Student Question
What conditions, according to William James in "The Will to Believe", justify belief in God without decisive evidence? Could these conditions also justify atheism?
Quick answer:
William James, in "The Will to Believe," argues that belief in God can be justified without evidence if adopting the belief is necessary to discover the evidence. This principle, which emphasizes emotional and heartfelt reasons, could theoretically justify atheism if one were to adopt disbelief as a hypothesis to challenge the existence of a specific deity, similar to how atheists might reject particular gods. James suggests that religious beliefs often lack conclusive evidence, yet their significance can warrant belief.
In his 1896 lecture "The Will to Believe," William James argues that one may be justified in believing in God without sufficient evidence if discovering that evidence depends on first adopting the belief. James makes an analogy with confidence in one's own abilities. Are you capable, for instance, of completing a PhD in physics? If you do not try, you will never know, and in order to try, you will first have to believe that you can do it.
This does not seem at first sight to offer a justification for atheism, since atheism is a purely negative belief. However, well-known atheists such as Christopher Hitchens have pointed out that everyone is an atheist with respect to most gods. Christians do not believe in Zeus or Odin. While a general disbelief in any gods may be described as purely negative, a specific contention that a particular god does not exist...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
could fit James's criteria.
Suppose you are particularly horrified by the idea of the Christian hell. You might decide to adopt the belief that the Christian God does not exist as a preliminary step in making the argument that hell must be a fiction. Bart Ehrman's Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife is just such an argument, from an atheist who is also a professor of religious studies.
References
In his essay “The Will to Believe,” William James mentions conditions other than evidence than can support belief in God. He argues that adopting the belief may provide a way to later gain that evidence. Furthermore, emotional reasons rather than logically supported ones, or those that come from the heart rather than the head, are suitable in questions of religious faith. James also applies a logical argument pertaining to the formation of a hypothesis that leads to discovering suitable evidence.
Posing a question about belief in God in itself suggests an openness to consider an affirmative response. This further allows for the questioner to propose a hypothesis that could then be supported by relevant evidence. Distinct from a scientific proposition, however, James suggests that statements regarding religious belief imply the possibility that adopting them could result in the desired outcome being established as true. Part of the character of religious beliefs, James put forth, is that conclusive evidence might be absent. People could hold such beliefs if they stem from hypotheses whose conditions include being momentous, not trivial.