https://nukeexcathedra.jottit.com/2011-08-01%3A_the_inherent_immorality_of_religions
The moral obligation to t***h
William Clifford's essay The Ethics of Belief illustrates how it is every human's moral obligation to assure himself of the t***hfulness of his beliefs. Highly recommended reading!
Alan Sokal says similar things in a different way:
If you are sloppy about evaluating evidence, then you are ethically liable for the mistakes that you’ve made. (~45:00 mark) The main point is … it’s important when you make claims about factual matters in the world, to understand clearly what is the evidence on which those claims are based and to and try evaluate that evidence as impartially as possible. (~45:50 mark)
Source:
http://colinmarshall.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=404357So if someone ignores or rejects the best available evidence -- or worse, they preemptively reject it -- then they are making an ethical error, not just a factual one.
How to find the t***hiest t***h
How can we arrive at the "truest" t***h possible, the most credible assertions about reality? Let's look at what epistemology has to say about our mechanisms of quality control for beliefs. This is pretty standard philosophic fare, but I'm taking the following list from Sense & Goodness (pp. 53-60). Here, in descending order of reliability, are the methods of discovering t***h, with summarized explanations:
The method of reason. Within the realms of logic and mathematics, reasoning leads to the broadest, most complete and most consistent success. Basically, a proof based on reasoning, unless it contains errors, leads with certainty to a solidly correct result. Alas, pure reason only works this way on abstract concepts. Out in the real world, we need other methods:
The method of science. Science is actually a collection of methods that take all the other methods of finding the t***h and works very hard at quality control to achieve the highest standard of t***h about reality attainable outside the method of pure reason.
The method of experience. "Seeing is believing," so this method is "better" than anything that comes below. But human observation is open to some errors, such as hallucination or misperception, that make one's own experience less reliable than experience validated by scientific investigation.
The method of history. If we can't observe an event ourselves, as is the case with historic events, our best bet is to apply critical historical analysis on reports from the past. We look for the most reliable sources and corroborate their information with other information, and that's the best we can do for past events.
The method of expert testimony. If we don't ourselves have direct access to sources of information, we can consult experts for their knowledge and interpretation. That's essentially applying methods 2 through 4 second-hand. This method can be strengthened by ensuring our expert has the qualifications, agreement with other experts and so forth.
The method of plausible inference. If we have incomplete facts, it's permissible to try to reach generalizations from those, if we're careful. Inductive logic, extrapolation, and interpolation of evidence and facts is how this is done. Sometimes this is the best we can do, but where one of the above methods is available, we should scrap our results for those from the "better" method.
The method of pure faith. To quote Carrier: "... refers to basing beliefs solely on tradition, hearsay, desire or mere speculation. That is, faith in this sense is trusting what we are told, or just 'guess' or want to be true, without requiring any proof. In other words, believing an ungrounded assertion."
The wording of this last and least trustworthy method of arriving at ideas about the world of course leads us into... religion.
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