As a contribution to the discussion here is a quotation from William
Kingdon Clifford's work entitled "The Ethics of Belief"(1877)
If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the
mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may
prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this
great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest.
What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that
it should become a den of thieves, for then it must cease to be
society. This is why we ought not to do evil, that good may come; for
at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are
made wicked thereby.
In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient
evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may
be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in
outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man,
that I make myself credulous.
The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong
things, though that is great enough; but that it should become
credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into
them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
William K. Clifford
THE DUTY OF INQUIRY Chapter I in:
The Ethics of Belief (1877)
The full text is available on line at :
<http://ajburger.homestead.com/files/book.htm>
William Kingdon Clifford, FRS (May 4, 1845 - March 3, 1879) was an
English mathematician who also wrote on philosophy. Along with
Hermann Grassmann, he introduced what is now termed geometric
algebra, a special case of the Clifford algebra named in his honour,
with interesting applications in contemporary mathematical physics
and geometry.