William James' "The Will To Believe"

As an example, consider that matchless may help to make another person' s post fri cobbler's lastly towards oneself by adopting a friendly attitude toward the educational activity: "X" is friendly towards me." "I will behave in a friendly manner toward 'X' because I know that 'X' likes me."

The higher up can be viewed as an example of the selffulfilling prophesy. We hold back what we want to see, and we see those things which reinforce our previously acquired belief systems. We may use reason to establish that paragon exists, but pack asserts that a need for God to exist is enough apology for belief. He adheres to this standard when considering living, as opposed to dead, hypotheses. In this manner, a believer will see evidence of God's will, while the nonbeliever, for whom God is not a vital issue, will see the absence seizure of God's presence.

In his es study, James repeatedly makes the show up that we have to take aim one way or the other: there is a God, or there is not a God. He argues that level(p) an agnostic (and, by extension, an atheist) such(prenominal) as the "enfant terrible" Clifford, who uncomplete affirms nor denies God's existence, has already decided against such an existence. The agnostic decides to give up all hope of winning a possible the true in order to avoid a possible misconduct in a situation for which evidence must in principle be inconclusive. The agnostic's beneficial to disbelieve

The believer may, in justifying his acts, regard as fundamental such judgments as "happiness is intrinsically worthwhile" or "the summation of knowledge is good for its own sake," whereas some believers may say that only the service of God is intrinsically valuable.

If it is a compress if irrationality, which in any normal sense of the word it is not, to hope a value judgment that is not based on another one, then the atheist is not one tatter more irrational than the believer. (187)

The atheist and believer may end up in the same place, having arrived there by diametrical paths. Certainly the atheist is no less rational than the believer, or viceversa. A passage from The Encyclopedia of Philosophy illustrates this point:

in this case is no greater than the religious man's right to believe.

Can James be read to interpret godlessness as one of the risky choices that an intrepid person major power make? Would he respect another's mental freedom to not believe as much as he value the believer? The answer is yes, and yet James shows a difficult bias toward belief in God. This is because, for him, atheism is not a living hypothesis. The conception of a Godless universe is an loth(predicate) thought, and must be dispelled. He chooses God, equating the choice as he does with a possible path through an otherwise blinding snowstorm.

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