The Ignostic Method And The “God” Debate

“God The Father” by Cima de Conegliano.

I never like being asked whether or not I believe in God. This is because my answer ends up provoking more questions. I usually answer ignostic. Being that most people who ask this question don’t know what the hell it means, I often have to define it. Ignosticism basically means that any discussion regarding the existence of God is meaningless until God is properly defined. In other words, I think that the very premise of the question is flawed.

There are a few helpful definitions of “ignosticism” from the Web. Here’s one from The Economist,

Ignosticism The attitude, also known as igtheism, that the question of God’s existence is meaningless, and so is arguing about it, since definitions of God cannot be proven to be either true or false. The term “ignosticism” was coined in the 1960s by Sherwin Wine (1928–2007), a humanistic rabbi; “igtheism” was coined by Paul Kurtz, a secular humanist, in a 1992 book The New Skepticism.

Ignostics usually hold the theological noncognitivist position, which has been described as follows in the essay, “Theological Noncognitivism and Ignosticism”:

“Theological noncognitivism is the position that discussions about God, omnipotence and related subjects are cognitively meaningless. Simply put Theological Noncognitivism is much like making up a word and then discussing it. Issues surrounding the qualities of God and the limits of human intellect make theological noncognitivism a significant threat to theism and to specific forms of atheism.”

Theists, atheists, and agnostics are all theological cognitivists. This means that they all have a version of “God” in their minds, which they believe, disbelieve, or aren’t sure of. Theodore M. Drange of Internet Infidels, has provided a good depiction of this,

“Suppose you are to answer the following two questions:

(1) Does the sentence “God exists” express a proposition?

(2) If so, then is that proposition true or false?

If you say no to the first question, then you may be classified as a noncognitivist with regard to God-talk. If you say yes to it, thereby allowing that the given sentence does express a proposition, then you are a cognitivist with regard to God-talk. (Let us henceforth abbreviate these expressions, simply using the terms “cognitivist” and “noncognitivist”.) All theists, atheists, and agnostics are cognitivists, so the second question applies to them: is the proposition that God exists true or false? You are a theist if and only if you say that the proposition is true or probably true, you are an atheist if and only if you say that it is false or probably false, and you are an agnostic if and only if you understand what the proposition is, but resist giving either answer, and support your resistance by saying, “The evidence is insufficient” (or words to that effect).”

Of course, we can debate vague words without completely defining them. Take “love”, one of the most misused words of all time. People’s ideas on love can differ in a variety of ways, but most of us have a general idea of the emotion that is being described. Where “love” and “God” diverge is in their nature. “Love” is a matter relegated to the human body, and an observable phenomenon. God, on the other hand, is not so certain. In the most general of terms, God is called a “higher power” something transcendent of our reality. Is God as easily observable as “love”?

The fact is, I have yet to see the theistic world produce a coherent definition of “God” that can be consistently argued against. The truth is that we all believe or disbelieve in various conceptions of God. So when atheists or agnostics argue against the existence of God, they are often accused of making up a cheap “straw god” and using “facile” criticisms to knock it down. Atheists and agnostics then respond by saying that these “sophisticated theologians” believe in a God far different than the one of the average believer. Inevitably, both sides end up talking past each other, instead of at each other.

I have many issues here. One is with the term “straw god”, a variant of “straw man.” With “straw man” we have a real man to reference, in showing just how ludicrous the one of straw is. The same can hardly be said of God. As I said earlier, we have yet to create a coherent or practical definition of Him. So the straw god may very well be a real god to many believers. Many atheists and agnostics are former believers, so they know what type of God it was they used to follow. When theists counter “straw god”, they’re really saying that the God you are describing isn’t the one I believe in. I’ll grant that there are some atheists and agnostics who use only the simplest arguments against God, and assume that most believers have a God similar to the one that he disbelieves in.

However, the word “atheist fundamentalist” has sprung up to be pejoratively applied to atheists (apparently not agnostics) who make these simple arguments against God. Or in other words, argue against a God that many religious fundamentalists believe in. As wrong-headed as these atheists may be, to use the word “fundamentalist” in this sense is a false equivalence. There are some theists who are so eager to make atheism out like another religion, though I really don’t know why. As Bill Maher has said, calling atheism a religion is like calling abstinence a sex position. The two aren’t even in the same ballpark. Further, to call atheists “fundamentalists” for critiquing religious fundamentalism, is akin to calling feminists “sexists” for pointing out misogyny. While it is important for atheist critics to realize that “not all religions are like that”, these theists would make plenty more headway by saving their critiques for the fundamentalists within their own ranks.

In any case, the term “atheist fundamentalist”, redundant though it may be, arguably seems more suited to those who accept Christopher Hitchens’ thesis that “religion poisons everything” or Andrew Dickson White’s “conflict thesis” that science and religion have always been in conflict. Any student of history knows that these matters are more complex and nuanced than I have time to explain here. We’ve seen this more recently with simplistic attempts to blame Islamic terrorism solely on the religion of Islam. The skeptic Brian Dunning shares my thoughts,

“Here’s the thing. If you write a book called “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” you sell a lot of books. If you write a book called “What’s So Great About Christianity” on the evils of atheism, you also sell a lot of books. If you say that neither extremist viewpoint makes any sense, you end up doing a podcast and working as a greeter at Wal-Mart directing customers to the section where they sell Hitchens and D’Souza books. The truth is less incisive, it’s less inflammatory, it raises no ire, and it draws no audience.”

Though if I may return to the topic at hand, defining God will be no easy task. One that might not even be performed in a single conversation. Part of the reason is that the attributes often ascribed to “God”, such as omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and omniscience, are metaphysical concepts that are hard to fully understand. From our experience, we only know limited benevolence, what does omnibenevolence mean? We may even disagree on what benevolence is, and how a conceptual God may express it. For example, it is usually said that God is “goodness”. Well, defining just what it means to be “good” is an issue philosophers have wrestled with since the beginning of human thought. So it’s little wonder that people can have radically different ideas of God based on their ideas of “goodness”.

That every person has a different God, amongst people who even share the same beliefs, can sound rather strange to some. So allow me to further illustrate this point. Imagine that two Catholic priests are in a car and they get into a crash with another vehicle. They all make it out of the crash okay. Although these two fellows belong to the same religion (Christianity) and the same sect of that religion (Catholicism) they all have differing perspectives on God’s role in the crash. The driver believes that the crash was God’s divine punishment for someone’s sin. The priest in shotgun believes that since no one was seriously hurt, that God’s benevolence protected them. These priests believe in slightly different versions of God, insofar that they apply different attributes to Him depending on the situation.

It’ll be impossible to get everyone to agree on the same conception of God. The matter is just so personal. You’ll find yourself confronted with various versions of God, and you may hold varying degrees of agnosticism on them. You may be a weak agnostic over Krishna and an agnostic atheist over the Abrahamic God. This is the ignostic method. If you want a better understanding of the spectrum of theistic belief, I recommend you look at “the Dawkins scale” from The God Delusion. The Big Think provides an excellent summary of the scale here:

1. Strong Theist: I do not question the existence of God, I KNOW he exists.
2. De-facto Theist: I cannot know for certain but I strongly believe in God and I live my life on the assumption that he is there.
3. Weak Theist: I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.
4. Pure Agnostic: God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.
5. Weak Atheist: I do not know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be skeptical.
6. De-facto Atheist: I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable and I live my life under the assumption that he is not there.
7. Strong Atheist: I am 100% sure that there is no God.

I think that it is logically impossible to be a 7, since you can’t affirm a negative. You cannot be 100% certain that God doesn’t exist, like you can’t be 100% certain that Bigfoot doesn’t exist. While the proposition may very well be true, we haven’t yet looked through every nook and cranny. So it’s hard to be sure. I also think that it’s impossible to be a 1. The existence of God can neither be proved nor disproved, but only guessed. One person’s guess is simply more probable than the other’s. As such, I knew I was ignorant of all the manifestations of gods that people affirm, but I knew which gods I didn’t believe in. I didn’t believe in a personal god, an anthropomorphic god that intervenes in human affairs by assigning prophets or holy texts. The very concept of “god” is one that I find highly suspect, considering that He is a conclusion in search of evidence, not a conclusion found as a result of it.

All of this being said, I try to avoid debates over God’s existence. It isn’t that I think the question to be completely irrelevant or worthless to one’s life. Dogmas and assumptions of any sort (religious or secular) deserve to be challenged and questioned whenever possible. In the long run, however, I think that a person’s view on ethics and morality is far more important than whether or not they believe in God (and in many cases, what religion they follow). Though certain beliefs can have a negative effect on a person’s ethics, religion can also inspire good, and secularism can’t always prevent evil. Only the most narrow-minded among us would seek to throw theist, agnostic, and atheist into crude “ us versus them” dichotomies. What matters most to me isn’t whether you believe or disbelieve in a God, but what you do with that believe or disbelief.