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Belief Should Be Proportioned to the Evidence is formally linked to four religions in this atlas: Agnosticism, Atheism, Deism and Secular Humanism. This is the one entry in this tier where the atlas does not need to assemble the convergence from four separate notes. Its own description states it directly.

The Point Where Four Positions Agree

The atlas's own description: "The evidentialist principle common to atheism, agnosticism, humanism and deism, and the point at which those four otherwise distinct positions agree. Hume put it as the wise man proportioning his belief to the evidence, and W. K. Clifford pressed it into an explicitly moral claim in The Ethics of Belief, arguing that it is wrong always and everywhere to believe anything on insufficient evidence, since credulity is a habit that spreads and beliefs are the ground of action. Its critics answer that the principle is self-undermining or impossibly strict; its defenders treat it as the discipline that distinguishes inquiry from wishing." Four religions that otherwise disagree about what exists, whether a god can be known, and what follows from either answer, converge on one shared method for how to hold a belief at all.

Three Organisations Built on the Same Principle, Not Counted Among the Four

Three further groups are formally linked to this same principle in this atlas, the American Humanist Association, Humanists International and New Atheism, but they are organisations rather than religions in this atlas's own typing, so they are named here rather than counted toward the four. The distinction matters: the four religions hold the principle as a position; the three organisations are institutions built to advocate it. Four otherwise distinct religions agreeing on one evidentialist standard, and three named movements organised around defending that same standard, is a wider convergence than a single count can say by itself.

Where To Read More

• Belief should be proportioned to the evidenceMoral PreceptsThe principle itself, stated by the atlas as the point where four otherwise distinct positions agree
• AgnosticismSecular / NontheisticOne of the four religions holding the principle
• AtheismSecular / NontheisticOne of the four religions holding the principle
• DeismSecular / NontheisticOne of the four religions holding the principle
• Secular HumanismSecular / NontheisticOne of the four religions holding the principle
• American Humanist AssociationSecular HumanismAn organisation built on the principle, of denomination type and not counted toward the four religions
• Humanists InternationalSecular HumanismAn organisation built on the principle, of denomination type and not counted toward the four religions
• New AtheismAtheismAn organisation built on the principle, of denomination type and not counted toward the four religions