Action despite incomplete knowledge - often despite considerable ignorance - is a necessary part of life. Certainly we try to increase our understanding and decrease the need to leap into the dark. But we are still often called to decisive action despite substantial uncertainty and ignorance.
Heuristics are called for: morals, mythologies, beliefs. And that's why I can't, as an agnostic, simply say I don't care what other people believe. What we believe, privately, has a profound public impact because our beliefs inform necessary acts in the absence of (or in the teeth of) full, true knowledge.
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