Toward the end of the piece, he notes an argument that people have used as a rebuttal to the ideas in his book: "Many readers of 'Letter to a Christian Nation' have taken inspiration from Blaise Pascal and argued that evidence (of God) is beside the point and that religious believers have simply taken the wiser of two bets: if a believer is wrong about God, there is not much harm to him or to anyone else, and if he is right, he wins eternal happiness; if an atheist is wrong, however, he is destined to spend eternity in hell" to which Harris responds "... Another problem with the wager—and it is a problem that infects religious thinking generally—is its suggestion that a rational person can knowingly will himself to believe a proposition for which he has no evidence. A person can profess any creed he likes, of course, but to really believe it, he must believe that it is true. To believe that there is a God, for instance, is to believe that you are not just fooling yourself; it is to believe that you stand in some relation to God’s existence such that, if He didn’t exist, you wouldn’t believe in him. How does Pascal’s wager fit into this scheme? It doesn’t" (The Empty Wager).
My first thought on reading the "wiser of two bets" statement was that it would be the same as my trying to convince myself that I like onions because I've been told that if I don't eat onions, I'll be doomed to a life of flavorless food. There I would sit, singing the praises of a Bloomin' Onion, all the while hating it; on the other hand, I could continue to refuse onions and spend an eternity denied the experience of having an overly aggressive bulb overwhelm the flavor of every dish it's in. *scoffs* Comparing the triviality of onion flavoring to questions of religious belief? Yes.
The real reason I brought this up, however, is because I spent a good twenty minutes trying to grasp the meaning of this sentence: "To believe that there is a God, for instance, is to believe that you are not just fooling yourself; it is to believe that you stand in some relation to God's existence such that, if He didn't exist, you wouldn't believe in him." It's sitting right outside of my comprehension, like the meaning of "ironic." I don't understand the last part, but I'm sure I'm over-thinking it. Why would a person who is a believer have an occasion to think that if God didn't exist, he or she wouldn't believe in Him? Is it "God exists, and I believe in him. If God did not exist, I would have no impetus to believe in a god, therefore my very belief in God proves there is a God"?
I just know I'm going to be watching TV later tonight and this is still going to be going through my head. On a side note, look how cute Sam is!
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