The ethic of belief which I label Soft Rationalism attempts to provide an epistemology which, if successful, would secure to religious beliefs the possibility of being assessed as rational. (Whether a particular religious belief is rational would of course depend on its passing the tests of epistemic worth laid down by this epistemology.) This paper begins with a necessarily brief outline of what I mean by 'an ethic 0f belief'. Part two describes a more familiar ethic which Soft Rationalism, described in the subsequent section, would seek to replace. In part four I criticize the arguments adduced in favour of the proposed ethic, and I conclude by pointing out a weakness in Soft Rationalism which, unless eliminated, would constitute a fatal flaw.
By the term 'an ethic of belief' I am not referring to moral constraints upon believing. 1 There are properly moral demands which do extend to one's believing,--e.g, that one be honest with oneself and others, that one avoid self-deception and wishful thinking--but they constitute just a branch or subsection of one's wider morality. This can be seen in the fact that the ultimate justification of such demands rests on an ideal, goal or interest of a specifically moral kind? There are, by contrast, demands upon believing of a specifically epistemic kind, demands which are generated from and ultimately justified by an epistemic goal or ideal. These demands are expressed through the