1) The characteristic attitude of the skeptic is not denial, but doubt. There are three main mental attitudes toward a proposition: affirm, deny, suspend. To doubt is neither to affirm nor to deny. It can therefore be assimilated to suspension. Thus a skeptic neither affirms nor denies; he suspends judgment, withholds assent, takes no stand. This obvious distinction between doubting and denying is regularly ignored in political polemics. Thus global warming skeptics are often unfairly tagged by leftists as global warming denialists as if they are willfully rejecting some well-known fact.
2) The skeptic is not a cynic. A cynic is a disillusioned idealist. The cynic affirms an ideal, notes that people fail to live up to it, allows himself to become inordinately upset over this failure, exaggerates the extent of the failure, and then either harshly judges his fellows or wrongly impugns their integrity. His attitude is predicated on the dogmatic affirmation of an ideal. Skeptics, by contrast are free, or try to be free, of dogmatic commitments, and of consequent moral umbrage.
Cynic: "All politicians are liars!" Skeptic: "What makes you think that scrupulous truth-telling is the best policy in all circumstances? And what makes you think that truth is a high value?"
3) One can be skeptical about a belief or a class of beliefs, but also about the rational justification for a belief or a class of beliefs. Thus skeptics divide into belief skeptics and justification skeptics. (See R. Fogelin, Walking the Tightrope of Reason, Oxford UP, 2003, 98) You can be one without the other. There are various combinatorially possible positions. Here are three of several interesting ones:
a) S doubts whether p is justified, but S does not doubt that p: he affirms that p.
b) S doubts whether p is justified, and in consequence doubts that p.
c) S doubts whether p is justified, and concludes that one ought to suspend judgment on p.
Ad (a). Suppose Tom canvasses the arguments for and against the existence of God and concludes that it's a wash: the arguments and considerations he is aware of balance and cancel out. Tom finds himself in a state of evidential equipoise. As a result he doubts whether belief in God is justified. But he decides to believe anyway. In this example Tom does not doubt or deny that God exists; he affirms that God exists despite doubting whether the belief is rationally justified. With respect to the existence of God, Tom is a justification skeptic but not a belief skeptic.
Ad (b). Like Tom, Tim doubts whether belief that God exists is justified. Unlike Tom, Tim transfers his doubt about the justification to the belief itself. Tim is both a justification skeptic and a belief skeptic.
Ad (c). And then there is Cliff. He thinks it is wrong always and everywhere and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence. Like Tim and Tom, he doubts whether the existence of God is justified and for the same reason: the arguments pro et contra balance and cancel. He reasonably takes evidential equipoise as entailing that there is insufficient evidence for either limb of a contradictory pair of theses. But, unlike Tom and Tim, Cliff infers a normative conclusion from his evidential equipoise: it is morally wrong, a violation of the ethics of belief, to believe that God exists given that the evidence is insufficient.
For now I am concerned only with the rationality of doing as Tom does.
Tom examines both sides of the question. He does his level best to be fair and balanced. But he finds no argument or consideration to incline him one way or the other. Now it seems perfectly obvious to me that our man is free to believe anyway, that is, in our example either to affirm the existence of God or to reject the existence of God. He is not psychologically compelled by his state of evidential equipoise to suspend belief.
But while Tom is free to affirm, would it be rational for him to affirm the existence of God? Yes, because for beings of our constitution it is prudentially (as opposed to theoretically) rational to believe beyond the evidence. Consider the case of
The Alpine Hiker
An avalanche has him stranded on a mountainside facing a chasm. He cannot return the way he came, but if he stays where he is he dies of exposure. His only hope is to jump the chasm. The preponderance of evidence is that this is impossible: he has no epistemic reason to think that he can make the jump. But our hiker knows that what one can do is in part determined by what one believes one can do, that "exertion generally follows belief," as Jeffrey Jordan puts it. If the hiker can bring himself to believe that he can make the jump, then he increases his chances of making it. "The point of the Alpine hiker case is that pragmatic belief-formation is sometimes both morally and intellectually permissible."
We should therefore admit that there are cases in which epistemic considerations are reasonably defeated by prudential considerations.
And now we come to the Big Questions. Should I believe that I am libertarianly free? That it matters how I live? That something is at stake in life? That I will in some way or other be held accountable after death for what I do and leave undone here below? That God exists? That I am more than a transient bag of chemical reactions? That a Higher Life is possible?
Not only do I not have evidence that entails answers to any of these questions, I probably do not have evidence that makes a given answer more probable than not. Let us assume that it is not more probable than not that God exists and that (in consequence) it is not more probable than not that I have a higher destiny in communion with God.
But here's the thing. I have to believe that I have a higher destiny if I am to act so as to attain it. It is like the situation with the new neighbors. I have to believe that they are decent people if I am to act in such a way as to establish good relations with them. Believing the best of them, even on little or no evidence, is pragmatically useful and prudentially rational. I have to believe beyond the evidence. Similarly in the Alpine Hiker case. He has to believe that he can make the jump if he is to have any chance of making it. So even though it is epistemically irrational for him to believe he can make it on the basis of the available evidence, it is prudentially rational for him to bring himself to believe. You could say that the leap of faith raises the probability of the leap of chasm.
What if he is wrong? Then he dies. But if he sits down in the snow in despair he also dies, and more slowly. By believing beyond the evidence he lives his last moments better than he would have by giving up. He lives courageously and actively. He lives like a man.
Here we have a pragmatic argument that is not truth-sensitive: it doesn't matter whether he will fail or succeed in the jump. Either way, he lives better here and now if he believes he can cross the chasm to safety. And this, even though the belief is not supported by the evidence.
It is the same with God and the soul. The pragmatic argument in favor of them is truth-insensitive: whether or not it is a good argument is independent of whether or not God and the soul are real. For suppose I'm wrong. I live my life under the aegis of God, freedom, and immortality, but then one day I die and become nothing. I was just a bag of chemicals after all. It was all just a big bloody joke. Electrochemistry played me for a fool. So what?
What did I lose by being a believer? Nothing of any value. Indeed, I have gained value since studies show that believers tend to be happier people. But if I am right, then I have done what is necessary to enter into my higher destiny. Either way I am better off than without the belief in God and the soul. If I am not better off in this life and the next, then I am better off in this life alone.
I am either right or wrong about God and the soul. If I am right, and I live my beliefs, then then I have lived in a way that not only makes me happier here and now, but also fits me for my higher destiny. If I am wrong, then I am simply happier here and now.
So how can I lose? Even if they are illusions, believing in God and the soul incurs no costs and disbelieving brings no benefits.
Addendum
Dave Bagwill hits me with a powerful objection, which I will put in my own way.
It may be that mere intellectual assent to propositions about God and the soul "incurs no costs." But how could that be true for those who live their faith? There are plenty of examples of those whose lived faith has cost them their liberty, their livelihoods, and their lives. As we speak, Christians are being driven from their homes and slaughtered in the Middle East by adherents of the 'religion of peace.'
This is a good objection and at the very least forces me to qualify what I wrote, perhaps along the following lines: religious belief and practice incur no real costs for those of us fortunate to live in societies in which there is freedom of religion.
How long freedom of religion can last in the USA is a good question given the leftist assault on religious liberty. Yet another reason to battle the leftist scum. Luckily, we now have a chance with Trump as president.
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