William Clifford The Ethics Of Belief Analysis

In William K. Clifford’s, The Ethics of Belief, he begins the essay telling a story of a ship-owner. The ship-owner was in the process of allowing a ship to sail off into the sea carrying emigrants. He knew the ship was old, needed to be rebuilt and was overworked. In his mind, he knew that the ship was not seaworthy which made him unhappy. The problem that plagued him the most were the possible expenses to the ship and he simply did not want to pay them. So instead of getting the ship repaired, the ship-owner convinced himself that the ship was seaworthy. He told himself that if he survived many voyages and so the ship will be able to get through this one. He put his trust in the Divine “Providence”. The ship-owner began to genuinely believe
Clifford believes that the ship-owner genuinely believed that the ship would preserver through the voyage, but that doesn’t matter because he had no right to believe on the evidence before him. His belief was not do to proper investigation of the boat instead it was based off of how he kept “stifling his doubts”. Clifford then tries to give a different case in which the vessel didn’t go down and made many other voyages safely. Would the ship owner still be guilty? Yes. Why? Because the ship-owner still let the ship go without taking the proper precautions regarding the ships safety. Clifford then tells of a story about and island and it is there where the inhabitants spoke of a religion “teaching neither the doctrine of original sin nor that of eternal punishment”. Then there was a suspicion (got to the mainland) that the teachers of this religion immorally taught the doctrine to children. Men began to start a small society to “inform” the public about what was happening on the island. The people of the small society published huge accusations against the citizens of the highest position and did everything to harm their character. They made such a buzz that the Commissioner investigated into the facts but after the investigation, nothing was found regarding the small societies accusations. After, the people of the small country looked upon their accusers as dishonest. Although the accusers believed wholeheartedly that their charges were true, they still didn’t not properly investigate. They only heard the “voice of prejudice and