William James Belief In God

After William James’s students “got well imbued with the logical spirit” (William James 130) they began to question his belief in God because it could not be proven through logic and he had no evidence to back up his claim. This inspired him to write his essay “The Will to Believe” in which he attempts to explore and refute Pascal’s logical reason to believe in God, and William Cliffords argument that any claim made without strong evidence to back it is a morally wrong claim, despite what the truth may be (William Clifford 126). Since a belief in God cannot be proven or disproven with logic, many philosophers have tried and failed, James want to argue that a genuine belief in God can still be reasonable without strong evidence. Firstly, James distinguishes “live” options from “dead options”, “forced” options from “avoidable” options, and “momentous” options from “trivial options” (William James 130). A live option is an option that has two choices a person may have to use reason to decide upon while a dead option is one in which one of the decisions is one a person would not logically choose under any circumstance, both must make “some appeal, however small, to your belief” (William James 130). An option that is avoidable is one that a person can avoid making, the example James
This, what James quotes in his essay, is not Pascal’s reason for believing in God and as James points out it is probably nobody’s real reason for believing in God(William James 131). What Pascal is arguably trying to do here is point out to a non-believer, that there is a good reason to look at faith more seriously and consider what it can do. Perhaps, if someone reads Pascal’s argument and takes up interest in the church they may well become a genuine