Talk:Proslogium

The ethics of belief
I read something very interesting the other day concerning the ethics of belief by Louis Pojman from his work Religious Belief and the Will. He believed that rational belief, and a concepion of faith, are the duties of every person according to the best available evidence they find. There is also a responsibility to search for true knowledge if what you already believe is based upon weak evidence. The example Pojman gives is of a physician prescribing a drug which he or she thinks might aid a patient, but the physician's diagnosis was incorrect, and as a result the patient dies. Because the physician had not sought a greater knowledge of a more appropriate drug based on the patient's conditions he or she would be judged culpably ignorant for not seeking out the latest or most appropriate drug. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of every individual to take responsibility for what they believe, even if it results in the injury of others. This is not necessarily our moral duty though, according to Pojman, but it is still a responsibility which should be taken very seriously. It is very unwise to believe in something which you know is not backed up by good evidence and/or proof. Therefore, in forming one's religious belief, Pojman writes that it is important that a person follows a rational line of reasoning in the formation of his or her spiritual beliefs. The beliefs that are the most justified are the beliefs that have the best chance of being accurate. He believes that one should even ask questions of their own personal religious beliefs, for the purpose of a genuine search for truth. People have the liberty to do this because it would seem that a God who is morally good would respect the conclusion of a person who honestly saw his or her religious beliefs in God as rationally incapable of being true. The God of the Bible does not work that way though, as according to the Bible there is no excuse for unbelief in God. Nonetheless, it is always wrong for anyone to form a strong belief in something based on weak evidence. -Mancalf 22 January 2006

Proposed merger with Proslogion
Please see the discussion at Talk:Proslogion --Lini 11:46, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I am going to begin the process of merging this article with Proslogion, by editing the articles that link here to link to Proslogion instead --Lini 04:10, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Next I will work on incorporating the text from this article into the text at Proslogion --Lini 04:40, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Text from this article has been merged into the Proslogion article. The next step will be to merge relevant text from this discussion page to the Proslogion discussion page, and then to convert the Proslogium article page to a redirect. --Lini 04:35, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Merger completed
All content had already been merged (see note above). Content on article page was replaced with redirect to Proslogion.