Talk:Ignosticism

message: 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)
replies: text: I agree, this is an excellent article.  I think that many, many atheists and agnostics would actually be ignostics, if only they knew the term.  Many people only use atheism/agnosticism because they do not know of a better word for their position.  Saying "I am an ignostic" is certainly much easier than saying "I'm a believer in Theological noncognitivism" (11 syllables! Argh!).  I certainly hope that this word stays on Wikipedia, and will do my best to spread its usage here and outside. Esn 00:53, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree as well. I used to consider myself ignostic, though now im an Apathiest, which is fairly similar. DemonWeb 01:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: I think it's Brilliant

message: 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)
thread_title: Ignosticism and its rational relevance

message: 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)
thread_title: Very nice start article!

message: I've removed some text that appeared to be original research, and I removed the  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)
replies: text: I agree with the general direction of your edits, but I would like to ask why you removed the explanatory paragraphs about the child's/theologian's definition of God.  They seemed to do a good job of explaining the reasoning to the reader.  Also, the article in its current state does not say where the word "ignosticism" came from; only "igtheism" is cited. Esn 19:50, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I reverted the anonymous edit because it had removed sources and conflated ignosticism with apatheism, but in doing so I also removed the useful material you mentioned. I think it's back in the article now (sans the historical tidbits, which are in Apatheism where they belong). Thanks for mentioning it, and feel free to fix the page if I've still missed something. =) — Elembis (talk) 23:32, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Original research

message: 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)
replies: text: Done. My edits were geared toward the style outlined at WP:CITE#Maintaining a separate "References" section in addition to "Notes", which the article once again follows. — Elembis (talk · contribs) 09:25, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: References section

message: 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)
replies: text: I beg your pardon? Where have I criticized theism? Skidoo 21:21, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleaned Up the Introduction

message: :"Ignosticism is a word coined by Rabbi Sherwin Wine to indicate one of two related views about the existence of God."
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)
replies: text: Hmm. I think that's just a matter of personal preference. The meaning's the same either way. But I don't care. I don't have a problem with changing it. --Skidoo 21:22, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've changed it to "either of" as "one of" read as mutually exclusive to me (i.e. "one is called ignosticism; the other, something different, is called something else"). I realize, though, that's just my interpretation. Hopefully, though, no-one will mind. Thanks for your reply. Sardanaphalus 23:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Opening sentence

message: 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)
thread_title: WikiProject class rating

message: 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)
thread_title: Article tags

message: 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)
replies: text: It's not a word for the undecided - if you read the article, it is clear that ignostics have a very strong position - that in the majority of cases, there is not a coherent enough definition of god, rendering any consideration of their existance or otherwise meaningless. However, as any such thoughts are then meaningless, it doesn't matter what you do or do not believe - belief can indeed be irrational. So an ignostic person can follow a faith. However, unlike agnosticism or atheism, the term ignostic itself does not require a qualifying belief (both atheism and agnosticism require a definition of god acquired from a belief set, wereas ignosticism works without consideration of the proposition of god put forth). Hope that helps you understand the subject! LinaMishima (talk) 21:39, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  I don't think it's that brilliant. 

message: 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)
replies: text: I've reworded it, and I think it now makes more sense. What are your thoughts? Does it still need more work? hmwithτ 18:20, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  #2 needs to be rewritten 

message: 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)
thread_title:  examples 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Note on capitalization 

message: "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)
replies: text: Is it trying to say, "an apatheist may see the statement "God exists" as meaningless, meaningful, true or false"?  --Dannyno (talk) 20:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps, but that seems to contradict the (admittedly limited) research I've done on the subject. 173.11.33.161 (talk) 05:06, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strange sentence re: apatheism 

message: I was bold and removed the infobox  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)
thread_title:  Infobox issues 

message: Are there any reliable sources for the idea of Soft vs Hard Ignosticisms? This would roughly be as follows: 
* Soft = I don't know what words like 'God' or 'gods' mean, if they have any true meaning, and therefore I don't know the meaning of questions like 'Do God or gods exist?', nor even whether they have any true meaning, nor how I would recognize their true meaning if I came across it, and so on.  
* Hard = Nobody knows (or Nobody can know) what words like 'God' or 'gods' mean, and therefore questions like 'Do God or gods exist?' are meaningless. 
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)
thread_title:  Any reliable sources for Soft vs Hard Ignosticisms? 

message: 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.Drange, Atheism 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)
replies: text: See Atheism. Not all atheists are explicit atheists. In other words, not all atheists would say "there is no god." Plenty of atheists say "I don't believe in a god."   — Jess· Δ♥ 03:12, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  False 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Ignosticism. Please take a moment to review my edit. You may add  after the link to keep me from modifying it, if I keep adding bad data, but formatting bugs should be reported instead. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether, but should be used as a last resort. I made the following changes:
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.sewanee.edu/philosophy/Journal/Archives/2002/Conifer.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 08:27, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: sourcechecked=true  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 03:17, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Define both "God" and "exists" 

message: I've removed the section about Eckhart Tolle because it's original research and was added presumably to promote that research ; 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:  ;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)
thread_title:  Tolle