I stand corrected.

[swestrup]

I've often told folks that there is no term for my stance on the existence of God. The fact is, I've always assumed that somewhere in the philosophical world, someone else has held the same views and that there probably is a term for it, but I've never known one. Well, today I did some Googling, and it would seem that I am an Ignostic. My only proviso is that I approach Ignosticism from the point of view of a Falsificationist (see especially the Theism section) and not that of a Logical Positivist.

To summarize my views, I'll paraphrase someone on the extropian's mailing list: Statements about the existence of God are so meaningless they aren't even wrong.

Comments

[sps.livejournal.com]

Me too. In fact, I find it hard to imagine being anything else, no matter what you may call yourself.

...Although it's a shockingly ill-formed word.

Much confusion arises from difficulties with the words 'know', 'believe' and 'exist'. My usual semantics for 'existence' is, I suppose, falsificationist. But I've always taken 'knowledge' to be not, for example, 'justified true belief' but persuasive verifiable belief. As to belief, it's simplest to pretend that it's a matter of mental state and ignore the thorny issue of introspection, though it is not actually independent.

The result of which is that I don't think it's even odd to believe in god, and it's even possible to know god (in certain psychosocial contexts), but it's either meaningless or false to say that you know that god exists - depending, as that article points out, on the precise definition of god in play - unless your experience of the world. More than that, simply to believe that god exists (the creator, not the guy with the beard) would seem to require some very different mathematics than I have.

Of course, the purpose of these discussions is usually to find a reason to be angry at people, and for that end agreeing on definitions is counterproductive!