okay so in this video I will be looking at what is sometimes called the pragmatic justification for religious belief and in particular I will be looking at the argument that is presented by a famous philosopher and psychologist by the name of William James um now a couple of uh introductory words about uh William James is that he Pro promotes a view uh of on the nature of Truth known as pragmatism and without getting into a lot of detail about this uh pragmatism basically has is a philosophy or it's a philosophical view about the nature of Truth and it basically maintains that um that when we say that a belief is true we're we're sort of highlighting that the idea that that belief enables us to successfully guide our actions so to give you an example um let's say uh if you take a moral belief uh it's wrong to murder somebody um is that belief true yes or no a pragmatist like James would say that yes it's true why is this true well it's true because it enables us to guide our actions in society in other words the moral belief that it is wrong to let's say murder somebody that that moral belief enables us to live together in a society obviously we aim to do that uh we want to live in a society that's characterized by order and Harmony um as opposed TOA uh Anarchy uh so that belief belief is true to the extent that it enables us it helps us to guide our actions uh relative to certain goals right that we are that we seek to accomplish as human beings in other words the idea here is that truth is understood in terms of practice right uh uh these things are they they they have a practical effect and so since and that practical effect is that they enable us to successfully guide our actions so that is the sort of like the context of James's way of thinking or his philosophy it's once again it's a philosophical view which was developed here in the United States and it is called pragmatism now um the question that is raised here is is it rational to believe in the face of inconclusive evidence that is suppose you're fa with a belief where there seems to be good reasons to believe in that um but there also seems to be some good reasons against that in other words you're faced with a situation or you're faced with an issue where the evidence doesn't really decide clearly one way or the other what should you do in that particular situation notice that obviously that doesn't apply to every situ situation right there are some situations that the evidence is pretty clear like like for instance at least nowadays it's it's it's a it's uh very clearly established that the Earth is revolves around the sun right I mean in the Middle Ages they did not have that belief but now it's pretty conclusive and it's very we don't really take seriously anybody who would say something different to that um so that obviously that's an issue where the evidence is clear and it's conclusive but there are lots of issues that are not that the evidence can go kind of both ways I guess we could say um so the evidence is somewhat inconclusive so what should we do how should our approach be with those kinds of issues um and obviously one of those issues is going to be the existence of God right so James is going to highlight the fact that want to comes to belief in the existence of God there seems to be some good reasons in favor of it but there's also some good reasons that speak against belief in God so what should we do in that situation now to propably understand James's argument it's important to real quickly look at the intellectual context in which James is writing uh so um so this um so my presentation of James's argument is divided up into two videos so in this first video I'm going to be briefly spending most of the time looking at the intellectual context of James uh because it's important for you to understand that in order for you to understand the argument that he is presenting in favor of belief in God all right so what is the intellectual context in which he's writing what I mean by that is obviously every philosopher every thinker usually uh you know when they write uh they think they often times they are in conversation with other thinkers uh that are promoting a specific point of view and during James's time there was a influential uh mathematician and philosopher who promoted a view known as evidentialism the name of this individual is WK Clifford and what in the world is uh evidentialism evidentialism is a position with respect to beliefs which BAS basically maintains that a person is Justified in a belief only if you have sufficient evidence for that belief that is that we have a certain Duty with respects to beliefs and what is that Duty uh the duty is that I should only believe those things that I have good sufficient evidence for them otherwise my belief is not rational so I have a moral duty to only believe those things for which you have sufficient evidence now to elaborate a little bit more on Clifford's Viewpoint Clifford points out that obviously beliefs are very important um uh to quote from one of his works his book his essay which is entitled the ethics of belief he says the following no belief held by one man or woman however seemingly trivial the belief and however obscure the believer is actually ever insignificant or without its effects on the fate of mankind um the basic idea here is obviously is that ideas have consequences in other words what a person believes about certain things uh has very significant consequences for life okay so with that in mind uh Clifford uh uses an illustration and he uses the illustration of a ship owner right so he speaks about this person who has a ship and that it's and and the question is whether he's going whether the ship is seaworthy you know those is it able to carry passengers uh on this trip um um in the specific example that he gives um Clifford points out that the ship owner um you know when confronted with the question is the ship ship capable you know is it is it a good conditions to carry these passengers the ship owner sort of assumes that the ship is safe and secure um doesn't really tell the captain or the crew and so the ship is sent out with all of the passengers um and unfortunately it turns out that the ship was not secure uh was not safe and in the middle of the storm everybody you know the ship went down and everybody died basically as a result so the question that Clifford raises is is the ship owner responsible for the deaths of those people and the answer would be yes right he's guilty of their deaths no matter how earnestly he believed that the ship was safe now um Clifford points out that even if the ship owner had been lucky and the people made it to safety he is still guilty in other words he's still not basing his beliefs in a rational way uh because uh he's basically guilty of putting these people at risk it just happened that in that second scenario he happens to be lucky and the ship made it all right so what's the point of that analogy the point of that analogy is that we have a moral duty to question everything we believe to see if it is based on sufficient evidence and so to summarize Clifford's evidentialism to quote from his essay on the topic the ethics of belief Clifford basically says that it is wrong always everywhere and for anyone's to believe upon insufficient evidence now how does this apply to religious Faith according to Clifford what is faith faith is confidence in what we hope for and Assurance about what we do not see in other words you believe in something that you can't really prove um so Clifford says well what's the problem with that way of thinking um it doesn't really give you sufficient evidence for that belief and So based on his argument here Clifford points out that it is that faith is basically an irrational belief why because by definition faith is to believe in something for which you do not really have strong evidence for otherwise it wouldn't be Faith uh so to believe in something by faith is to commit yourself to a Bel that you hope is true but you don't really have strong evidence to support that it is true and so once again Clifford will argue that that kind of a position is always irrational and it is wrong for a person to have that type of belief okay so that is Clifford's evidentialism um William James will respond to Clifford's evidentialism he's going to disagree with this and he's going to give a couple of reasons as to why he thinks that Clifford is mistaken so that I would do in the next video on William James