Current location:	In God
Current mood:	contemplative
Entry tags:	logical concepts, spiritual science

Thoughts on Ignosticsm and Religious Complexity
I think my left-brain is an atheist, and my right-brain is God.


This is also interesting:

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist

Comments follow.

Ignosticism

Main article: Ignosticism

Ignosticism is the view that the question of whether or not deities exist is inherently meaningless. It is a popular view among many logical positivists such as Rudolph Carnap and A. J. Ayer, who hold that talk of gods is literally nonsense. According to ignostics, "Does a god exist?" has the same logical status as "What color is Saturday?"; they are both nonsensical, and thus have no meaningful answers.

Ignostics commonly hold that statements about religious or other transcendent experiences cannot have any truth value, often because theological statements lack falsifiability, because of an epistemological view that renders the ontological argument nonsensical, or because the terminology being used has not been properly or consistently defined — the latter view is known as theological noncognitivism.

The use of the word "god" is thus solely a matter of semantics to ignostics, dealing with word use and technicalities rather than with existence and reality.

In Language, Truth and Logic, Ayer stated that theism, atheism and agnosticism were equally meaningless, insofar as they treat the question of the existence of God as a real question. However, there are varieties of atheism and agnosticism which do not necessarily agree that the question is meaningless, especially using the "lack of theism" definition of atheism. Despite Ayer's criticism of atheism (perhaps using the definition typically associated with strong atheism), Ignosticism is usually counted as a form of atheism; Ayer (1966) was clear on his position:

I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it. (p226)

The ignostic position is mentioned (though the term ignostic is not used) as one of the three forms of "critical atheism" (in Smith) or "rejectionist atheism" (in Nagel). Active disbelief in god or supernatural beings is one other type of critical/rejectionist atheism. Finally, the third type is the positive claim that deities do not exist. Since critical/rejectionist atheism is a type of explicit atheism, it follows that ignosticism is a type of explicit atheism. There is some debate over whether it should be classified as weak atheism or strong atheism.

Ignosticism is distinct from apatheism in that while ignostics hold questions and discussions of whether deities exist to be meaningless, apatheists hold that even a hypothetical answer to such questions would be completely irrelevant to human existence.


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I think about semantics a lot.  You can't have communication between different people unless you delve into semantics, because you have to know what meanings different people are giving to different words.  The vast majority of the words we use are generally objective enough that we don't have any significant problems-- we wouldn't be able to have scientific accomplishment if this were not the case.

The word "God" is loaded with subjectivity and semantic differences.  It absolutely amazes me that different people see this word so differently, and make such a big deal out of it.  Your definition of the word "God," probably more than any other single word, reflects and represents your own personal psychology.  The word carries a weight in it-- a weight just for you-- that tells you exactly which groups of human beings you like, which groups of human beings you dislike, which groups of human beings you trust, and which groups of human beings you _don't_ trust.  It tells you who you're supporting, and who you're rebelling against.

Unfortunately, your definition of the word "God" communicates very little of objective value to any other human being.  Unless, that is, you are able to abstract the word out to a sufficiently universal definition that encompasses the sum total of meaning for the word as comprehensively as you possibly can.


Ignosticism, as described here, really hits the nail on the head, in describing this issue.  Let's look at the question, "Does a god exist?"  Well, what does "exist" mean?  I don't think we can get a universal consensus on that either.  Do you define "existence" as a physical existence, or a spiritual existence?  Does love exist?  Well, not physically, it doesn't.  But yet we find it rather silly to attempt to write love off as non-existent.  The other perspective is that _only_ love exists.  Okay, so in that case, we're talking about a framework where the scientific, observable physical world becomes no longer of relevance.  So, in that case, "that which exists" and "that which is relevant" agree, but then we have this vast illusion that we observe with our senses.

Think about the concept of prayer for a moment.  Prayer is an operation that is performed in the spiritual world.  But, when you pray for something, you have to pray for something in the physical world... otherwise, you're just praying for, say, something like peace of mind, which you technically have control over anyway.  Ah, but what about praying for _someone else's_ peace of mind?  Well, to some extent, you only perceive "someone else" when you perceive them physically, with your physical senses.  Ummm... that's the physical world again.  What about when you perceive them emotionally?  Well, that's called empathy, and in that context, you feel what they feel, and there's no longer any grounds for distinction in deciding what's "you" and what's "them" in any rationally quantifiable manner.


So, we've established what "exists" depends on how you want to define that word.  But given the two realms-- existence due to physicality (physical reality), and existence due to relevance (emotional reality), we're now given the prospect of attempting to define the existence of a god.  Well, the left-brained approach has argued extensively that no god exists in the physical world.  Granted, there's also an alternative explanation-- a god could be so pervasive in the physical world that _anything_ in the physical world shows a god exists.  Or, alternatively, anything that's "good" or "perfect" can be a god.  Of course, "good" is defined by the "good guys," much like the way history books are written by the winners.

The other explanation points to a god existing in emotional reality, rather than in physical reality... with the idea being that the physical reality draws forth from the existence of a god in emotional reality.  This approach makes sense, and is extremely elegant.  In fact, if you observe all the major religions, they all share a common theme along these lines.  Once you abstract your god out to the realm of relevance, rather than the realm of proof, then you have something.  Furthermore, your definition agrees with everyone else's... including the atheists, because the purely left-brained approach ignores emotional reality completely.


Now, ignosticism comes into play as a highly relevant factor in this equation because it addresses this understanding from a much more logically precise framework.  There are two ways that one can frame a religion-- one is through concrete definitions, and the other is through abstract definitions.  When you define a religion through abstract definitions, you gain accuracy, but you lose specificity.  As far as I can tell, abstract Catholicism and abstract Buddhism are completely compatible.  In my understanding, abstract Bahai and abstract New Age are completely compatible as well, for example.  There is a conceptual complete overlap between the differing religions at this level.  You see this all-pervasive, comprehensive force in the non-physical realm that represents the all.  Oneness and unconditional love join together as the same concept-- you love something ultimately because it is you.  If it were truly separate from you, you would be completely emotionally detached from it.

Unfortunately, that which makes a religion a religion is its _concrete_ definition.  I could tell you that I am a Catholic and a New Age follower, for example.  But no-- the Vatican does not allow for that distinction.  Creeds are based on precise logical definitions, and concrete religion requires precise logical definitions of a concrete variety.  Defining terms concretely creates separation.  My favorite example: "Jesus is the only Son of God."  In New Age terminology, Catholics are saying, "Jesus is the only Ascended Master."  Of course, followers of Islam would equivalently be saying something like, "the Prophet Mohammed (praise be unto his name) is the only Ascended Master (or the only human with direct access to God's word)."  Hence, in this instance, we create centuries of everything from minor quibbles to major holy wars, all based on "exclusive rights" to God, via a _concrete_, historical human being, who supposedly exclusively fit or did not fit a certain perfect, divine criteria.


Logically, a great amount of conflict is created simply by people holding irrational attachments to concrete versions of religion.  When you transcend the inaccurate concrete versions of religion, you no longer need to look at it as something in the "correct" and "incorrect" categories... "the one true faith" and "something else someone else believes in that I believe is wrong."

Now, if you want to make the argument that creating irrational conflict and separation is a positive thing, because of its benefit as a game, then I cannot specifically argue against that.  There is, in fact, a game that most people on the planet are playing, when they play favorites like that.  Most of them don't appear to realize that it is a game, hence the game becomes real to them.  Well, to be more precise, it becomes real to them because it becomes emotional reality for them.  Like I said before, what makes something relevant?  It's relevant if it's part of your emotional reality.  If you care about something, that caring is your reality.  If you do not, it's not.  Though this differs greatly from physical reality, it is a much more appropriate assessment of "what matters and what doesn't."  Anything in science that gets fleshed out, as much has been, all stems from one underlying premise-- that many human beings enjoy fleshing out the map of reality, of how everything is, from an emotionally neutral context.

That, too, is a game, though.  Why do we think the objective rules of the universe exist all by themselves, outside our observations, outside our cares and considerations of them?  We just assume that if 6 billion people perceive something it is objective.  Actually, we usually go by a much smaller consensus than that-- a few scientists with a few double-blind experiments, and we treat it as absolute proof.  But we don't realize that _someone_ has to perceive the results of the experiments, before it gets into our brains.  There is no perfectly blind experiment, because the scientist who later observes whatever has been done is _still_ the one observing it, and creating subjective value to the objectivity-- telling the rest of us "how it is" and "why we should care."

Funny how, with anything that really seems all that perfectly objective to us in science, we hear it, and we knew it all along.  It's just a question of the language creating a logic to describe the natural laws.  Hmmm... we knew it all along, eh?  Well, wouldn't that mean that the natural laws were inside of us, as well as outside of us?  We're perceiving something, but then we recognize it.  "Educate" means to draw out.  It's much easier to learn that which exists inside us already, than that which is created by partial consensus, externally.  Math and science have a certain perfect beauty to them.  Einstein once said something like, "the hardest thing in the world to understand is the tax code."  Ah, essentially randomized, dicordant, hyper-intellectualization and over-complexifying at its finest.

This is also why I hate bureaucracy so much.  Reliable logical systems were easy to learn.  Stuff that kind of works in one localized setting, and totally doesn't work in another localized setting... ugh.


Perhaps summing this up overall, I think the world should be a heck of a lot less concerned with matter, and a heck of a lot more concerned with _what matters_.  If we stop making reality out to be this logically overcomplicated monster, and stop trying to convince people that reality needs to be as complicated as we happen to arbitrarily think it is... then we can start realizing that everything gets simpler and simpler as we look at it more carefully, and we can focus a lot more energy on resolving problems and helping other people do the same.

Yes, it really is that simple.


Logical complexity is a game... a form of art.  It's not something that we're supposed to use to scare other people with.