Editing Protagoras (section)

===Agnosticism===
Protagoras was a proponent of either [[agnosticism]] or, as [[Tim Whitmarsh]] claims, [[atheism]], on the grounds that since he held that if something is not able to be known it does not exist.<ref>[[Tim Whitmarsh]], ''Battling the Gods'', Alfred A. Knopf, 2015, pp. 88–89.</ref> Reportedly, in Protagoras's lost work, ''On the Gods'', he wrote: "Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not, nor of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life."<ref>περἰ μἐν θεῶν οὐκ ἔχω εἰδέναι, οὔθ᾽ ὡς εἰσὶν οὔθ᾽ ὡς οὐκ εἰσιν οὔθ ὁποῖoί τινες ἰδέαν· πολλὰ γὰρ τὰ κωλύοντά με εἰδέναι, ἥ τε ἀδηλότης καὶ βραχὺς ὤν ὁ βίος ἀνθρώπου.</ref><!--English translation corrected: nor--><ref>[[DK numbering|DK]] 80B4.</ref><ref>[http://www.iep.utm.edu/p/protagor.htm The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Protagoras ({{circa|490 BCE|420 BCE}})], Accessed: October 6, 2008. "While the pious might wish to look to the gods to provide absolute moral guidance in the relativistic universe of the Sophistic Enlightenment, that certainty also was cast into doubt by philosophic and sophistic thinkers, who pointed out the absurdity and immorality of the conventional epic accounts of the gods. Protagoras' prose treatise about the gods began "Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be. Many things prevent knowledge including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life".</ref>

According to [[Diogenes Laërtius]], the outspoken, agnostic position taken by Protagoras aroused anger, causing the Athenians to expel him from the city, and all copies of his book were collected and burned in the marketplace. The deliberate destruction of his works is also mentioned by [[Cicero]].<ref>Cicero, ''De Natura Deorum'', 1.23.6.</ref> The classicist [[John Burnet (classicist)|John Burnet]] doubts this account, however, as both Diogenes Laërtius and Cicero wrote hundreds of years later and as no such persecution of Protagoras is mentioned by contemporaries who make extensive references to this philosopher.<ref>John Burnet, "Greek Philosophy: From Thales to Plato", 1914.</ref> Burnet notes that even if some copies of the Protagoras books were burned, enough of them survived to be known and discussed in the following century.