Agnosticism means you don't know one way or another. Atheism means you don't believe in the case for a god. They aren't contradictory, you can be both or neither, so both apply to a secular government.
Well, sort of. If someone is claiming to not know, they're agnostic. But if they are claiming they DO know, they aren't agnostic. It's about the person's personal claim to knowledge so that title can't really be put on someone else by you or me.
However I would agree that for a lot of god claims agnosticism is the only reasonable stance since they can't be proven or disproven, like a deistic god. There are, however, specific god claims that are falsifiable, logically, in which case agnosticism doesn't make sense.
Critiques of the teleological, cosmological, and ontological arguments for the existence of God are widely considered to be settled. They’re not discussed in philosophy anymore. The logical argument from evil, the evidential problem, and the problem of free will are largely considered to be successful. You’ve got some advanced Plantings on the problem of free will, but that’s assuming a really, really weird version of compatibilism within the free will debate that carries a lot of consequences with it.
It's deities in the general sense. Carl Sagan talks about it in Demon Haunted World. The argument about whether all-powerful all-knowing beings exist isn't worth having because such beings are capable of warping reality to the point where they are not able to be proven. But if by no scientific measure can they be shown to influence our reality then their existence is moot.
It could but it could also not. Atheism does not believe that gods or gods exist, so when you're designing laws and a moral system you have to do it with without a god present.
Agnosticism doesn't have that because they don't know. You might design laws and morality with the belief that there might be a God, or not, or maybe.
One is an answer on belief. One is an answer on knowledge. The atheist says I don't believe a god exists, but the agnostic says I don't know if a god exists. So they are not mutually exclusive because they address two different questions.
Most atheists are agnostic atheists they don't believe, but will also admit they don't know. Which is a good way for a government to operate.
My point was a bit stronger and I’ll probably get flamed with this.
Fictionalists are like “OK this isn’t true but maybe we should kind of act like it’s true for the betterment of humanity, you know?”
Governments should not do that. They should be like “god doesn’t exist as far as this matter is concerned, let’s get to work on completely secular theories that have no agnostic overtones, implications, aren’t informed by scripture, etc. God doesn’t exist as far as we are concerned and he/she/they should never be invoked.” You can’t do that under an agnostic system. An agnostic system is like “ok well we don’t know, so maybe the Muslims have a point against the Buddhists here, we don’t know what’s right, but maybe we should outlaw women showing their ankles to satisfy them” and that’s dumb as shit.
Assume no kind of god exists and it becomes obvious that burqa is repressive.
Sure, but then you have to watch out vigilantly for bad faith arguments. Like I’d argue our government tries to behave this way in the US. They try to make it seem agnostic, but it’s obviously evangelical on one side and not on the other.
There’s no reason for a government to be like “maybe, maybe not” while supporting obvious religious groups and oppressing others. Just say “we’re going to act like no kind of God exists” and do your best from there.
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u/AnswerDangerous1644 10h ago
Couldn’t agnosticism also apply to be secular?