Clifford and the Ethics of Belief Essay

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Clifford is trying to make in the story of the ship-Owner (Meister, 359)?

Despite the contention that religious belief has no moral downsides, having the belief can result in a refusal to take practical actions and thus does have many negative consequences for humanity. Even if no one was hurt due to the shipbuilder's belief in providence, this belief does not result in the shipbuilder taking prudent precautions. Similarly, religion can act as an inhibiter, preventing people from looking at an issue with scientific objectivity to make an advance in medicine or for a government to undertake appropriate social policies because of a religious notion like the poor are always with us.

Q2. What, according to Clifford, makes holding a belief right or wrong? (Be careful here. I'm not asking what makes the belief true or false, but rather what makes it OK to hold the belief.) (Meister, 360)

Holding a belief is correct if it is entered into when one holds the correct evidence. If someone has good reason to believe based upon concrete evidence that his ship is sound and he sails and the ship sinks, this does not make him wrong to hold his previous belief. On the other hand, if someone takes no precautions, trusts in providence and by happy accident the ship does not sink, that does not make the belief right, even if no ill consequences resulted from the erroneous belief that ships do not need to be regularly examined by a mechanic before sailing and only prayer is required for a safe passage across the sea.

Q3. What, according to Clifford, is the chief danger of believing a claim to be true without having sufficient evidence? (Clifford's answer to this question goes from the bottom of p.

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362-363.)

A belief does not exist in a vacuum but rather leads to other beliefs and are passed on to succeeding generations. A good example of this might be someone who believes in the God he is taught about in Sunday school, comes to believe that God does not bestow salvation to those who do not accept Christianity, holds intolerant political views about certain groups based upon his evangelicalism, and then passes these beliefs on to other people.

Q4. There is one sentence in the essay that is especially well-known. It is his thesis statement, and it occurs on p. 363. What is it?

"A bad action is always bad at the time it is done, no matter what happens afterward."

Q5. Thomas Aquinas argued that an important reason why the exercise of our wills to believe was important was because many people do not have the time to invest to assess carefully the evidence and arguments for and against religious belief. How would Clifford answer Thomas? (See 364)

In plain terms, according to Clifford, if someone is really so busy he does not have time to….....

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