Atheism and Theism 49pity to deprive people of their religious beliefs, since these gave them solace,
and he said that he himself regretted not being able to share these beliefs.
Now consider the case of a hypothetical person Mary who believes that if she
continues the study of philosophy she would lead an unhappy life, missing
belief in God and perhaps belief in an afterlife. Should she abandon philo-
sophy and confine her studies entirely to (say) electronics or pure mathematics?
Mary might feel that there would be something shameful in taking such a
course, but it is not easy to see how from a consequentialist and prudential
point of view it would not be the right one.
Of course consequentialism is not (and in my opinion ought not to be)
purely prudential. It needs to consider not only one’s own happiness but that
of all sentient creatures. Now Mary might consider that her religious beliefs,
solacing though they are for herself, are indirectly harmful. She might point
to various consequences of religious belief that she considers harmful. Reli-
gious wars might be one of them, overpopulation with the probability of mass
starvation, disease and eventual world population collapse, might be another,
with religious beliefs making population control hard to bring about. So
Mary might think in a consequentialist way that arguing herself out of her
religious belief might improve the general happiness even though not her
own happiness. Alternatively she might think that knowing the truth is one
of her intrinsic values. She might want the truth at all costs, even at that of
her own happiness. Let us for the sake of argument suppose that Mary’s
beliefs about the bad social consequences of religion are false or that the evil
effects are outweighed by the good social works undertaken in the name of
religion. What about the prudential considerations?
Once again, we might consider that Mary could be wrong about the
empirical facts. In my experience arguing oneself out of one’s religious beliefs
can bring about peace of mind, since one does not need all the time to square
one’s religious beliefs with continuing developments in cosmology, biology
and for that matter philosophy. (Some deny that there is nowadays conflict
between science and religion but I have challenged this view on pp. 9–13.)
The philosopher and logician Arthur Prior once confirmed to me in conver-
sation that this sort of peace of mind can indeed come from rejection of one’s
previous theological beliefs.
In his essay ‘The Will to Believe’ William James expressed a good deal of
distaste for Pascal’s argument, holding that Pascal’s talk of believing by our
volition seems ‘from one point of view, simply silly’ and ‘from another point
of view it is vile’.^88 Silly because for a Protestant the remedy of masses and
holy water would not be a live option, and vile because of its difference from
the scientific attitude of testing hypotheses by evidence. Nevertheless, James
did think that if we are concerned with a forced option of how to live our
lives then the option of faith and a leap in the dark is an appropriate one to