bruto
Penultimate Amazing
As I am new to the thread, I might not have grasped your point yet. I don't see a copout, unless there is some social or cultural involvement with the believers of Xenu. I disagree that one cannot be truly agnostic and do intellectual justice to a belief simultaneously. The only way this could make sense to me is if it is necessary to believe in a god to do it intellectual justice.
I have tried this, when I was younger I realised that to do justice to the ideas of religion, I should give it a go and actively believe. I did this for more than one religion over the years and found afterwards that intellectually it was unnecessary to have done it in terms of cold philosophical analysis. I do not regret it though and found it enriching in my life experience.
I come up against this difficulty all the time here with numerous words. I always make distinction where it seems necessary.
Maybe it depends a bit on what one considers agnosticism to be. To me, agnosticism means allowing the possibility that, since we don't or can't know, therefore some specific thing might exist. If you were to be an agnostic about Xenu you would have, in some real sense, to allow the possibility that the Xenu story is true, and if someone else comes up with a story equally crazy, you'd have to allow the possibility that that one is true. If you say, "that's made up nonsense," then you're not agnostic, even if you realize you can't disprove the nonsense. To meaningfully say you don't know requires also that you don't judge.
I find it actually, functionally impossible to believe on demand. I can try to do intellectual justice to an idea, but it has to stand on its own. I cannot believe in something in order to study it. In fact, I cannot even conceive of how that is possible. In fact it sounds much like the escape clause that paranormal believers often use, that you can't judge a belief unless you believe it first.