“Semantic Non-Doxastic Agnostic Religious Faith”

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to articulate the possibility of semantic non-doxastic agnostic religious faith. Robin Le Poidevin, who introduced the idea of semantic religious agnosticism, defines it as being agnostic about which parts of religion to treat in realist terms and which parts to treat in fictionalist terms (2019, 2016). I take Le Poidevin’s view and argue that it is consistent with a non-doxastic attitude toward the object of faith such as acceptance. I then explore the similarities and differences between my account and a prominent version of non-doxastic faith found in the work of Daniel Howard-Snyder (2018, 2017a, 2017b, 2016, 2013). One advantage of my theory of faith is that it allows a person to be even more sceptical about religion than other versions of agnosticism while simultaneously avoiding some of the problems frequently associated with religious fictionalism.