be likely. Or to take another example, when Cartman suggests (“Jewpacabra”) that the Jewpacabra is real and coming for them, the leaders of Sooper Foods reluctantly cancel the Easter egg hunt since they can't prove that no such creature exists. Kyle has it right here, as he tells Cartman, “There's no reference of it anywhere on the known species webpage,” and anyone who says otherwise “is either lying or stupid.” We shouldn't fall into the “disproof” trap. If our beliefs can't be supported, then they should be rejected, or at least put aside until further evidence comes about.
But believing things without sufficient evidence hardly seems like a good way to lead a successful life. It's difficult to understand how making decisions without evaluating the available evidence would work in the long run. Imagine picking a college, a career, a place to live, a mechanic, a doctor, or anything, for that matter, without reasoning and examining the facts involved. Imagine going through your life merely guessing whenever a decision is to be made, or going by how you feel at the moment, or basing decisions on what's said by someone who may not be reliable.
Take as an illustration the time when Kyle became very ill and needed a kidney transplant (“Cherokee Hair Tampons”). Instead, his mother took him to the new “Holistic Healer” in town, Miss Information. At her shop, the townspeople lined up to buy all sorts of useless products. Her employees, introduced as Native Americans, must surely know all about healing! Fortunately for Kyle, these “Native Americans” (who turned out to be Cheech and Chong) were honest enough to convince Mrs. Broflovski that Kyle was really sick and should be taken to a real doctor. Stan, who realized from the start that the “healers” were frauds and their methods unscientific, had been urging this all along. He later tricks Cartman into giving up a kidney, so everything works out well for Kyle in the end. Often though, when we start with beliefs that have been uncritically accepted, the outcome isn't so fortunate. When the South Park version of the company BP (the one who caused the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico), continued drilling without carefully examining the potential risks, they proceeded to create an even worse disaster by ripping a dimensional hole in space allowing the evil Cthulhu to cause great devastation (“Coon2: Hindsight”).
What's at stake is not just having correct beliefs. As we've seen, having incorrect beliefs can have dire consequences. Notice too, how closely beliefs are tied to action. In “Trapped in The Closet,” Stan tells Tom Cruise that he's not as good of an actor as Leonardo DiCaprio, Gene Hackman, or “the guy who played Napoleon Dynamite.” This causes poor Tom to become depressed, and he locks himself in the closet. Now, why should a famous actor care what a little boy thinks of his acting skills? Well, he would care if he was a Scientologist and believed that that little boy is the reincarnation of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. And Mr. Cruise believes this, because the current Scientology leaders told him. So his illogical actions are motivated by a ridiculous belief that's held, not on the basis of any testable evidence (well, they did test Stan's “body thetans” with their “E‐Meters”—more unsupported nonsense), but solely on the basis of authority. And the “authority” here is hardly reliable or objective; in fact, later Cruise admits to Stan that it's all made up and he's doing it for the money.
Faith, Self‐Interest, and Evidence
Many people say their beliefs – especially their religious beliefs – are based on faith. What does this mean? And is this connection a good idea? First, let's be clear what is meant by faith in this context. Sometimes faith means a kind of confidence. In “Scott Tenorman Must Die” Cartman was confident that his friends would betray him, and they did. This allowed his plan for revenge on Scott to work perfectly. Cartman, we might say, had faith that his plan would work.
Now this kind of faith isn't opposed to reason and evidence. Cartman reasoned that he could accurately predict what his friends would do based on their past actions. This is perfectly reasonable. If, on the other hand, Mr. Garrison had faith that his students would all work hard on their homework assignments, his confidence would be misplaced. He has no good reason to think so. So faith in the sense of being confident may be reasonable or not, depending on one's evidence.
Talking about religious faith, however, we don't mean confidence based on reason. This kind of faith is in fact opposed to reason; quite simply, it is belief without good evidence. After hearing the story of Joseph Smith, a story that Stan points out is unsupported and contrary to known facts, Stan says, “Wait: Mormons actually know this story, and they still believe Joseph Smith was a prophet?” The reply, of course, is “Stan, it's all a matter of faith.” So, faith appears to be a kind of fallback position we can take when we can't support our views. But this shouldn't be encouraged, for it would render any belief whatsoever acceptable.
Does a belief have to be supported by evidence in order for it to be a rational belief? Can there be reasons that justify believing something besides just evidence? Let's make a distinction between prudential reasons and evidential reasons. The difference between them is easy to illustrate with an example. Suppose that I tell you that John Edward – the self‐proclaimed psychic whom Stan puts in his place – really can communicate with the dead. Since you watch South Park, you know that John Edward is the “biggest douche in the universe,” so you don't believe my claim for a second and you demand proof. Suppose I tell you that if you do believe it, I'll give you lots of money (I show you the full briefcase); but if you don't believe it, you get nothing. Now you have a reason to believe that John Edward is not a fraud, and it's a good reason. But you still don't have a shred of evidence. Your reason, instead, is prudential: it's in your best interest to believe.
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), a French mathematician and philosopher, attempted to justify religious belief in exactly the same way. His argument has come to be known as “Pascal's Wager.”2 Pascal urges us to think of belief in God as a bet. If you wager on God existing (if you believe in Him) and God exists, you win. God rewards believers with eternal joy and happiness. But if you don't believe and God exists, then you lose. God punishes nonbelievers with eternal suffering and pain. What if God doesn't exist? Well, in that case the nonbeliever has the truth and the believer doesn't; but whatever positive or negative results emerge are negligible in comparison to what happens if there is a God. The point is, if you have any chance at all to achieve eternal peace and avoid eternal damnation, you're a fool not to go for it. Prudential reasons reign: it's in your best interest to believe in God.
Notice a few things about Pascal's Wager. First, he's not trying to prove that God exists. If we could prove that there is a God, then the Wager would be pointless (the same would be true if we could prove that there is no God). Pascal starts by assuming that we don't know either way. Second, Pascal isn't arguing that we should simply go on faith alone. He's instead arguing that religious belief is reasonable because it's prudential. Of course, there have also been many criticisms of the wager that show that it's not a very good argument for religious belief. Let's look at two of these, as they are nicely illustrated in South Park.
First, you might wonder why God would choose to torture someone for all eternity simply because they don't believe in Him. Isn't God supposed to be perfectly good? Why would a good being wish pain and suffering for anyone? In the episode “Cartmanland,” Kyle wonders the same thing. Cartman inherits a million dollars and buys an amusement park, while Kyle suffers from hemorrhoid pain. Kyle begins to lose his faith as well as his will to live. If there were a God, he reasons, He wouldn't reward someone like Cartman (who's evil) while allowing Kyle (who's good) to suffer. Kyle says: “Cartman is the biggest asshole in the world. How is it that God gives him a million dollars? Why? How can you do this? There are people starving in Alabama, and you give Cartman a million dollars? If someone like Cartman can get his own theme park, then there is no God. There's no God, dude.”
Kyle's parents, in an attempt to restore his faith, tell him that God sometimes causes us to suffer, perhaps to test our faith, and they read him the story of Job. (Incidentally, the idea of God testing us makes little sense. If he is all‐knowing, he would already know what we would do, rendering any test pointless.) But the story horrifies Kyle: “That's