Andrew Brooke, HAT Membership Manager - December 1, 2024

I am proudly ignostic, annoying atheists and theists equally. But what exactly is ignosticism?

Ignosticism is not agnosticism. Both agnostics and ignostics believe the existence or non-existence of god is unknowable. But ignostics go further and say the entire question is meaningless, partly because not everyone agrees on what “god” is.

Ignoticism is to agnosticism what antitheism is to atheism. Atheism is the belief that there’s no god; antitheism goes further and says not only does god not exist, it’s a harmful idea. Agnostics say: “we’re not sure if god exists”; ignostics say: “We’re not sure if god exists, and besides, it’s a ridiculous question because we can’t even agree on what “god” is, and, even if we could agree, and he did exist, he doesn’t seem to be active in the world.

For theists, there’s no middle ground: you’re sure god exists, or you’re not. The reaction of atheists is more nuanced. When I say I’m unsure of god's existence, they may say, “Well, are you sure the tooth fairy exists or not?”

Rather than asking about something ridiculous that we know doesn’t exist, a better comparison is to something scientists are unsure exists. Examples include dark matter, dark energy, multiverses, primordial black holes, extraterrestrials, and the nature of consciousness.

At its core, ignosticism embraces two fundamental principles: uncertainty and practicality. Uncertainty is critical if you want to be a thinking person. One of the terrible dangers of religion is its claim to be 100% sure about everything. Absolute certainty in religion (or anything else) is a toxic view that has led to untold misery. If there’s one thing I'm sure of, it's that I can't be fully sure of anything. Instead, I make reasonable assumptions based on the facts.

Practicality means useful, effective and meaningful. It means not wasting mental energy on things that don’t matter. Would it meaningfully change your life if dark energy were proven to exist? Probably not. The same can be said for god: as long as he does not appear to stop evil, proving his existence would have no more effect on us than the existence of a multiverse, an extraterrestrial living millions of light years away, or the tooth fairy.