Mehdi Akhavan; Seyyed Amin Moosavizadeh
Volume 4, Issue 1 , January 2015, , Pages 1-14
Abstract
William Clifford in the essay ‘The Ethics of Belief’, claimed that to believe on the basis of insufficient evidences is wrong, anywhere, anytime and for everyone. In the article ‘will to believe’, William James, replying this claim, argued that religious belief is a genuine decision ...
Read More
William Clifford in the essay ‘The Ethics of Belief’, claimed that to believe on the basis of insufficient evidences is wrong, anywhere, anytime and for everyone. In the article ‘will to believe’, William James, replying this claim, argued that religious belief is a genuine decision and in such decisions, Faith justification is will to believe. The principal claim of James in the essay is to define genuine choice and to assign monotheistic faith to it. Believing in God if be a genuine decision must meet three characteristics: a) the inevitability; b) being alive; and d) being risky. In this paper, after reviewing a summary of the most important ideas of James and criticisms of him, we will check the validity of the assignment of the three characteristics to Faith.
