We cannot escape the issue [of faith] by remaining sceptical and waiting for more light, because, although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve. It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisevely as if he went and married some one else? Scepticism, then is not avoidance of option; it is an option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error - that is your faith veoter's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field. To preach scepticism to us as a duty until 'sufficient evidence' for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in presence of the religious hypothesis that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true...dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear?
William James - "The Will to Believe"
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