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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 the most horrible story I've ever heard. Why would God do such horrible things to a good person just to prove a point to Satan?” Kyle reasons here that if there really were a God, there would be justice in the world. God wouldn't reward someone like Cartman and neither would he allow people like Job and Kyle to suffer.

We can see how all of this applies to Pascal's Wager. Imagine someone who's a really good person – loving, honest, helpful, kind – yet she doesn't believe in God. She thinks she ought to be moral to make the world a better place, let's say, not because God says so or to get some personal reward. Does it really make sense to think that God (who is supposed to be supremely good, remember) would allow such a person to be tormented for all eternity?

A second – and much worse problem for Pascal's argument – is that he assumes that we know the possible outcomes of our wager. Pascal says that God rewards believers and punishes nonbelievers. But this is just an assumption. If we had proof of this, we would already know that the religious view of things is true, and we wouldn't need a prudential argument. Remember, the point of the Wager is to convince us to believe when we have no evidence of God's existence or nonexistence. Without evidence, there are lots of possibilities to consider. Perhaps God rewards everyone, or maybe there's no afterlife at all. Maybe God values reason and punishes those who believe blindly without any evidence. There are endless possibilities.

Even if we could show that only religious believers get rewarded (and how would we prove that without making the Wager pointless?), we still have the problem of which religious beliefs to have. In “Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?” we're treated to a bunch of religious folks who, to their horror, find themselves in hell. They are told that they have the wrong religious beliefs, since only the Mormons go to heaven!