Ignosticism 101: The Negative Space forms an Elephant or A Conversation with Rockhound570 theist

I am having a conversation with a person who goes by the name Rockhound570 theist about ignosticism and the implications of it as it relates to God. 

He brought up a point that many people, in my experience, often seem to be confused about. It seems there is an ongoing debate in theology as to whether or not we can fully comprehend God, should such a being exist. Or, as some contend, God is so far beyond our understanding that we cannot grasp him.

Before moving on, let's not forget that the first question relating to ignosticism asks, "What do you mean by God?"

This is a fair question, and a good starting place I might add, since human experience tells us that humans have invented a wide range of religious customs and beliefs, have erected competing religious ideologies, and have subscribe belief to a seemingly endless supply of supernatural deities and gods. 

So, as you can see, "What do you mean by God?" is a very good question to ask before getting too deep into theological discussions.

Now here's the thing. Ignosticism says it should be relatively easy to find an agreeable definition for God and what the term "God" actually means. Ignosticism holds that if God is real then all we need do is look at the referent (the thing itself) and simply describe it. If everyone's answer matched, then we'd all have a working definition for God. But this doesn't appear to be the case. 

So, naturally, theists like Rockhound (or Rocky for short) suppose that God simply isn't comprehensible. We just cannot understand or perceive God fully enough to explain in any greater detail. As such, we can only perceive God dimly, or as St. Thomas Aquinas suggested, we can only recognize him why what he is not -- sort of like feeling out the empty space in a room and determining that it is the ever illusive elephant in the room.

But I have a different suggestion. My suggestion holds that, if ignosticism is correct in its assessment, the reason nobody can agree as to what they mean when they talk about "God" is *not because they haven't fully comprehended God but because there are different competing definitions for supposedly the same thing.

In response to my article on Ignosticism being the best argument against God, Rocky stated that

I don't care about human definitions of God. I care about whether or not God exists as a reality independent from the capability of humans to adjudicate. That is a more fundamental question than any you have asked. That requires clarification from you before you can logically proceed.

Earlier, I suggested that all definitions of God are conceptually derived. In my book titled Ignosticism, I explain that we have two ways in which we ultimately settle on definitions. There is the first method, in which definitions are pragmatically derived -- that is, we observe a referent (i.e., the thing itself),  like an apple, and then we test and examine it thereby supplying the information we all need to recognize and reasonably describe what an apple is. 

As such, "apple" is merely the name we assign to the referent (the thing itself), and the description of its features or characteristics supply us with a working definition for it. In this case, we have a crunchy, juicy, greenish / or redish / or yellowish fruit with a delectable sweetness or sourness and an easily recognizable fragrance, which all people can agree upon whenever they stumble upon the thing in person, and can say quite emphatically that it is an apple.

I have mentioned that other cultures, and other languages, will name the referent (the thing itself) differently. This is to be expected. Thus, in Japanese, an apple is called "ringo." But the fact remains, the description of an apple, whether you are American, Japanese, or Russian, will always match everyone else's description since we are all reliant on the same referent (the thing itself) that we must derive our description from. 

Hence, we have pragmatically derived a proper definition from the referent (the thing itself) by observing, testing, and examining it.

Now, there is another kind of definition which is derived, not from any object, but from an idea or concept. 

These sorts of definitions are not explaining anything in the real world but, rather, these definitions are the combination of ideas and concepts which, together, form a conceptual framework in which we can better understand said ideas or concepts. 

An example of this would be the concept of a Democracy. Democracy isn't a thing unto itself that has any referent in the real world. Instead it is a political ideology regarding how we ought to organize societies and what rights citizens ought to be allowed in such societies. The democracies that exist today do not supply us with the definition of what constitutes a democracy, rather, the definition of a Democracy gives us the ability to descern and recognize what constitutes working democracies.

What this means is that the concept of a Democracy is a collection of specific, yet recognizable, political philosophies and ideologies collected together to form a conceptual framework for what we mean by the term "Democracy." Therefore, whenever we see a system of government that contains these specific political philosophies or ideologies, we will call it a Democracy.

This is what I call a conceptually derived definition, since we lack a referent to describe but we have, in essence, a well established or elucidated concept or idea. 

During our conversation, it seems that Rocky took umbrage at my suggestion that the term "God" was conceptually derived, although I don't see how it could be otherwise. Allow me to explain.

All definitions of God, if derived from a referent (the thing itself) would presumably match -- that is, they would be in agreement with one another about the thing they were seeking to describe -- just as we saw was the case with apples. But this we do not find.

Rather, definitions of "God" tend to vary drastically, since people are using religious templates to create their ideal God based on subjective experience, usually through the lens of their culture and/or religion, of what they feel or believe God to be. In my mind, God is clearly a conceptually derived idea.

We know this precisely because we can ask anyone what it is they mean by "God" and what it is any particular definition of God seeks to describe? If there was actually a referent (the thing itself) which people could experience first hand, as with apples, then whatever they might call God, whether it be Yahweh or Allah or Vishnu, at least they would be explaining a tangible referent (the thing itself) and their definitions would align. But this we do not find. Which, I feel, is a big indicator that we are absent a referent and are in all likelihood dealing with competing conceptualizations.

Rocky went on to add that

You say that I must supply a third party referent. That implies that the human psyche can fully and adequately grasp the concept of God so clearly that all humans will agree upon it. How do you know this is so? 

Naturally, my suggestion that a third party should be capable of describing a referent (the thing itself) in virtually the exact same way was to point out that regardless of culture or background, everyone knows how to describe an apple to someone else of a different culture or background -- and that between the two of them they can agree on what apples are. 

But when it comes to God, this kind of semantic agreement is virtually lacking. Why? Because there is no centralized source to derive a common definition from. Rather, it seems to be the case that all definitions of "God" are conceptually derived, thus lending to a divergence in opinion on what "God" is or what attributes he (or she) has. What this means from the point of view of the ignostic is that God is a semantically confused term.

Continuing in our conversation, Rocky goes on to say:

That just leads me back to what I asked before. How do YOU know that such a definition is even possibly attainable? Why is such a definition needed if the real project is to try and decide if a transcendent reality that gave rise to all that exists is possibly there. By implication, it must be, or God is just an individual concept. OK. Well and good. That is a truth implication that you must clarify before we can proceed. If you cannot, your thesis is founded upon a non-provable supposition and it fails. I am quite certain that I can supply more challenges than this first simple one that comes to mind. If just really seems that you are trying to evade the deeper question of God's existence simply by citing the cloud of confusion of defining something that may not be fully available to limited human perception.

To which I replied:

**We know, at least, that humans can recognize other intelligent minds. If God is not an intelligent mind, of a sort, then what is it you claim to be experiencing -- when by your own admission it is not comprehensible? 

If it's incomprehensible to you, and you cannot makes sense of it, then how do you know it's God? If it is truly incomprehensible, then I have to say ignosticism is justified by the very fact that what is incomprehensible cannot also be coherent, since the prior nullifies the latter.

In other words, you cannot have a logical and consistent argument for that which is incomprehensible except to say that it is incomprehensible, and you've gotten nowhere. Are you saying God is incomprehensible? If so, the problem seems obvious. There can be no suitable definition for God, since any experience we may have of him would be meaningless since it is incomprehensible to us.

If, on the other hand, God is comprehensible, then my prior claims with how to approach this information still holds. If God is comprehensible, then we should expect, at the very least, to be able to come to agreement of that which we have comprehended. Otherwise, the problem of dissimilarity arises all over again, and we just come back to God being incomprehensible, and thus irrelevant to human experience.*

Please keep in mind that ignosticism doesn't disprove the existence of God, per se. Rather, it simply observes that there is an undeniable semantic confusion, and that in all likelihood this confusion is caused by God being conceptually derived rather than pragmatically derived. 

One possibility is that all anyone has are their individual conceptualizations, in which case, God is a figment of human imagination, a mere fancy. On the other hand, there is a real possibility that God exists but there is simply no way to know him,  that the referent (the thing itself) is out there but simply beyond our perception or understanding, in which case the ignostic's claim would revert back to the theological noncognitivist's position that it is meaningless to talk about something which cannot be talked about meaningfully. 

I think that addresses the theist's confusion as to whether or not God is comprehensible. If the theist is to believe in any God that is a Personal being or a Perfect being, then God has to, by his very nature, be discernible to us. Otherwise we could not know him and he would be rendered irrelevant to human experience. Similarly, anything said about such a God, such as him being a God of love, or him being a transcendent being, would all be lies. Unable to know anything about God, we wouldn't know anything about his basic attributes except to say he was supremely illusive. And such a God cannot be anything but irrelevant to us.

I rather think the simpler explanation, however, is that God is a type of conceptualization -- and people simply have conceived of different, often competing, ideas and concepts for what they feel God is and what the term "God" means to them personally.

Science and Truth: More Lisa Randall Quotes

"Scientists actively approach the door to knowledge--the boundary of the domain of what we know. We question and explore and we change our views when facts and logic force us to do so. We are confident only in what we can verify through experiments or in what we can deduce from experimentally confirmed hypotheses." --Lisa Randall (Knocking on Heaven's Door)

"Although there is much we don't yet know about the evolution of the universe, we have a spectacularly successful understanding of the universe's evolution based on the so-called Big Bang theory supplemented by a period of exponential expansion of the universe known as cosmological inflation... This theory has agreed with a range of observations, including observations of the microwave radiation in the sky--the microwave radiation left over from the time of the Big Bang.

"Originally the universe was a hot dense fireball. But during the 12.75 billion years of its existence it has diluted and cooled substantially, leaving this much cooler radiation that is a mere 2.7 degrees kelvin today--only a few degrees Celsius above absolute zero. Other evidence for the Big Bang theory of expansion can be found in detailed studies of the abundances of nuclei that were made during the universe's early evolution and in measurements of the universe's expansion itself." --Lisa Randall

"In some cases, we will understand the observations sufficiently well to know what they imply about the underlying nature of matter and physical laws. In other cases, we'll spend a lot of time unraveling the implications. Regardless of what happens, the interplay between theory and data will lead us to loftier interpretations of the universe around us and expand our knowledge into currently inaccessible domains.

"Some experiments might yield results soon. Others could take many years. As data come in, theorists will be forced to revisit and sometimes even abandon suggested explanations so we can improve our theories and apply them correctly... even when new results might require abandoning old ideas.

"Our hypotheses are initially rooted in theoretical consistency and elegance, but... ultimately it is experiment--not rigid belief--that determines what is correct." --Lisa Randall

Belief not Indicative of Truth

"The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive."  — Sam Harris (On George W. Bush, Letter to a Christian Nation)

One thing that aggravates me, and which I hear a lot from religious people, is that I shouldn't criticize other people's beliefs. 


What they are really stating is I shouldn't criticize their beliefs. Or more specifically, I should just let them have their beliefs just because, and calling their beliefs delusional or stupid (i.e., challenging their beliefs) won't change the fact that they believe in whatever it is they believe.


Consider a recent comment I received from my dear Christian mother who posted it on my Facebook under public (as such it went out to all my family and friends and anyone who can read my Facebook, not that I mind, but notice the distinct message here):

"Quit being such poop head... Let people have their beliefs. They let you have yours. And yours are no stupider than theirs." 

Needless to say, because you believe something doesn't make that belief true. Nor does it make the thing you profess a belief in necessarily true. In fact, philosophy, psychology, and science have shown us that our beliefs are more often than not mistaken. 

Is Atheism a Belief System?

I usually say that Atheism is not a belief system. That is, there is no positive claim within atheism which could lend to any particular system of belief. However, atheists need to be careful, especially those who say atheism is not a *belief (singular). In the past I too made the mistake of claiming atheism is not a "belief" in an of itself, but I have come to see that this reasoning is wrong. Atheism is, in fact, the belief that there are no gods.


Before you jump down my throat and try to explain Strong (Positive) atheism and Weak (Negative) atheism to me, let me inform you that I am not arguing about the definition of atheism, but rather, testing whether or not it fits the definition of what a Formal belief is. 


If we find that atheism does fit the definition of a Formal belief, then we must be willing to admit that it has the properties of a belief. As such, it is important to make the distinction based on what analytic philosophers have defined as a Formal belief.

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Most contemporary philosophers characterize belief as a “propositional attitude”. Propositions are generally taken to be whatever it is that sentences express (see the entry on propositions). For example, if two sentences mean the same thing (e.g., “snow is white” in English, “Schneeist weiss” in German), they express the same proposition, and if two sentences differ in meaning, they express different propositions. (Here we are setting aside some complications about that might arise in connection with indexicals; see the entry on indexicals.)

A propositional attitude, then, is the mental state of having some attitude, stance, take, or opinion about a proposition or about the potential state of affairs in which that proposition is true—a mental state of the sort canonically expressible in the form “S A that P”, where S picks out the individual possessing the mental state, A picks out the attitude, and P is a sentence expressing a proposition.

As such, Atheism appears to be a belief in the non-existence of God, the rejection of theism, and the proposition that God does not exist.

If You Don’t Have Faith, Then What Do You Believe In?

Recently a Christian asked me, “If you don’t have Faith, then what do you believe in?”

She was earnest, and so I replied earnestly:

               I believe in goodness, for which without there could not be kindness. I believe in lending a helping hand to our fellow Homo sapiens, as well as to animal kind. I believe in equality and the active protest of inequality wherever it should rear its ugly head. I believe in peace, freedom, love and the pursuit of happiness. I believe these are the inalienable rights of every person regardless of age, gender, or race.

I believe in human rights, the right for people to choose who they want to love and how they go about expressing that love. I believe in the right for gays to marry and for women to go unveiled. I believe we have the right to take a stand against promoters of dangerous ideologies as well as actively support those ideologies which will enlighten the human race and liberate us from the shackles of antiquated and outmoded belief systems. I believe in diplomacy. I believe in triumphing over cruelty and iniquity, stupidity and ignorance.

I believe in progress, in science, and in the heuristic quest for answers. I believe being erudite trumps being lazy. I believe in patience and in formulating a thought carefully before voicing an opinion. I believe in gaining an educated opinion about somebody else’s cherished beliefs before criticizing it. I believe in a vast expanding universe so magnificent that when put into perspective I am infinitesimally un-important. But I don’t think this is nihilist or defeatist, I find it humbling, even awe-inspiring. I believe not all questions need answers and not all answers require deeply profound inquiries.

I believe in the innate good of humanity, and the struggle to become more than just an animal. I believe we have the capability to transcend out primitive origins. I believe in free thinking. I believe respect must be earned, not doled out because it is simply expected. I believe in striving to better myself and do good. I believe in human solidarity and the eternal struggle against our flawed nature to improve ourselves to the point where pain and suffering are minimal. I believe these things are all achievable, and that with some effort and hard work, we can move towards unheard of echelons of human moral goodness. I believe that all this is true even without the added concept of God.

All these, which I call appreciations, can be understood and achieved without the idea of God.

She then countered with the question, “Well, what are your moral guides then? What are your secular ‘Ten Commandments’? How do you know right from wrong?” Instead of correcting her on the nature of the Ten Commandments (most of which are unethical, if not erroneous, injunctions instead of moral edicts—but that’s a debate for another time) I simply informed that I derive my morality from the accumulative appreciations I have accrued, and that it’s not just one set of beliefs I prescribe to, but an unlimited and never ending sea of ideas, thoughts, principles.  Each of these key appreciations which make up my “belief,” subsequently, compound to form a larger foundation for morality than any holy book could ever provide. And the tools of reason and my moral sense (call it my conscience if you will) help aid me to decipher the wisdom, discerning the excellence from the genuinely rubbish, simultaneously finding merit in the best while disregarding the worst.

Accordingly, by a process of elimination, and proven methods of critical thinking, I allow myself to step back and examine each appreciation in detail finding a common strand of wisdom interwoven into their very fabric, their significance enhance by the awareness of their internal congruity, and with each increasing appreciation their total value and sophistication also increases, as does my benefit from them. For each moral improvement helps me advance morally.

All this sounded fine to her, but she couldn’t quite believe that the myriad of random philosophies floating in my head could come out as anything other than sound bites of sophist opinion. I said I would agree with such a statement, if and only if, I was immoral and an imbecile to begin with, and by my own unfortunate circumstances of being held ransom to my own naïveté, retarded by ignorance, could not find the moral sense enough to unravel the greater mysteries. Only an automaton would be calculating probabilities of the raw data without consideration of the implications regardless of the negative harm it might cause. Nor am I a moral relativist. I believe there is good and there is bad, and what’s more, that we can know the difference. But I am not a cold soulless robot, I reminded her. I am an Atheist, and so too a skeptic, and I could never put my faith into something I knew to be blatantly untrue.

(Note: I do not mean to say I "know for certain" that God does not exist. I think with our current understanding it is impossible to assume God exists or not, and so I remain agnostic on whether such a supreme being exists or could even exist, in which case I  must agree with Albert Einstein who properly stated, “I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him I would be a liar.” However, when a person says I believe in a specific type of God, i.e. the God of Christianity, which is beyond mere personal knowing and becomes an individualized sort of God--reflected in the cultures which first conceived and championed it, I think this sort of man-made God is disprovable and can be invalidated along with the religious claims which like to accompany it.)

Which is to say, I think,  and I know this much, I’m not a cast iron mechanical contraption without a heart. The Tin Man was without a heart, but as it turned out, he had an innate moral sense all along. We don't need the illusion of God, or some  magical man behind the curtain posing as one, to tell us such things; we can realize them on our own.

I’m a human being, flawed, sure, but whatever else I may be I choose to strive toward goodness, not because I think that it is the ultimate final destination, but because I think that it’s a perfectly fine goal worth achieving simply for all the good it will do us.  And that's the kind of person I choose to be.

She told me that from her perspective the thing which makes me human—or which gives me my humanity—is the saving grace of God. For her, I suppose, God is that final destination. I offered, give me something worth believing in, and I might agree with you—but as a skeptic I’m not just going to take your word for it. As far as I can tell, I told her, the case seems to be the opposite. We are good for goodness sake, regardless of whether or not God exists at all. She demanded I prove such a proclamation of faith by picking the noblest appreciations I could think of which didn’t have anything to do with her notion of God. And although I knew that whatever I gave her she would inevitably set about trying to reconcile whatever secular advice I told her and connect it back to her devotional convictions, in effect reinterpreting them not according to their own worth, but according to the values she perceived through the lens of her faith, only by coming into contact with the issues first hand could she glimpse my understanding of them. In due course, I came down to three appreciations which mean the most to me personally. They are as follows:

Appreciations for Living a Good Life: Which I Try to Follow

1)      Albert Einstein’s remark: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

2)      Kant’s maxim: “Dare to Know.”

3)      Thomas Paine’s espousal: “My religion is to do good.”

In summary, from these appreciations I derived these three reasonable conclusions: 1) Never lose your sense of wonder, 2) always seek knowledge and the truth, and last but not least, 3) always do good.

Whether or not God is real, these are real appreciations I can live by, and they can enhance my life. There is no reason to suppose any supernatural entity or divine being in order for me to glean these morsels of wisdom or put them into practice. Now multiply these appreciations by a hundred fold, and then apply them in a similar fashion, and every one of us has the capacity, indeed, the capability of living a respectably moral and ethical life without God. At any rate, our conversation continued in depth, neither of us trying to convince the other of their belief’s supremacy, neither of us trying to prove our argument superior, but rather, we respectfully listened to what each other had to say and although we did not change the other person’s mind, we agreed to disagree. In other words, we did get to understand each other’s thinking better. And, I dare say, that’s what counted the most.