Believing without evidence is always morally wrong

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Believing without evidence is always morally wrong
Francisco Mejia Uribe, Aeon, 2018/11/12

In ‘The Ethics of Belief’ (1877)  William Kingdon Clifford gives three reasons for believeing that belief without evidence is morally wrong (quoted from the article):

• every single belief has the capacity to be truly consequential
• poor practices of belief-formation turn us into careless, credulous believers
• we have the moral responsibility not to pollute the well of collective knowledge

I am always wary of arguments that conclude that we have a 'duty' or 'responsibility' because these are easily abused by others and almost always require that we act against our own self-interest, sometimes in devastating ways. More...