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→Faith as a virtue
In [[Dante]]'s [[Divine Comedy]], [[St Peter]] is most identified with faith. This is appropriate, since he was the 'rock' on which the Church was built, just as a Christian life must be rooted in faith. Peter's great faith is shown in Matthew 14:28-31, when he is briefly able to walk on water until doubt enters his mind.
In [[Dante]]'s [[Divine Comedy]], [[St Peter]] is most identified with faith. This is appropriate, since he was the 'rock' on which the Church was built, just as a Christian life must be rooted in faith. Peter's great faith is shown in Matthew 14:28-31, when he is briefly able to walk on water until doubt enters his mind.
Christian philosopher [[Robert Merrihew Adams]] wrote a book, ''The Virtue of Faith'', to defend the idea of faith as virtuous. Consider the case of a loved one accused of some wrongdoing, but who protests their innocence - our relationship with them creates a special ethical obligation to believe what they say, which does not apply to the protestations of innocence of strangers; at the same time, that obligation is not absolute, but can be overturned by the evidence. Adams uses this example to argue that some beliefs we are ethically obliged to hold, and argues that the existence of God could be such a belief for the believer.
Contrary to Adams' view is that favored by many atheists, classically expressed by William Kingdon Clifford, in his 1877 essay ''The Ethics of Belief'', which states "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." However, while Clifford can point to individual cases where believing things without evidence is unethical, those cases fail to demonstrate that his principle is true in every case, and he ignores valid cases such as those which Adams cites which lead to the opposite conclusion.
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