In the movie Seconds, directed by John Frankenheimer, a world-weary businessman gets an offer that seems to be a chance of getting a new life and a new identity: He receives a telephone call from a friend he thought was dead. The friend tells him that instead he has got a new and happy life, and he gives the businessman an address to which the businessman finds his way. From this he is led to The Company, which persuades and not least threatens him to get a new body and life. The business man is an amateur painter, and the idea is that he shall be a professional artist in his new life. The very idea seems unbelievable or “fishy”. Indeed, it also proves to be so, for the artist is led to a place where there are only other new lives (apart from assistants or guards from the company). Can the businessman really have become a professional artist, or shall all of them just tacitly pretend to believe each other?

Certainly only one of the messages of the movie lies hidden here. However, it made me think that we can imagine the possibility of subject areas that in themselves were excellent but in which people would be able to do well, effortless and successful; and unless they instead want to find an interesting and important part of the subject area, this would lead to an unauthentic life. Here people would be able to create an image of themselves and get approval without yielding anything especially demanding. By and large they would be able to have a work that looks impressive, but which did not demand new thinking. As to profundity it would only be an appearance.

The members of such circles could give each other recognition without the recipients having promoted science, even though this ought to be a prerequisite. In former times, influential groups in society could be criticized for keeping their knowledge for themselves... However, in these circles, the members conversely protect themselves against insight, which they of course may not be conscious about, if they are not able to understand it. On the contrary, they can have a number of idiosyncrasies and be engaged in persistently protecting their ideas against what these reactions are directed against. These protecting reactions in form of article and treatises are regarded as meritorious among their associates, also if there in fact should be evident arguments against them because they contain basic argumentation errors.

We can imagine that other persons in this world are satisfied with the first ideas they find and like and that for that reason they find just what they like. Some may even admit that they think that the case can easily be about that. These persons do not exactly meet criticism from their associates either, but accept.

In this society such persons would live an unauthentic life just as the transferred members of the above-mentioned society in Seconds. The same naturally applies to members of religious communities. Their statements have only meaning inside a closed system, just as in role-playing or ludo.

The opposite of this consists in maintaining results even though one does not like them oneself... This is the scientific attitude.

The remarkable thing is that despite of the fact that persons in this imagined world would hardly be satisfied with their life and achievement, apparently persons in the real world are comfortable with a similar unauthentic life.

The article “Presuppositions in religion and the realism debate” inter alia called attention to the error of defining atheism as the opposite of theism. Certainly the following broader definition of atheism can be stated: “Being an atheist is the same as not being a theist”. ([Skepticisme], my translation.) According to the homepage [Skepticisme], atheism is the absence of belief in gods. However, this definition demands some goodwill, because not all who do not want to call themselves atheists can accept it; and they have good reasons not to do that. For it is possible to argue that religious sentences are semantically senseless, as e.g. sign sequences as “god” and “belief”, when used in religious contexts, lack word meaning, and as the definition of theism is based on such sign sequences. Persons that have understood this can neither be called theists nor atheists. For it is possible neither to deny nor to affirm a semantically senseless sentence, but only to assert and make good that it is semantically senseless. Some may call this view agnosticism, but firstly, this term does not have semantic meaning either. Secondly, it must be observed that if we assert that a particular sentence is semantically senseless, we assert a stronger statement than when we say that it is true and when we say that that it is false, simply because it does not even qualify itself for being true or false. Cf. the section “Semantic critique of religious sequences of signs” in Treatise No 5 in which it is argued that religious sentences lack word meaning and therefore are semantically senseless.

Ignosticism.

Obviously, the standpoint ignosticism or igtheism is in agreement with these considerations; however, it is too unclear as it also suggests a certain acceptance.

According to wiktionary.org, the etymology of the word “ignosticism” is:

ig- (from ignorant) + gnostic + -ism. Coined by Rabbi Sherwin Wine. ([Etymology])

Here I will only consider the definition of ignosticism, the way it is worded in the British version of Wikipedia, and some of the resuming remarks in the article.

Wikipedia states two definitions of ignosticism. According to the first, ignosticism is:

“The view that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of God can be meaningfully discussed.” ([Ignosticism])

As far as it goes, this corresponds to what has been put forward in the above mentioned section “Semantic critique of religious sequences of signs”, but only after a necessary correction. For in order not to be semantically erroneous, it ought to be worded in this way:

“The view that a coherent definition of the term “God” must be presented before the statement “God exists” can be meaningfully discussed.” ([Ignosticism], my underlinings of the corrections.)

In the just referred section from [Treatise no 5], however, it has also been argued that such a semantic meaning cannot be established, as a number of possibilities of this were gone through and criticized.

The referred lexicon article also states:

‘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”’.” ([Ignosticism])

To this it must be remarked that it is misleading to compare the latter view with atheism and agnosticism. These two views on religions can be compared to each other and to agnosticism, as they all presuppose that the above mentioned sentences, which their adherents would put forward, have a semantic meaning and do not just borrow an appearance of semantic meaning from real words. However, in its best wording ignosticism is just a result of the quite elementary truth that all sentences must have a clarified meaning in order that they can be discussed.

Firstly, however, the quotation simply turns the case upside down. It is not the persons who can argue for the semantic senselessness of the religions that are ignorant; for it is the religious persons that must be able to explain their own putative concepts, before they can attribute a semantic meaning to them. As long as the religious persons cannot do this, it is them that are ignorant concerning what kind of diffuse ideas they have themselves. In the above mentioned section “Semantic critique of religious sequences of signs”, this has been gone through and justified in a number of respects, and with increasing goodwill.

We are here dealing with the same kind of misuse of the word “ignorant” as calling a person ignorant if he does not know where his neighbour keeps his tool box.

According to the second definition of the lexicon article, ignosticism is synonymous to theological noncognitivism.

Theological noncognitivism.

This ism is defined in this way:

’Theological noncognitivism is the argument that religious language, and specifically words like God, are not cognitively meaningful. It is sometimes considered to be synonymous with ignosticism. ([Theological noncognitivism])

However, this statement is too week, as the concept of cognitive meaningfulness only demands that what is discussed has to be decidable, either analytically or empirically. However, as religious sentences are not semantically meaningful, they do not even qualify to being an object of an analytical or empirical examination.

The lexicon article concludes:

“As with ignosticism, the consistent theological noncognitivist awaits a coherent definition of the word God (or of any other metaphysical utterance purported to be discussable) before being able to engage in arguments for or against God's existence. ([Theological noncognitivism], my use of bold types.)

Certainly, we can only express ourselves about sentences that only use words that have semantic meaning, such that they are in fact statements. However, it is misleading to call this fact being waiting. We are just dealing with the elementary demand that every sentence must have a clarified meaning in order to be a statement we can take a position on.

Moreover, the quoted passage is semantically senseless itself, as it contains the unclarified sign sequence “God’s existence”. The wording suggest intriguingly that it is given that this sign sequence can be attributed a meaning we just wait for. The quotation contains the same error as the sentence “Before it can be decided whether Kryxir exists it must be decided what ‘Kryxir’ denotes”. This sentence suggests that, it is given that “Kryxir” denotes something we have just not clarified yet. Certainly we can refer to sign sequences whose meaning we do not know, but we do not use them as words. Instead we can say “Some people asserts that there is something they call “Kryxir”. Before we can relate to that, they must explain what they talk about”.

Both those who assert “God exists” and those that assert “Kryxir exists” may simply be expected to have an explanation ready, i.e. to know what they say themselves. The fact that they cannot do this is not an attribute of those who points it out.