That’s What I Meant

I get a little excited when I discover a coherent way to describe something that seems to take me forever to articulate. Not that I’m reluctant to go off on a thousand-word rant, but simpler — or at least more coherent — is often better.

While I’m certainly open to correction, I think I may qualify as an ignostic. I don’t know if the word will catch on (it is a bit of a neologism, which I’m normally loath to endorse), but it basically means that I neither believe nor disbelieve in the existence of a god (or gods), because I find the entire argument logically meaningless. “Atheist” (however adherents may choose to define it) connotes absolute disbelief in the existence of a deity (and various modifiers like “implicit atheist” or “soft atheist” are at best unwieldy), and “agnostic” similarly implies a “gee, I dunno” quality that is equally inaccurate (my own frequent choice, “devout agnostic,” raises a few eyebrows but does little to actually inform).

I think I’ll throw this one up and see if it sticks.