Talk:Ignosticism

Topic
I would like to expand and improve the page http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ignosticism, Still I would like to have a discussion about ignosticism before just going and editing it on my own. The corresponding talk page even does not exists.

Is there someone interested in sharing this discussion?

I personally believe to be an Ignostic, but I have found no one in real life that define himself as such, and only one person that actually known the term.



I tend to classify the main (ir-)religious stands in the following way:

The big question is


 * "does god exists?"


 * --Theists said "Yes", and then they often attribute some feature on this "god", thus characterizing themselves into a specific religion.
 * --Atheists said "No", many atheists also deny the existence of any "supernatural" concept, but that is not required to be Atheist.
 * --Apatheist said "I do not care"; many country with declared atheist majority, have indeed an Apatheist majority.
 * --Agnostics said "I do not know", as in "with my limited human capacity and information, I can not answer, but I understand the question and its implications"
 * --Ignostics said "I do not understand the question". Indeed the concept of god is quite a tough one, and the concept of existence is, if possible, even tougher. And you put them together in the same sentence? - sorry, I can not understand.

Expanding this point is clear that there are three main kind of Ignostics:
 * -I do not understand the God concept
 * -I do not understand the existence concept
 * -I do not understand what is the meaning of applying the existence concept to a trans-material god-like entity.

It looks like most of the ignostics/definitions of ignosticism focuses on the first category only.


 * I'm really struggling to see that the distinction between agnosticism and ignosticism is a meaningful one. However I suggest you make some changes to the article that fit with your understanding of the term.  If people don't agree they will tell you pretty quickly and we can have the discussion if we need to.  DamoHi 05:38, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I think the summary of "I do not understand the question" misses the mark. In my understanding, agnostics believe that the question of God's existence could in theory be answered "yes" or "no," but that they do not/cannot know the correct answer. Ignostics believe that the answer to such a question has to be "mu," because the question is of the "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" sort. 05:44, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * There's also strong and weak agnosticism on top of that. One saying "we don't know" the other saying "we can't know". I still view ignosticism as an even worse fence-sitting cop-out than that, being that it merely deflects the question. After all, the definition of "god" is made quite clear by most non-ietsism religious beliefs. Scarlet A.pngbomination 12:36, 18 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I tried to sort that up where I wrote about "not even wrong".--Nael (talk) 05:37, 19 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I think I'd rather sit on a fence and risk annoying people, than jump off the fence for the wrong reason (or, to the Ignostic, no reason). Ignosticism seems to be the only "Theistic" position compatible with good old fashioned objective inquiry and empirical support, even as made distinct from "Theological noncognitivism"--YoureRetorted (talk) 22:59, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Fictional comparison, koans and jokes
First 76.11.94.233, thanks for adding new content. Your approach to expressing ideas in the lede section were very helpful. That being said, I have been an ignostic for many years and I've never heard of ignostic koans or "fictional comparisons" and I've only ever heard one ignostic joke...which was here on rational wiki and one on a random website I saw through "stumble upon". Could you provide some sources for the new content you've added? 19:38, 23 August 2017 (UTC)