Editing Existence of God (section)

=== Ignosticism ===

{{Main|Ignosticism}}

The ignostic (or igtheist) usually concludes that the question of God's existence or nonexistence is usually not worth discussing because concepts like "God" are usually not sufficiently or clearly defined. Ignosticism or igtheism is the theological position that every other theological position (including [[agnosticism]] and atheism) assumes too much about the concept of God and many other theological concepts. It can be defined as encompassing two related views about the existence of God. The view that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of God can be meaningfully discussed. Furthermore, if that definition is [[Falsifiability|unfalsifiable]], the ignostic takes the [[Theological noncognitivism|theological noncognitivist]] position that the question of the existence of God (per that definition) is meaningless.{{Citation needed|reason=Citation needed for what seems very dubious Original Research (OR). The OR seems especially dubious as seemingly coming from a pseudo-Popperian perspective; Karl Popper objected to Logical Positivists' insistence that what was not verifiable was meaningless, and brought in Falsifiability partly to oppose them, but he also said that they were abusing the word 'meaningless' in a way that would wrongly render many important areas of human thought and experience 'meaningless'; there's no reason to suppose that ignostics are generally pseudo-Popperians, nor to unwittingly or wittingly imply it in this article. But all that's probably a lot less relevant here than the fact that the statement is seemingly OR.|date=August 2018}} In this case, the concept of God is not considered meaningless; the term "God" is considered meaningless. The second view 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.

Some philosophers have seen ignosticism as a variation of agnosticism or atheism,<ref name="The Argument From Non-Cognitivism">{{Cite web |title=The Argument From Non-Cognitivism |url=http://www.strongatheism.net/library/atheology/argument_from_noncognitivism/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140429162223/http://www.strongatheism.net/library/atheology/argument_from_noncognitivism/ |archive-date=2014-04-29 |access-date=2008-02-11}}</ref> while others{{Who|date=December 2016}} have considered it to be distinct.{{Citation needed|date=December 2016}} An ignostic maintains that he cannot even say whether he is a [[Theism|theist]] or an atheist until a sufficient definition of theism is put forth.

The term "ignosticism" was coined in the 1960s by [[Sherwin Wine]], a [[rabbi]] and a founding figure of [[Humanistic Judaism]]. The term "igtheism" was coined by the [[Secular humanism|secular humanist]] [[Paul Kurtz]] in his 1992 book ''The New Skepticism''.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2010-07-28 |title=isms of the week: Agnosticism and Ignosticism |newspaper=The Economist |url=https://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/07/definitions_1 |url-status=live |access-date=December 19, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111216014452/http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/07/definitions_1 |archive-date=December 16, 2011}}</ref>