The Nature of Agnosticism Part 2
Agnosticism, Apologetics, and Evaluating Worldviews Introduction: Agnosticism as an Epistemic Posture As I reflect more on my agnosticism, I have come to a few additional conclusions about the habits of thought it tends to encourage. I want to examine several arguments in the philosophy of religion that I find unconvincing, ask how we should evaluate the worldviews that generate and preserve those arguments, explain why much speculative argumentation seems epistemically unproductive, and reconsider how these belief systems are structured and sustained. A little background matters because intellectual trajectories are path-dependent. I encountered a religious subculture in my late twenties without much prior involvement. By that point I had gone through undergraduate and graduate school, spent roughly a decade reading philosophy and critical argumentation, and taught myself computer science. I also had the privilege of growing up in a household that was broadly open to free thought an...