I stumbled onto a YouTube video yesterday that I've just watched for the second time. It's a talk given by Sam Harris on the nature of belief and its consequences, and I just think he makes a number of really interesting integrations. The gentleman who introduces Harris is a bit abrasive, but Harris himself is quite polite and sincerely tries not to offend. If you're sensitive to criticism of religious belief, you should find this relatively mild. With reference to the title of this post, he makes a very sound and important distinction between hope and belief that I think is not obvious to a lot of people all of the time. For example, religious belief is oftentimes expressed in terms of hopefulness. But, as Harris points out, your behavior will be quite different when you hope you've won the lottery versus when you believe you've won the lottery. Now, that may sound obvious, but consider it in a religious context. There are many who honestly are not certain about religious propositions as to the nature and origin of existence, yet find comfort in such "possibilities" and hope they are true. And yet, they are very unlikely to take actions...