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Join Date: May 2008
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|  True Ignosticism
THE AGNOSTIC APPROACH:
The philosophy of agnosticism, is a challenge to the structural integrity of any individual, group or belief system that professes to be the exclusive beneficiary and/or source of divine knowledge. The primary philosophical position of all agnostics, is that as finite, mortal and frequently self-annihilating creatures, human beings are probably ill equipped to adequately prove or disprove the existence of God. God in essence, is an unknowable. In other words, the agnostic’s line of reasoning is simply, you probably don’t know and neither do I. To further illustrate the presupposition of agnostic ideology, the premise is that human neurological processes are by design limited. They are electrochemically based, narrowly fixed, and faulted by the inherent inadequacy and derisive tendencies of human language, and therefore, probably, based upon these observed factors incapable of appropriating (disassembling, re-assembling and imparting without using vague concepts) the vast and incomprehensible amount of information that would be necessary to “explain” God. As a result conceptualization is as close as humanity can come to any real defining aspects of the character and attributes of God. But an assumption is not proof. The see saw form of agnosticism, weak agnosticism posits that it may be possible, though not unarguable for human beings to become enlightened, that is to say, come to possess some high level of awareness with regard to matters of a spiritual or supernatural origin. The weak agnostic would exclaim, “I don’t know but it is possible that you may”. This to some extent negates the theory of natural human neurological inadequacies, although the ability of one to satisfactorily verbalize this kind of “metaphysical” knowledge, even if they had it, is suspect. On the other hand, strong agnosticism, which says “you can’t know for certain and neither can I”, is technically a belief which may or may not have any basis in reality but is generally inconsistent with logic because one cannot completely eliminate the presence of the anomalous-that someone at some time may indeed somehow come to possess a special connection with some metaphysical source of knowledge, as unlikely as that may seem.
In the broadest sense, agnosticism is a flawed ideology. It fails to address the hard problem of God in a way that presents an unassailable solution.
THE ANGRY (BUT IMPLAUSIBLE) STAND AGAINST GOD
Atheism, perhaps the most antagonistic (and problematic) of all the theological noncognitivist schools of protest is another failed ideology because it seeks to relegate the concept of God to that of an impossibility, a claim that is wholly contestable and unfounded. One cannot disprove the existence of God simply by bringing into question the validity of theologically based assertions. Contrary to the position that most atheists assume with regard to their credo, in any dispute centering on the existence or non-existence of God, the burden of proof rests solely upon the shoulders of the atheist. Why? Because the faith-based convictions of theists and spiritualists provide an amnesty against having to present a preponderance of evidence favoring the existence of God. Theology is not a study based upon attestable claims. It’s a group effort to establish the supreme authority of spirituality based upon the perception some have that certain ancient scriptures are (or were) divinely inspired and that the spirit of God is the sole force that deposits in us certain personal internal convictions. Therefore faith drives the theologian to stand behind his or her beliefs. But atheism is an outright challenge to the legality of faith, which is absurd and once again, unsupportable.
Where ignosticism differs in its approach to the “hard problem” of God is by postulating that human beings have yet to even rationalize the very necessity of such a concept as that of God, much less prove or disprove the presence of divine reality because any patent and absolute description of the nature or facilities of such a being is absent in the concept. The true ignostic would say, “I don’t know what you mean by God, and until you can provide any sufficiently tenable explanation for what you mean by God, the discussion itself is pointless”. Being able to prove or disprove the existence of God is an argument for atheists and theologians to bury themselves under. But to a true ignostic it is simply irrelevant; no one has yet to present an infallible contention for why the concept of God is even remotely necessary, if at all. In other words, perhaps the idea of God is attainable, and truly enchanting, but any exacting and complete explanation or definition of the nature and attributes of such an entity is not, at least not yet, and therefore it is really without any clear necessity. Case in point; most cosmologists estimate that we inhabit a galaxy of some 400 billion stars within a universe of about 100 billion galaxies or so. This incredibly vast number of heavenly bodies is not beyond our ability to conceptualize; it is merely an approximation garnered from observations scrutinized using mostly ground-based telescopes. But that still represents a figure far greater than the entire number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the world combined, and there may in fact be an inconceivably larger number of stars and other cosmic materials that we cannot observe with the use of present day technology. Hence, what we can see may not necessarily be all there is, but because we are limited by our own inability to observe the universe in its entirety, no more exact figures are yet available. The real question then becomes, in a universe so obviously vast, is it really necessary or beneficial to have exact figures? Perhaps one day it will necessitate the survival of our species to possess such knowledge, but even that is a dubious claim at best. Similarly, to my way of thinking there is a tear in the fabric of the claim that God is a concept that is necessary. Some pertinent issues need to be addressed first. And the most fundamental set of questions that most assuredly need to be answered (but never have been) before we can qualitatively ascribe the title of “God” to anything at all are; what accurately and completely defines the nature and attributes of “God”, on who’s authority, and most importantly, for what beneficial purpose would it serve to have this information? |
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