Our whole society functions on the concept of belief. Every time you get into your car and go for a drive you are bound by 'belief'. There is no physical law of the universe that says the other diver approaching a red light at the next intersection will slow down and stop rather than keep going and collide with your vehicle - even though you have the green light. Yet we all operate every day in the 'belief' that this is in fact what will happen. We 'believe' even though every year our hospitals and cemeteries get filled with the bodies of people whose 'belief' failed them. We 'believe' our partners will be faithful, 'believe' our friends will support us. We even borrow and lend money in the 'belief; that those debts will be honored. Some people think that race or religion gives them the right to persecute others. Some believe the opposite. So is belief immoral? I think it just comes down to what you are choosing to believe in.
Nonsense all sorts of beliefs exist. Some are down right horrible, some are innocuous, some are noble. To state that beliefs don't exist is to claim human beings are incapable of rational thought which would mean their actions can't be judged
No clear distinction on this issue, is there? What if a person kills his pregnant wife and guts her like a deer because he believes God spoke to him and told him she was carrying Satan's baby? This actually happened, and he claimed the whole way through the trial that he did the moral thing. That's a pretty extreme example, but if you believe you're doing something for the right reasons, and it turns out to be something bad, how does morality play into it?
Belief is very powerful. Belief can manifest things into reality that are not real to you or me but are real to them, nonetheless... Some people with schizophrenia can manifest things into reality that are not real to me or you but are real to them-like smelling a pineapple as if that pineapple were right in front of their face but nothing is there. Some amputees experience pain in limbs they no longer have. That pain is as real to them as if they still had those limbs. What may be true to you may not be true to someone else but what is true to one mind may not be true to your mind but what is true to a mind is true to that mind.
That's why we have psychological institutions. Every so often you run into people who believe bat **** crazy stuff. We call that psycoses and currently the law does not hold insane people to the same standards as everyone else.
The word "reasons" is the distinction. Belief is really just our (limited and imperfect) perception of things. We still have to apply reasoning to those things to decide what we'll do as a result. There is no moral element to the belief but there is to the reasoning. Believing a woman is carrying the child of Satan isn't immoral in itself. Killing a woman, even if you do think she is carrying to child of Satan is immoral because it isn't rational. That's also why people who have a mental illness preventing them from making rational decisions aren't punished for them but detained and treated (in civilised societies at least ).
Let's sort out some terminology before we get too much farther. Knowledge is a tool. A belief is a means of applying that tool, or a lens through which to examine that tool.
It's always good to be clear about definitions. Moral is another of those words that we tend to have slightly different meanings for. Since there is no universal moral code, it's going to depend on our individual interpretations.
May we take this to mean there is reasonable doubt as to the immorality of that particular act of butchery?
You can know that a tomato plant and tomato's come from a tomato seed. But unless you believe that planting it will produce the desired results, you will not plant it. You must also water, fertilize, weed, and tend to it regularly. And still, things can go wrong. So you must maintain belief in the outcome so that you don't give up. It's miraculous that one tiny seed can produce 100 tomato's on one plant, each with 200 seeds. So in one generation, even if you eat half your first crop, you can wind up with ten thousand tomato plants...all from one tiny seed and a little belief.