any differently."
This is more the essence of ignosticism as I understand it and why I created the article. Simply proving that god exists or doesn't exist is not important, neither is arguing simply that god exists or doesn't exist. Neither is this nebulous (and non-ignostic notion) of begging the question of "I don't know what you're talking about when you talk about God.". Only debate around the idea of verifiable consequences of such belief are important. Restrust 13:10, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
————
This concept is extremely well written and I would love to contact the author. I have incorporated Ignosticism into the docrtine of the Church of Reality. I invite that author to contact me about anything else you've written. -- Marcperkel 16:24, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, as to the points addressed above it pertains, I believe that it is irrational to attack the validity of the claims of Ignosticism just because the article stresses the importance of the term. Remember that atheists, agnostics define themselves as such when faced with the mayority of people that are theists. If there wasn't a debate about God and infidels, there would be no need for people to write articles about it, don't you think? The same goes for theists - Why use organised religion, if you can go around life with apathic theism (if you believe in God, and everyone else knows he/it's there, why use churches, rituals and the bible?) This argument can be countered by taking it ad absurdum. There is a need to define the different forms of disbelief, and the very concept of its importance isn't debatable I believe. Besides, what do you expect us to do? To write counter-arguments against everyone else's particular definition of God? When theists reach an agreement as to what God is, then call the atheists to counter that argument. The question of Ignosticism remains relevant because there are so many definitions of God (both epistemological, philosophical, religious and so on) that some people (like me and many others) find the question of God plain irrelevant, useless and daft. -- Rodrigo Cornejo 21:12, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Just wandered onto this article and wanted to leave a kudos for those that have done work on it. I hope to be able to contribute to this article in the future! Nemilar 13:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I've removed some text that appeared to be original research, and I removed the {{verify}} tag as well. Please feel free to request additional citations for the article's current content or to add additional material with appropriate sources. — Elembis ( talk) 23:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
The references section is now woefully incomplete and oversimplified after a few days of somewhat careless edits by too many cooks - one person removing the full citation templates because of a section at the bottom, and another person removing the section at the bottom because of the existence of the (now incomplete) citation templates. I would really recommend that this be cleaned up if possible. Esn 09:00, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
I just restructured the article with some content changes that probably deserve mention outside of my edit summary. Among them are that:
If any of these changes need discussion, this is the place. =) — Elembis ( talk · contribs) 05:51, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Ignosticism according to Rabbi Sherwin Wine: "finding the question of God's existence meaningless because it has no verifiable consequences."
Current introduction, cited to Kurtz: "a form of nontheism that believes no conclusion can be reached about the existence of God because the statement "God exists" is incomprehensible since theism lacks a coherent definition of what god is."
Are those two really the same thing, or are we mixing up two different beliefs here? The first version says that it is meaningless, while the second just says that it is unknowable. The first version gives the reason as the lack of verifiable consequences. The second gives the reason as the lack of a coherent definition of God.
Now, the last point does overlap to an extent; if there's no coherent definition, there can't be verifiable consequences. However, the link between "meaningless" and "unknowable" requires a bit more work.
(Also, the zdnet page shouldn't be used as a source. It's nothing more than a copy of an earlier version of this article.) Esn 19:35, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
I think I've figured out the major difference, and have changed the intro accordingly. The big problem now is that a lot of the article must now be moved into the theological noncognitivism article, because many of the views are actually noncognitivist in nature rather than holding off judgement until "God" is defined (and noncognitivist only if the definition is found to be incoherent). The Drange explanation should stay, as well as the sentence comparing it to atheism and agnosticism. Some things will have to be moved, of course... Esn 10:42, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
From the definition given by the good Rabbi, it sounds like he simply misspelled agnostic. Neither can be said to be nontheist because neither denies the existance of a God, both say that God might not exist. 199.125.109.27 15:26, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, but I fail to see any distinction. 199.125.109.11 21:37, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
I took a stab at clarifying and cleaning up the wording in the first three paragraphs. For example, it used to say:
If the chosen definition cannot be verified empirically, the ignostic believes that it is not coherent.
This statement wasn't sourced, so I assumed equating unfalsifiability with incoherence is not actually a tenet of ignosticism. In fact, a statement can be completely coherent, but still unfalsifiable. The rest of it was just cleaning up sentence structure and attempts to make it read a little easier. I don't think I changed anything material. -- Skidoo 03:19, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
User Edwin McCravy completely butchered the first section. I reverted it. -- Skidoo 20:41, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
--I deny butchering anything. I merely said that no coherent definition has been given to "Yahweh" or "God" (capitalized), thus this sound has no more literal significance than the sequence of letters "Fod" or "Zxcvbnm". --- Edwin McCravy — Preceding unsigned comment added by Edwin McCravy ( talk • contribs) 14:28, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Skidoo is offensive and dumb. He can make his point without criticizing theism
I'm not sure that all of those changes were for the better. The "sources" in question were actually deleted by someone from this page. I'm not sure why. Does anyone object to restoring that big chunk of yellow text that was removed?
Unfalsifiability was not equated with incoherence in those sources, this is true (this was Kurtz's definition for igtheism, which we found above in the "Are ignosticism and igtheism really the same thing?" discussion to be distinct from ignosticism. But apparently some trace of the definition still remained by oversight). Rather, unverifiability was equated with lack of meaning. So the current sentence can stay as is, except that "falsifiability" should be replaced with "verifiability".
Overall, this article has become somewhat muddier since I was here a year ago... I'd like to fix it up a little. The very first paragraph for example is pretty muddled, I think. And the sentence "In this case, the concept of God is not considered meaningless; the term "God" is considered meaningless." simply makes no sense to me. What is the difference between "term" and "concept"? Esn ( talk) 05:29, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone else feel the phrase "either of" might be more appropriate than "one of" here? If not, the opening section still isn't clear to me. Sardanaphalus 21:28, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:08, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the ActiveDiscuss tag, because the last significant discussion on this article was from Sept/07, and it was favorable. If anyone objects to this, feel free to revert, but please leave justification comments here. Thanks. -- Skidoo ( talk) 22:48, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
One can vouch or dis-vouch their positions on God depending on the definition of God.
A God that is a separate entity from the universe that made us for his 9th grade science project - I do not believe. A God that IS the universe - Maybe A God that is me (or you, the reader,) watching himself, maybe also true. God is Earth and the Sun - perhaps. That would be cool.
So an Ignostic is just a different word for just plain undecided. Anyone, theist or not, can be an ignostic.
My $0.02 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.180.212.212 ( talk) 05:25, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't even understand what this means:
"The view that 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."
It sounds like "The view that is synonymous with theological noncognitivism, which asserts that skipping ... is meaningless." If this is correct, it needs to be rewritten. If this is not correct, it needs to be rewritten. Ergo, it needs to be rewritten. 131.107.0.73 ( talk) 17:51, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
These various concepts of non-theism have fuzzy borders and there is dispute over their meanings. If a concept can't be used to predict or describe the world then what use is it? I would love to see specific examples of each non-theistic view. A person who goes about not thinking about gods and the supernatural, who changes the subject when others bring it up is ????? soft atheist? Strong agnostic? A person who shops around all the various concepts of deities and rejects the unprovable ones but may accept the one that appears that is testable and proven is ????? ignostic? Going down the list of all non-theists with a specific example of each person and their life practices would be so appreciated. 71.86.152.127 ( talk) 16:55, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
As was necessary in the past, I have corrected several grammatical errors, specifically regarding when it is appropriate to capitalize the word god. Upon reading, I found no such instances (excepting where someone is being quoted and their quote contained a capitalized 'God'. That is obviously appropriate).
It is improper to capitalize the word god (excepting the beginning of a sentence of course) unless referring to the Judeo-Christian god specifically, as they tend to use the word 'God', as their god's 'name'. It becomes a proper noun in that case. There were many uses of the word here (nearly all of them), that referred to anything from the 'word god' to the 'concept of god', yet all were capitalized.
The rules for usage can be found at the following Wiki page;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization
from that page;
"The names of gods are capitalized, including Allah, Vishnu, and God. The word god is generally not capitalized if it is used to refer to the generic idea of a deity, nor is it capitalized when it refers to multiple gods, e.g., Roman gods. There may be some confusion because the Judeo-Christian god is rarely referred to by a specific name, but simply as God (see Writing divine names). Other names for the Judeo-Christian god, such as Elohim, Yahweh and Lord, are also capitalized."
Noisforme ( talk) 18:52, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
"An apatheist may see the statement "God exists" as meaningless, yet they may also see it as meaningful, and perhaps even true.[9]"
They may see it as meaningless as well as meaningful and true? Even the citation seems strange to me, especially when comparing it to the Wikipedia article on apatheism.
173.11.33.161 ( talk) 08:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
I was bold and removed the infobox [2] for a few reasons. 1) The graphic did not give any meaningful information and its meaning had to be described to be understood. This means that the graphic was ineffectual. 2) As noted in the infobox, the definitions provided are not cited and not agreed upon. 3) I found the "inquiring layman" term to be condescending. In the end, I found nothing redeemable about the infobox and felt the article was better without it at all. 98.247.53.229 ( talk) 03:00, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
Are there any reliable sources for the idea of Soft vs Hard Ignosticisms? This would roughly be as follows:
This is rather similar to the difference between Soft vs Hard Agnosticisms, roughly Soft="I don't know whether a God or gods exist" vs Hard="Nobody knows(or Nobody can know) whether a God or gods exist".
I'd be perfectly happy to describe myself as some kind of Soft Ignostic, but the article as currently written ('the term God is meaningless', etc) sounds very much like it is defining an Ignostic as roughly what I call a Hard Ignostic, and I wouldn't wish to have anything to do with such a position. In other words I'm happy to say to a theist that I don't understand what theists are talking about, but I would think I was being grossly arrogant, ignorant, and insulting if I claimed that what theists are talking about must therefore be meaningless - indeed I think I would feel I was being guilty of the usual "I'm right and those who think different are wrong and stupid, etc" that has probably been fuelling religious wars for millenia, though quite likely there are Hard Ignostics who would disagree and give any number of reasons why I'm misrepresenting them, etc (and some or all of them may well be right, for all I know, especially if this article is currently somewhat misrepresenting their position, which wouldn't greatly surprise me). I suspect I may not be alone in feeling as I do, but presumably none of that can go into this article, unless there are reliable sources saying something similar. Tlhslobus ( talk) 01:45, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Like Ayer, Theodore Drange sees atheism and agnosticism as positions that accept "God exists" as a meaningful proposition: atheists judge it to be "false or probably false" while agnostics consider it to be inconclusive until further evidence is met. [1] If Drange's definitions are accepted, ignostics are neither atheists nor agnostics. A simplified maxim on the subject states "An atheist would say, 'I don't believe God exists'; an agnostic would say, 'I don't know whether or not God exists'; and an ignostic would say, 'I don't know what you mean when you say, "God exists" . However, this is false because an atheist would say "There is no god," not "I don't believe in God." 63.247.160.139 ( talk) 03:07, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
References
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I think the question is even more difficult; not only should you need to define what you mean exactly by "God", but also what "exists" exactly refers to in this context. -- Zzo38 ( talk) 16:22, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
It used to mean: "Ignosticism' is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless, because the term "god" has no unambiguous definition" Or the statement 'God exists' is cognitively meaningless.
now it means: "It claims that knowledge regarding the reality of God is altogether unprofitable."
If it's the later what corresponds to the first definition?
--
OxAO (
talk)
20:28, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
This recent deviation towards a new definition goes against everything i have ever known about Ignosticism. As it stands it seems to be more congruent with Deism. The proper meaning was removed at some point this year, it used to mean: "the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless, because the term "god" has no unambiguous definition". It seems to me that editors are trying to redefine the term in such a way that it would contrast more with theological noncognitivism and in doing so brought the term closer to Deism. Why this redefinition? Is there some agenda being put forward?
128.61.111.162 ( talk) 20:43, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
An excerpt from a recent (2013) book on Ignosticism starts with the fundamental question that is missing in Wikipedia's definition:
What if the question "Does God exist?" proved to be meaningless? What if the very definition of "God" was incoherent? Could you still, in good conscience, believe in something if it was incoherent and meaningless? Would it even be possible to talk about an incoherent and meaningless thing meaningfully? If not, then what consequences would follow from this realization? These are the questions which the branch of philosophy known as ignosticism concerns itself with... [1]
That basic question "Does God Exist?" now has given way to "What are the properties of God?" That is not a version of Ignosticism that I would recognize.
128.61.111.162 ( talk) 21:50, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
References
I've removed the section about Eckhart Tolle because it's original research and was added presumably to promote that research [3]; it has (to my knowledge) absolutely nothing to do with ignosticism and the author has not taken any stance or even commented about ignosticism or related subjects in a significant or notable way. It was, in fact, basically promoting misinformation (as can be inferred here from a simple search engine query: [4] ;the poster was led to believe Tolle had a viewpoint or position specifically about ignosticism (not misleadingly) because there was a section entitled "Eckhart Tolle" on the Wikipedia page, which is the first result in a query) for an absurd amount of time (from September 2017 until now, it seems). Removing original research, basically.
The source from Peter Boghossian et. al is a much better source for the article since it actually mentions ignosticism and deals with theological noncognitivism and related philosophical subjects rather than spiritualist self-help subjects (and how they might possibly be related to the subject of ignosticism...?), but may not meet notability standards. There are several sources dealing with the history of the term on the Sherwin Wine article that would be of much better use listed here. 184.88.250.165 ( talk) 07:12, 14 May 2018 (UTC)