In Brand Blanshard's major defence of reason in religion, Reason and Belief, he criticizes both Roman Catholics and Protestants for advocating contradictory theological doctrines and for believing beyond what the evidence supports. Claiming belief to be an ethical matter, with one morally responsible for one's religious beliefs, he holds that one is morally obligated in such metaphysical matters to believe only what the evidence warrants. Blanshard finds that religious beliefs typically fail to meet the standard of this ethics of belief, and thus his ethics appears inhospitable to religious belief.
