I don't know

From Religions Wiki

"I don't know" is a statement expressing that the speaker does not have the answer to a particular question.

In a great many mundane situations, to say "I don't know" is an uncomplicated and acceptable response which may well be the best one in the circumstances -- e.g. "Where are my keys?", "I don't know". However when applied to greater questions, such as how the universe came to be or what the meaning of life is, many people feel uncomfortable not giving some kind of answer. In the face of ignorance, it is tempting to insert a deity into the picture as a convenient explanation to a question which one feels, or is persuaded to feel, ought to have an answer.

Use as a theistic argument

A version of the Argument from ignorance, a common religious apologist approach is to ask a hard-to-answer question, hoping to elicit either a straight "I don't know", or some attempt at an explanation which can be shown to be inadequate. Then, employing the Principle of sufficient reason (essentially, that there must be some explanation) the theist concludes that God supplies the necessary explanation.

Embracing ignorance

Celebrated physicist Richard Feynman thought it was important to be honest about what we do not know, and that we should feel comfortable admitting to ignorance:

"I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask 'Why are we here?' I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me." (No Ordinary Genius, 1994) [1]

Owning up to ignorance in this way is an important part of a scientific worldview because it is the first step towards being able to find out more about the world. On an individual level, I might not know some particular answer, but with a little research I might find that there is someone who does. On a larger scale, the current state of human knowledge on a question can progress from knowing nothing, to incomplete information towards greater certainty. For example, in the mid-twentieth century many large scientific questions (such as how genetic information is encoded in cells, or whether there are Earth-like planets orbiting stars other than the Sun) were almost completely unanswerable but now they are major research programs yielding important knowledge.

A response to the Argument from Ignorance, then, would be to admit the lack of knowledge without embarrassment. "I don't myself know how life started on Earth, but it would be invalid to conclude from my ignorance that Yahweh created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden", for example.

Notes

  • Not to be confused with I don't understand.
  • Also distinct from Skepticism which is a general stance rather than an attitude towards a particular question.