do you believe in the existence of god essay brainly

Believe

This unusual argument does not justify the conclusion that "God exists." Rather it argues that it is rational to believe that God exists, given that we don't know whether he exists.

FLAW 1:  The "believe" option in Pascal's wager can be interpreted in two ways.

One is that the wagerer genuinely has to believe, deep down, that God exists; in other words, it is not enough to mouth a creed, or merely act as if God exists. According to this interpretation, God, if He exists, can peer into a person's soul and discern the person's actual convictions. If so, the kind of "belief" that Pascal's wager advises — a purely pragmatic strategy, chosen because the expected benefits exceed the expected costs — would not be enough. Indeed, it's not even clear that this option is coherent: if one chooses to believe something because of the consequences of holding that belief, rather than being intuitively convinced of it, is it really a belief, or just an empty vow?

The other interpretation is that it is enough to act in the way that traditional believers act: say prayers, go to services, recite the appropriate creed, and go through the other motions of religion.

The problem is that Pascal's wager offers no guidance as to which prayers, which services, whichcreed, to live by. Say I chose to believe in the Zoroastrian cosmic war between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu to avoid the wrath of the former, while the real fact of the matter is that God gave the Torah to the Jews, and I am thereby inviting the wrath of Yahweh (or vice-versa). Given all the things I could "believe" in, I am in constant danger of incurring the negative consequences of disbelief even though I choose the "belief" option. The fact that Blaise Pascal stated his wager as two stark choices, putting the outcomes in blatantly Christian terms — eternal salvation and eternal damnation — reveals more about his own upbringing than they do about the logic of belief. The wager simply codifies his particular "live options," to use William James's term, for the only choices that seem possible to a given believer.

FLAW 2:  Pascal's wager assumes a petty, egotistical, and vindictive God who punishes anyone who does not believe in him. But the great monotheistic religions all declare that "mercy" is one of God's essential traits. A merciful God would surely have some understanding of why a person may not believe in him (if the evidence for God were obvious, the fancy reasoning of Pascal's wager would not be necessary), and so would extend compassion to a nonbeliever. (Bertrand Russell, when asked what he would have to say to God if, despite his philosophical atheism, he were to die and face his Creator, responded, "Oh, Lord, why did you not provide more evidence?') The nonbeliever therefore should have nothing to worry about — falsifying the negative payoff in the lower-left-hand cell of the matrix.

FLAW 3:  The calculations of expected value in Pascal's wager omit a crucial part of the mathematics: the probabilities of each of the two columns, which have to be multiplied with the payoff in each cell to determine the expected value of each cell. If the probability of God's existence (ascertained by other means) is infinitesimal, then even if the cost of not believing in him is high, the overall expectation may not make it worthwhile to choose the "believe" row (after all, we take many other risks in life with severe possible costs but low probabilities, such as boarding an airplane). One can see how this invalidates Pascal's Wager by considering similar wagers. Say I told you that a fire-breathing dragon has moved into the next apartment and that unless you set out a bowl of marshmallows for him every night he will force his way into your apartment and roast you to a crisp. According to Pascal's wager, you should leave out the marshmallows. Of course you don't, even though you are taking a terrible risk in choosing not to believe in the dragon, because you don't assign a high enough probability to the dragon's existence to justify even the small inconvenience.

32. The Argument from Pragmatism

(William James's Leap of Faith)

1. The consequences for the believer's life of believing should be considered as part of the evidence for the truth of the belief (just as the effectiveness of a scientific theory in its practical applications is considered evidence for the truth of the theory). Call this the pragmatic evidence for the belief. 2. Certain beliefs effect a change for the better in the believer's life — the necessary condition being that they are believed. 3. The belief in God is a belief that effects a change for the better in a person's life. 4. If one tries to decide whether or not to believe in God based on the evidence available, one will never get the chance to evaluate the pragmatic evidence for the beneficial consequences of believing in God (from 2 and 3). 5. One ought to make 'the leap of faith' (the term is James's) and believe in God, and only then evaluate the evidence (from 1 and 4).

This argument can be read out of William James's classic essay "The Will to Believe." The first premise , as presented here, is a little less radical than James's pragmatic definition of truth in general, according to which a proposition is true if believing that it is true has a cumulative beneficial effect on the believer's life. The pragmatic definition of truth has severe problems, including possible incoherence: in evaluating the effects of the belief on the believer, we have to know the truth about what those effects are, which forces us to fall back on the old-fashioned notion of truth. To make the best case for The Argument from Pragmatism, therefore, the first premise is here understood as claiming only that the pragmatic consequences of belief are a relevant source of evidence in ascertaining the truth, not that they can actually be equated with the truth.

FLAW 1:  What exactly does effecting "a change for the better on the believer's life" mean? For an antebellum Southerner, there was more to be gained in believing that slavery is morally permissible than in believing it heinous. It often doesn't pay to be an iconoclast or revolutionary thinker, no matter how much truer your ideas are than the ideas opposing you. It didn't improve Galileo's life to believe that the earth moved around the sun rather than that the sun and the heavens revolve around the earth. (Of course, you could say that it's always intrinsically better to believe something true rather than something false, but then you're just using the language of the pragmatist to mask a non-pragmatic notion of truth.)

FLAW 2:  The Argument from Pragmatism implies an extreme relativism regarding the truth, because the effects of belief differ for different believers. A profligate, impulsive drunkard may have to believe in a primitive retributive God who will send him to Hell if he doesn't stay out of barroom fights, whereas a contemplative mensch may be better off with an abstract deistic presence who completes his deepest existential world view. But either there is a vengeful God who sends sinners to Hell or there isn't. If one allows pragmatic consequences to determine truth, then truth becomes relative to the believer, which is incoherent.

FLAW 3:  Why should we only consider the pragmatic effects on the believer's life? What about the effects on everyone else? The history of religious intolerance, including inquisitions, fatwas, and suicide bombers,  suggests that the effects on one person's life of another person's believing in God can be pretty grim.

FLAW 4:  The pragmatic argument for God suffers from the first flaw of The Argument from Decision Theory (#31 above) — namely the assumption that the belief in God is like a faucet that one can turn on and off as the need arises. If I make the leap of faith in order to evaluate the pragmatic consequences of belief, then if those consequences are not so good, can I leap back again to disbelief? Isn't a leap of faith a one-way maneuver? "The will to believe" is an oxymoron: beliefs are forced on a person (ideally, by logic and evidence); they are not chosen for their consequences.

33. The Argument from the Unreasonableness of Reason

1. Our belief in reason cannot be justified by reason, since that would be circular. 2. Our belief in reason must be accepted on faith (from 1). 3. Every time we exercise reason we are exercising faith (from 2). 4. Faith provides good rational grounds for beliefs (since it is, in the final analysis, necessary even for the belief in reason — from 3). 5. We are justified in using faith for any belief that is so important to our lives that not believing it would render us incoherent (from 4). 6. We cannot avoid faith in God if we are to live coherent moral and purposeful lives. 7. We are justified in believing that God exists (from 5 & 6). 8. God exists.

Reason is a faculty of thinking, the very faculty of giving grounds for our beliefs. To justify reason would be to try to give grounds for the belief: "We ought to accept the conclusions of sound arguments." Let's say we produce a sound argument for the conclusion that "we ought to accept the conclusions of sound arguments." How could we legitimately accept the conclusion of that sound argument without independently knowing the conclusion? Any attempt to justify the very propositions that we must use in order to justify propositions is going to land us in circularity.

FLAW 1:  This argument tries to generalize the inability of reason to justify itself to an abdication of reason when it comes to justifying God's existence. But the inability of reason to justify reason is a unique case in epistemology, not an illustration of a flaw of reason that can be generalized to some other kind of belief — and certainly not a belief in the existence of some entity with specific properties such as creating the world or defining morality.

Indeed, one could argue that the attempt to justify reason with reason is not circular, but rather, unnecessary. One already is, and always will be, committed to reason by the very process one is already engaged in, namely reasoning. Reason is non-negotiable; all sides concede it. It needs no justification, because it is justification. A belief in God is not like that at all.

FLAW 2:  If one really took the unreasonability of reason as a license to believe things on faith, then which things should one believe in? If it is a license to believe in a single God who gave his son for our sins, why isn't it just as much a license to believe in Zeus and all the other Greek gods, or the three major gods of Hinduism, or the angel Moroni? For that matter, why not Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy? If one says that there are good reasons to accept some entities on faith, while rejecting others, then one is saying that it is ultimately reason, not faith, that must be invoked to justify a belief.

FLAW 3:  Premise 6, which claims that a belief in God is necessary in order to have a purpose in one's life, or to be moral, has already been challenged in the discussions of The Argument from Moral Truth (#16 above) and The Argument from Personal Purpose (#19 above).

34. The Argument from Sublimity

1. There are experiences that are windows into the wholeness of existence — its grandeur, beauty, symmetry, harmony, unity, even its goodness. 2. We glimpse a benign transcendence in these moments. 3. Only God could provide us with a glimpse of benign transcendence. 4. God exists.

FLAW:  An experience of sublimity is an aesthetic experience Aesthetic experience can indeed be intense and blissful, absorbing our attention so completely while exciting our pleasure that they seem to lift us right out of ourselves. Aesthetic experiences vary in their strength, and when they are overwhelming, we grope for terms like "transcendence" to describe the overwhelmingness. Yet for all that, aesthetic experiences are still, more than likely, internal excitations of the brain, as we see from the fact that ingesting recreational drugs can bring on even more intense experiences of transcendence. And the particular triggers for natural aesthetic experiences are readily explicable from the evolutionary pressures that have shaped the perceptual systems of human beings. An eye for sweeping vistas, dramatic skies, bodies of water, large animals, flowering and fruiting plants, and strong geometric patterns with repetition and symmetry, was necessary to orient attention to aspects of the environment that were matters of life and death to the species as it evolved in its natural environment. The identification of a blissfully aesthetic experience with a glimpse into benign transcendence is an example of The Projection Fallacy, dramatic demonstrations of our spreading ourselves onto the world. This is most obvious when the experience gets fleshed out into the religious terms that come most naturally to the particular believer, such as a frozen waterfall being seen by a Christian as a manifestation of the Christian trinity. One does not detract anything from the sublimity of aesthetic experiences by seeing them for what they are, namely sublime aesthetic experiences. Music, too, produces such experiences, though there we know exactly who the creators were.

35. The Argument from the Intelligibility of the World

(Spinoza's God)

1. All facts must have explanations. 2. The fact that there is a universe at all — and that it is this universe, with just these laws of nature — has an explanation (from 1). 3.There must, in principle, be a Theory of Everything that explains why just this universe, with these laws of nature, exists (from 2. Note that this premise should not be interpreted as entailing that we have the capacity to come up with a Theory of Everything; it may elude the cognitive abilities we have.) 4. If The Theory of Everything explains everything, it explains why it is the Theory of Everything. 5. The only way that the Theory of Everything could explain why it is the Theory of Everything is if it is itself necessarily true (i.e. true in all possible worlds). 6. The Theory of Everything is necessarily true (from 4 & 5). 7. The universe, understood in terms of the Theory of Everything, exists necessarily and explains itself (from 6). 8. That which exists necessarily and explains itself is God (a definition of "God"). 9. The universe is God (from 7 & 8). 10. God exists.

Whenever Einstein was asked whether he believed in God, he responded that he believed in "Spinoza's God." This argument presents Spinoza's God. It is one of the most elegant and subtle arguments for God's existence, demonstrating where one ends up if one rigorously eschews the Fallacy of Invoking One Mystery to Pseudo-Explain Another: one ends up with the universe, and nothing but the universe: a universe which itself provides all the answers to all the questions one can pose about it. A major problem with the argument, however, in addition to the flaws discussed below, is that it is not at all clear that it is God whose existence is being proved. Spinoza's conclusion is that the universe that is described by the laws of nature simply is God. Perhaps the conclusion should, rather, be that the universe is different from what it appears to be — no matter how arbitrary and chaotic it may appear, it is in fact perfectly lawful and necessary, and therefore worthy of our awe. But is its awe-inspiring lawfulness reason enough to regard it as God? Spinoza's God is sharply at variance with all other divine conceptions.

The argument has only one substantive premise, its first one, which, though unproved, is not unreasonable; it is, in fact, the claim that the universe itself is thoroughly reasonable.  Though this first premise can't be proved, it is the guiding faith of many physicists (including Einstein).  It is the claim that everything must have an explanation; even the laws of nature, in terms of which processes are explained, must have an explanation. In other words, there has to be an explanation for why it is these laws of nature rather than some other, which is another way of asking for why it is this world rather than some other.

FLAW:  The first premise can be challenged. Our world could conceivably be one in which randomness and contingency have free reign, no matter what the intuitions of some scientists are.  Maybe some things just are ("stuff happens"), including the fundamental laws of nature. Philosophers sometimes call this just- is-ness "contingency" and, if the fundamental laws of nature are contingent, then even if everything that happens in the world is explainable by those laws, the laws themselves couldn't be explained.   There is a sense in which this argument recalls The Argument from the Improbable Self.  Both demand explanations for just this-ness, whether of just this universe or just this me.

The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe fleshes out the consequences of the powerful first premise, but some might regard the argument as a reductio ad absurdum  of that premise.

COMMENT:  Spinoza's argument, if sound, invalidates all the other arguments, the ones that try to establish the existence of a more traditional God—that is, a God who stands distinct from the world described by the laws of nature, as well as distinct from the world of human meaning, purpose, and morality. Spinoza's argument claims that any transcendent God, standing outside of that for which he is invoked as explanation, is invalidated by the first powerful premise, that all things are part of the same explanatory fabric. The mere coherence of The Argument from The Intelligibility of The Universe, therefore, is sufficient to reveal the invalidity of the other theistic arguments. This is why Spinoza, although he offered a proof of what he called "God," is often regarded as the most effective of all atheists.

36. The Argument from The Abundance of Arguments

1. The more arguments there are for a proposition, the more confidence we should have in it, even if every argument is imperfect. (Science itself proceeds by accumulating evidence, each piece by itself being inconclusive.) 2. There is not just one argument for the existence of God, but many — thirty-five (with variations) in this list alone. 3. The arguments, though not flawless, are persuasive enough that they have convinced billions of people, and for millennia have been taken seriously by history's greatest minds. 4. The probability that each one is true must be significantly greater than zero (from 3). 5. For God not to exist, every one of the arguments for his existence must be false, which is extremely unlikely (from 4 ). Imagine, for the sake of argument, that each argument has an average probability of only .2 of being true. Then the probability that all 35 are flase is (1-0.2)^35 = .0004, an extremely low probability. 6. It is extremely probable that God exists (from 5).

FLAW 1:  Premise 3 is vulnerable to t he same criticisms as the Argument from the Consensus of Humanity. The flaws that accompany each argument may be extremely damaging, even fatal, notwithstanding the fact that they have been taken seriously by many people throughout history. In other words, the average probability of any of the arguments being true may be far less than .2, in which case the probability that all of them are false could be high.

FLAW 2:  This argument treats all the other arguments as being on an equal footing, distributing equal probabilities to them all, and rewarding all of them, too, with the commendation of being taken seriously by history's greatest minds. Many of the arguments on this list have been completely demolished by such minds as David Hume and Baruch Spinoza: their probability is zero.

COMMENT:  The Argument from the Abundance of Arguments may be the most psychologically important of the thirty-six. Few people rest their belief in God on a single, decisive logical argument. Instead, people are swept away by the sheer number of reasons that make God's existence seem plausible — holding out an explanation as to why the universe went to the bother of existing, and why it is this particular universe, with its sublime improbabilities, including us humans; and, even more particularly, explaining the existence of each one of us who know ourselves as a unique conscious individual, who makes free and moral choices that grant meaning and purpose to our lives; and, even more personally, giving hope that desperate prayers may not go unheard and unanswered, and that the terrors of death can be subdued in immortality. Religions, too, do not justify themselves with a single logical argument, but rather set themselves up to minister to all of these needs and provide a space in people's lives where large questions that escape answers all come together and co-mingle, a co-mingling that, in itself, can give the illusion that they are being answered.

[Excerpted from  36   Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction  by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, New York: Pantheon Books. Forthcoming, January, 2010. Copyright © 2010 by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. All rights reserved. Published with permission.]

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5 reasons to believe in the existence of god.

Let’s explore five arguments for the existence of God. We are not going to fully flesh out these arguments. Instead, we will treat them as springboards for future discussions or research. If you’re not yet at a point in your journey where you believe in God, I recommend you look deeply into these five arguments. Or, if you are a Christian, and are looking to develop your understanding of Christian apologetics, you should become well-versed in these five arguments. At the end of the study, we are going to explore one bonus argument that is great for Christians to explore, but one you definitely should think twice about before trying to use it in your conversations with your skeptical friends. 

If you want to go straight to the arguments, skip to the first heading below. But if you’ll hear me out a little longer, I believe the following foundation and warnings are important to say when it comes to these types of discussions.

I began my faith journey seriously when I was nearly 18 years old. When I learned the truth about Jesus, I was so excited, and I wanted to tell people about His kingdom. And if you’re a believer, you know exactly what I’m talking about, whether you learned about Jesus at 18 or 80. And let me know if you also know what this is like: One of the first times I tried to share my faith in the Lord, I was attacked (verbally) and presented with alleged evidence against God’s existence. What do you do in that situation? Should you simply agree to disagree? There are occasions when Jesus told His disciples to not cast their pearls before swine, shake the dust off their feet, and move on. However, in most cases, that’s not the first course of action. What is? Of course, you need to provide an apology. 

What? You need to apologize for your faith in Jesus? Of course not. This is what we’re talking about:

Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear. 1 Peter 3:15

See that word defense ? It’s translated from the Greek word apologia (ἀπολογία), which is, of course, where we get our English word apology . Sure, if you are apologizing for something, you may be trying to defend or rebuild trust or reputation. However, when the word apologetics is used in philosophy or religion, it’s the idea of providing solid reasoning and evidence for a given reality. In Christian apologetics, it’s about defending the existence of God, the historicity of Jesus, and the assurance of Scripture, which includes the promises of God, or as we saw, “the hope that is in you.” 

Look at the verse again. It instructs us in not only the arguments and evidence to prepare for, but also in the delivery of the evidence. The Bible says that when we defend the hope of the kingdom of God, we must do so in meekness and fear .

Meekness is not weakness. It’s the idea of being gentle. Do you have the ability to tear someone up, make them feel foolish, and end the discussion with a mic drop? Perhaps. But you take all of that ability and temptation, and you put it under control. The Scriptures say the fruit of the Spirit includes love, peace, kindness, gentleness, and self-control. So, when we provide arguments for the existence of God, we don’t do so argumentatively. We don’t do so with the goal of making the other person foolish. We do so in meekness. When we view our mental opponents as enemies, when we tear them to pieces with weapons of our wrath, and laugh when they weep, do we give anyone a reason to believe in God’s existence? Perhaps, but we also destroy any reason to believe in an internal hope.

As you prepare to gently provide evidence, don’t confuse gentleness with softness or wishy-washy-ness. The Scriptures say you defend your hope also with fear. Fear of what? First, it begins with a respect for the person with whom you’re conversing. But with that respect, do you fear what they may say about you? No. Check this out:

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, But fools despise wisdom and instruction. Proverbs 1:7

A couple of verses after directing the Christian to prepare to defend his or her faith, Peter says:

For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. 1 Peter 3:17

Jesus talks about not fearing what people can do to your body, since the worst they can do to you is kill you. Instead, fear the One who has authority over your soul, because that’s what’s going to matter when it’s all said and done. In the end, you and I will not be mainly concerned about how we crafted our sentences to change people’s minds. We’ll be concerned about whether or not we truly and reverently represented God and the Lord Jesus, who said:

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels. Mark 8:36–38

With that in mind, let’s prepare to follow through with our discipleship, as Paul reminds us:

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3–5

Let’s begin with what I think is the most powerful argument for God’s existence. It’s also the one we will spend the most space on.

1. The moral argument points to the existence of God

It’s cute when your three-year-old is trying to convince you of the best flavor of ice cream. Vanilla is good. Strawberry is gooder . And chocolate is goodest . However, by the time he’s eight years old, the cuteness wears off, and it’s time to correct his language. Strawberry isn’t a good ice cream flavor. And Moose Tracks is the goodest , or best , we may say. 

In our conversations, we talk about things that are good, both in a subjective way and an objective way. What’s the difference?

Subjective truth is grounded in the subject. It is, indeed, a fact that Moose Tracks is the best ice cream flavor…to me. But what’s your opinion? The point is, although this is a fact , that fact is rooted in the opinion-holder (the subject), and it very well can change over time. It’s not rooted in the ice cream (the object). 

Objective truth is, of course, rooted in the object. Whatever is objectively true would be true, regardless of any person’s opinion. Imagine a scoop of pistachio ice cream. Some facts about it are: It’s round, it’s -9 degrees Celsius, it contains sugar, and it’s green. Whether or not you prefer these facts or pistachio ice cream at all will not change these facts, because the facts are rooted in the object, not the subject.

Here’s how all this relates to God’s existence. When it comes to morality, there are certain things that are good, and some things that are bad. And here, we can turn this into a two-fold defense. 

First, if there is an objective moral law, then there is a moral lawgiver. What do you think about genocide? Additionally, do you think it’s wrong to torture innocent people to death just for fun? Or is that just a matter of opinion? Some people like ice cream, and others prefer to torture children. Is that how this works? Of course not. We all think it’s wrong. So even when an individual person (or nation) actually enjoys racism, genocide, and torture, all while calling it “good,” the rest of us appeal to an objective law outside of ourselves—a higher ethic, a higher law—that tells us it’s wrong. It’s not based on the local or national justice system. It’s founded on something even higher than that—something above human lawmakers.   

There are things that are objectively right and wrong. For example, stealing, murder, rape, and torture are objectively wrong. Service and love, on the other hand, are objectively good. How can something be objectively right or wrong without the existence of God?

People who don’t believe in God can be morally good. But they can’t justify why something is right or wrong. They may appeal to culture or majority, but that only answers the question of how we come to the conclusion on morals. That’s not the question. The question is, if God does not exist, then why is anything right or wrong? It can’t be. In fact, the honest atheists admit this: If God does not exist, then objective moral law cannot exist. Yet, what would happen if you snatched that same person’s wallet? Would he shrug his shoulders and say there really was nothing wrong with that?

The naturalistic worldview claims that everything exists because of mindless, random chance. Therefore, since there is no governing mind, the atheist must agree with Dr. Richard Dawkins, who claims a naturalist worldview requires a belief in “no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” 1

However, every single time a person has been upset at another person’s behavior, or said something like, “You ought to have done this,” or “You should not have done that,” they have appealed to an objective moral standard—something higher than themselves. When humans act in heinous ways, our hearts cry out for justice, because something is not right. We believe a moral law has been broken; therefore, it should be dealt with. 

Additionally, if we say someone is morally good or morally bad, then we, like the toddler, know that someone could be gooder or badder . If there, indeed, is better and worse, then there is also best and worst. The Christian worldview sees God as not just the moral lawgiver, but also the standard of what is morally best.

Of course, atheists and skeptics often attack God, claiming He is not good or something He commands is not good. Those are certainly worthwhile topics to explore. However, a person must first borrow from the theistic worldview in order to make this accusation. He has to assume an objective moral law to try to accuse God of breaking it. If God does not exist, then objective moral standards do not exist, and whatever anyone does cannot be right or wrong beyond personal opinion. But objective moral law does exist; therefore, God exists.

2. The cosmological argument points to the existence of God

This one is based on the law of causality. Everything that exists in or is affected by space, time, and matter had a beginning. Everything that is an effect had a cause. The laws of thermodynamics help us understand that the universe had a beginning—it’s not eternal.

For example, the first law of thermodynamics (also known as the law of conservation of energy) states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed in a closed system; it can only be transferred or transformed. The amount of energy remains the same; however, the second law of thermodynamics states that the amount of usable energy is decreasing. Since the universe is winding down (it’s in an increasing state of entropy), at one point, it was wound up. It had a beginning.

The law of causality states that anything that had a beginning had a begin-er. Consider anything in the universe—your phone, a dog, your brain, the earth, the moon, the star called Betelgeuse—every one of them had a beginning. Where did it come from? Everything, including the universe, had a cause. Once we learn the cause of a particular object, it’s reasonable to then ask, “But where did that cause come from?” Eventually, we have to arrive back to an uncaused cause. This is what led Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest, Georges Lemaître, in 1927 to be the first to propose the Big Bang Theory. That’s right; atheists often present the Big Bang as their idea, but it originated with a theist, one who studied the works of Einstein and believed God was behind it! However, naturalism’s claim is, “In the beginning, nothing…” If nothing ever existed, nothing would still exist. And I’m talking about real nothing, not nothing plus something that skeptics often try to cheat with. That’s why it’s reasonable to believe the first sentence in the Bible:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1

God is the uncaused cause. He is the self-existing one. This is what He told Moses:

“I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.’” Exodus 3:14

Jesus said:

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” Revelation 1:8

This raises a question in a thinker’s mind: “If all things had a cause, then who created God?” Simply put, the answer is in the question itself. God is not a thing . He does not exist in, nor is He affected by, space, time, and matter. If you are thinking about a god who had a beginning, then don’t worry; I am not trying to defend the existence of that god. 

3. The aesthetic argument points to the existence of God

I love art in various forms. I’m guessing you do too to some degree. Perhaps you love music, movies, theater, or paintings. Sometimes when I hear a particularly complicated piece of metal music or witness a beautiful painting, it blows my mind. I ask, “How in the world do people come up with such ideas? How many hours of work or practice did it take to make something as unique and beautiful as this?”

Beauty, of course, is subjective. Only some people understand the work of Jackson Pollock. Not everyone loves my favorite genre of music. Even when I find someone who does, we disagree on who the best bands are. Yet the fact that beauty exists at all points to the existence of a personal, loving, relational Creator, because people have an innate appreciation for beauty, symmetry, and order in the world. 

Many discoveries in the scientific field can be traced back to our innate ability to recognize and appreciate beauty. A child may become enthralled by the beauty of a snowflake, which drives her to eventually pursue a life in meteorology. A teenage walking home one night does the unthinkable—he keeps his phone in his pocket and is surprised by the beauty of the stars, which leads him down a lifelong pursuit of knowing the heavens. Upon learning about the Fibonacci Spiral, a student is thrust on a journey of beauty-chasing. For me, working in New Zealand for a decade inspired me to become a hobbyist landscape photographer. 

But things don’t have to be aesthetically pleasing to be functional (I’m looking at you, Cybertruck 😏). But can you imagine a sunrise that’s not beautiful? If naturalism is true, then why beauty? The order, complexity, and beauty we find in creation are not random occurrences. They are deliberate creations of an intelligent and creative being—God. 

Not only has the close observation of a snowflake, sunset, or flower pedal thrust people into the pursuit of knowledge, in many cases, it has also sent them on a journey towards their Creator. 

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. Psalm 8:3–5

To take this argument deeper, we need to consider the implications of the naturalistic worldview. If there is no mind behind our existence, and we are simply accidents of nature, then every thought, every emotion, and every experience you have had was nothing more than a chemical reaction. Not only have we never observed mere chemicals create artwork for the sake of art, but we have also never observed mere molecules appreciate beauty. Accidents neither take in nor create beauty. What do you think? Does beauty exist in the world? If so, you have reason to believe in God. You may think the random scatterings from an explosion are beautiful in a sense. But we all know that the chaotic scattering of shrapnel is not the same as what Van Gogh painted, the Beatles composed, or what a child doodles in a notebook. If that’s true on a small scale, then think of the implications of the magnificent view from atop a mountain, the lush spread of a forest, and the awesome expanse of the heavens. Paintings in a museum were created to be appreciated. So was the universe, which is the work of a creative God, not a cosmic accident.

4. The teleological argument points to the existence of God

This one closely relates to the aesthetic argument, but it is more objective. We all think some things are beautiful, but we don’t all agree on what those things are. However, who can deny the complexity of all creation? Simply put, the teleological argument states: Wherever we point our lenses, whether telescopes or microscopes, we find design. And design demands a designer. 

Let’s see if the first part of this Bible verse makes sense to you:

For every house is built by someone.  Hebrews 3:4a

Sure, if you’re bent on disagreeing with that statement, you could twist the definition of house to mean anything. However, basically speaking, I imagine you agree with the statement, “every house is built by someone.” Additionally, you and I would also agree that every painting has a painter. Every book has an author. Every song has a composer. And so on.

Wouldn’t it also be the case that every design has a designer? Just scratch the surface of subjects like astronomy, the water cycle, or microbiology, and ask yourself, “Who designed this?” Where did the language of DNA come from? Who came up with the digestive system in not just humans, but in all kinds of living things? How in the world can the single cell in its irreducibly complex state have evolved without a guiding hand?”

The first part of that Bible verse says, “every house is built by someone.” The rest of it says:

but He who built all things is God. Hebrews 3:4b

It would take a lot of blind faith to believe mindless accidents should be credited for the design we see in the world.

5. The historical argument points to the existence of God

Not only does this argument help us defend the existence of God, but it also helps us in understanding the authenticity of the Bible. Just because we can defend the existence of God, who’s to say that that God is the God of the Bible? This argument begins to deal with that question.

I’ve heard of Sunday school teachers trying to equip their kids with confidence by saying things like, “We know the Bible is the word of God, because it says so!” Or, “We know God exists, because the Bible says God exists.” Of course, this is circular reasoning. Do I believe what the Bible says about itself or the existence of God? Absolutely. However, my confidence is supported by further examination of the external and internal evidences of Scripture. You see, if the Bible can be proven to be from a divine source, then when it says that God exists, that claim becomes a substantial, tested claim built upon a solid foundation. 

The historical argument concerns things like archaeological discoveries and extra-biblical written accounts. Do the discoveries we find in these fields confirm or deny what we see in Scripture? Without a doubt, they confirm what the Bible says. There are certain scientific facts about the world the Bible has been saying all along, yet their discoveries or explanations in the scientific fields are relatively new. 

For years, critics of the Bible accused the writers of Scripture of inventing people and people groups, like king David, Pontius Pilate, and the Hittites. But when archaeological discoveries later proved the historicity of these people, the mouths of the critics were stopped. 

The Bible is not a history book per se , but it, indeed, includes history—history begging to be fact-checked. Just look at the first three verses of the third chapter of the gospel of Luke and go down the rabbit hole of researching any of the times, places, or people Luke mentions by name. Not only are they right there in the Bible, but they are also concreted in history, just as Luke says. Luke, an educated doctor, wrote more words in the New Testament than anyone else, and most of his writings are just like this—laced with historical and geographical markers.

Since Luke all but demanded fact-checkers to handle his work, that’s exactly what Scottish archaeologist, Sir William Ramsay did. He was actually a skeptic of the authenticity of the Bible, and in the late 19th century, he set out on a journey to prove Luke and the rest of the Bible wrong. After much travel, digging, research, and comparison, he was no longer a skeptic. Here are some of the things he said about the books of Luke and Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament:

Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements trustworthy, but he is possessed of the true historic sense. […] In short, this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians. 2

Further study […] showed that the book could bear the most minute scrutiny as an authority for the facts of the Aegean world, and that it was written with such judgment, skill, art and perception of truth as to be a model of historical statement. 3

I set out to look for truth on the borderland where Greece and Asia meet, and found it there [in the book of Acts]. You may press the words of Luke in a degree beyond any other historian’s, and they stand the keenest scrutiny and the hardest treatment. 4

If this is the case with the author Luke, this would also apply to the entire Bible by extension, since Luke himself believed in the authenticity of all Scripture. Likewise, other biblical authors and Luke’s contemporaries believed that he was not just recording a historical account, but also a document inspired by God. For example, Paul, who was inspired by God to write part of the Bible, referred to Luke’s writings as holy Scripture in 1 Timothy 5:18. Likewise, Peter confirmed Paul’s writings to be God’s Scripture in 2 Peter 3.

Despite the fact that the Bible was penned in three different languages by about 40 different authors, who lived at different times and had different cultures, backgrounds, and social statuses, it tells one unified story and commentary on reality. Despite the fact that the Bible covers all of history from the beginning of time through the first century AD, and was written over a period of about 1600 years, there has not been a single scientific or historical discovery that clearly refutes anything written in Scripture. 

When speaking of the historical argument for the existence of God, you must not neglect the most attested figure of all antiquity: Jesus of Nazareth. There is not a single credible historian, including those who doubt the existence of God, who denies the historical life and death of Jesus. Beyond that, there are also loads of historical evidence for the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus. We’ve covered that briefly in another study , and we might expand on that later, so we won’t get too deep here. 

Suffice it to say that when one studies Christian apologetics, the study is not complete without a deep dive into the historical argument for the existence of God, the historicity of Jesus and his resurrection, and the authenticity of the Bible.

Bonus: The experience argument points to the existence of God

There are a couple of Christian hymns I have mixed feelings about. The song, “I Serve a Risen Savior,” written by Alfred Henry Ackley in 1933 says:

I serve a risen Savior He’s in the world today. I know that He is living, Whatever men may say…. You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart.

More recently, Gary Leon Mabry wrote “Blue Skies and Rainbows,” which includes these lyrics:

I know that Jesus is well and alive today. He makes His home in my heart.

My family loves both of these songs. They assert the existence of God. But my mixed feelings come from where the assurance and presentation of evidence is coming from: emotion and experience. Experience is a powerful defense and motivation. Sometimes you know something to be true, not because you can fully articulate why or defend its truth to a skeptic, but because it has affected you so deeply that you can’t explain your life or state of mind without it! To a degree, that should be true for every Christian’s relationship with Jesus Christ. 

Experience in many people’s lives points to the existence of God. How does an addict explain being released from twenty years of bondage after turning to Jesus? How can a wife explain the Christian transformation of her husband who used to abuse her? How can I defend the thankfulness and peace within my heart when I praise Jesus for His sacrifice? By a five-point essay on the scientific and historical arguments for the existence of God? That doesn’t feel like the right direction. Simply experience in the presence and promises of God Almighty feel like a sufficient explanation. Here’s the kicker: This really only convinces one person, though—the person with that experience.

John, when he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to instill confidence of salvation, he didn’t ask, “What does your heart tell you?” or “Have you not experienced Jesus living in your heart?” No, he said this:

These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. 1 John 5:13

God wants you to be confident in both His existence and His promises. That’s why He’s provided all this evidence. Nature points to the existence of God. God and history point to the work of Christ. Christ has given us the Scriptures to know both His will and His promises. And on that foundation, you can be sure what your hope is. With that line of reasoning, you can give a defense for the hope that is in you. You can be sure that your experience with God is real, so long as it’s based on what He has revealed in Scripture. 

Yes, the experience argument points to the existence of God. But as powerful as your personal experience may be, it is still subjective. Senses can be fooled. Minds can hallucinate. Religious so-called “experiences” often contradict the Scriptures. That’s why I have a healthy skepticism of many so-called “experiences” I hear about today, and we shouldn’t blame our less religious friends when they’re skeptical too.

Yet, someone asks, “But what about Paul? Didn’t he—as well as others in the Bible—use their experiences to convince skeptics?” Yes. Again, we agree that experience is powerful and, indeed, can argue for the existence of God. There is a place in evangelism for your story. Yet Paul also shared further evidence beyond his story to convince his friends, acquaintances, and even strangers that Jesus is the Son of God. So we continue to recommend you, as a Christian, equip yourself with the study of Christian apologetics. We are building our resources on apologetics here . We also suggest you check out the good material by Apologetics Press .

• Dawkins, Richard. River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life . 1995. p133. ↩︎
• Ramsay, William. The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament . 1915, p.222. ↩︎
• Ibid. p.85. ↩︎
• Ibid. p.89. ↩︎

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Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God

Unlike the Cosmological Argument or the Design Argument, theistic pragmatic arguments are not arguments for the proposition that God exists; they are arguments that believing that God exists is rational. The most famous theistic pragmatic argument is Pascal’s Wager . Though we touch on this argument briefly, this entry focuses primarily on the theistic pragmatic arguments found in William James, J.S. Mill, and others. It also explores the logic of pragmatic arguments in general, and the pragmatic use of moral arguments, and arguments predicated on the idea of final meaning in life. This entry looks at an important objection to the employment of pragmatic arguments in belief formation – the objection that evidence alone should regulate belief. It also explores a few pragmatic arguments that have been offered against Theism. 

1. Pragmatic Arguments

2. moral arguments as pragmatic arguments, 3. william james’s will to believe argument, 4. j.s. mill’s license to hope, 5. consolation and needs-based arguments, 6. pragmatic arguments and meaning in life, 7. the ethics of belief, 8. pragmatic arguments and belief, 9. atheistic pragmatic arguments, other internet resources, related entries.

As with so much in philosophy, the first recorded employment of a pragmatic argument is found in Plato. At Meno 86b-c, Socrates tells Meno that believing in the value of inquiry is justified because of the positive impact upon one’s character:

Meno: Somehow or other I believe you are right. Socrates: I think I am. I shouldn’t like to take my oath on the whole story, but one thing I am ready to fight for as long as I can, in word and act – that is, that we shall be better, braver, and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we don’t know than if we believe there is no point in looking because what we don’t know we can never discover. Meno: There too I am sure you are. [ 1 ]

Paraphrased, Socrates’ point is if being better, braver, and more active are among our desires, and if believing that inquiry is worthwhile facilitates our becoming better, braver, and more active, then we have reason, pragmatic reason, to believe that inquiry is worthwhile. Socrates’ argument is an argument for the permissibility of a certain belief, based on the benefits of believing that certain belief. Pragmatic arguments are practical in orientation, justifying actions that are thought to facilitate the achievement of our goals, or the satisfaction of our desires. If among your goals is A , and if doing such and such results in your achieving A , then, all else being equal, you have reason to do such and such:

• Doing α brings about, or contributes in bringing about, β, and
• It is in your interest that β obtain. So,
• You have reason to do α.

As presented this is a particular kind of pragmatic argument, a prudential argument. Prudential pragmatic arguments are predicated upon one’s preferences or goals or self-interest. As we will see, there are pragmatic arguments that are not narrowly prudential but are moral in nature.

Pragmatic arguments are relevant to belief-formation, since inculcating a belief is an action. There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of pragmatic arguments that have to do with belief-formation. The first is an argument that recommends taking steps to believe a proposition because, if it should turn out to be true, the benefits gained from believing that proposition will be impressive. This first kind of pragmatic argument we can call a “truth-dependent” pragmatic argument, or more conveniently a “dependent-argument,” since the benefits are obtained only if the relevant state of affairs occurs. The prime example of a dependent-argument is a pragmatic argument that uses a calculation of expected utility and employs the Expectation Rule to recommend belief:

whenever both probability and utility values are known, one should choose to do an act which has the greatest expected utility.

Among the various versions of his wager argument, Pascal employs this Rule in a version which states that no matter how small the probability that God exists, as long as it is a positive, non-zero probability, the expected utility of theistic belief will dominate the expected utility of disbelief. Given the distinction between (A) having reason to think a certain proposition is true, and (B) having reason to induce belief in that proposition, taking steps to generate belief in a certain proposition may be the rational thing to do, even if that proposition lacks sufficient evidential support. The benefits of believing a proposition can rationally take precedence over the evidential strength enjoyed by a contrary proposition; and so, given an infinite expected utility, Pascal’s Wager contends that forming the belief that God exists is the rational thing to do, no matter how small the likelihood that God exists.

The second kind of pragmatic argument, which can be called a “truth-independent” pragmatic argument, or more conveniently, an “independent-argument,” is one which recommends taking steps to believe a certain proposition simply because of the benefits gained by believing it, whether or not the believed proposition is true. This is an argument that recommends belief cultivation because of the psychological, or moral, or religious, or social, or even the prudential benefits gained by virtue of believing it. In David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , for example, Cleanthes employs an independent argument, “religion, however corrupted, is still better than no religion at all. The doctrine of a future state is so strong and necessary a security to morals that we never ought to abandon or neglect it” (Hume 1776, 87). Perhaps the best-known example of an independent-argument is found in William James’s celebrated “Will to Believe” essay in which he argues that, in certain circumstances, it is rationally and morally permissible to believe a proposition because of the benefits thereby generated. [ 2 ]

Unlike independent pragmatic arguments, dependent ones are, in an important sense, truth-sensitive. Of course, being pragmatic arguments, dependent-arguments are not truth-sensitive in an evidential sense; nevertheless they are dependent on truth since the benefits are had only if the recommended belief is true. In contrast, independent pragmatic arguments, yielding benefits whether or not the recommended beliefs are true, are insensitive to truth. Independent-arguments, we might say, are belief-dependent and not truth-dependent.

Theism is the proposition that God exists . A theist is anyone who accepts or believes that proposition. In this entry we limit ourselves to pragmatic arguments concerning Theism – whether pro or con – and skip over pragmatic arguments for non-theistic religions. A theistic pragmatic argument contends that there are practical, prudential, or moral reasons for inculcating theistic belief. An atheistic pragmatic argument holds that there are practical, prudential, or moral reasons for denying Theism.

Pragmatic arguments in support of theistic belief can either be predicated on prudence or on morality. By pragmatic arguments predicated on morality I mean arguments that contend that morality, or some proper part of morality, presupposes, or is facilitated by theistic belief. And if morality, or the proper part of morality, is rational, then so too is theistic belief. Put generally: [ 3 ]

• Doing α helps to bring about β, and
• It is morally desirable that β. So,
• It is prima facie morally desirable to do α.

Since (4) specifies actions, we should understand accepting theistic propositions as actions, even if believing is not an action (for more on the distinction between acceptance and belief, see the section, “Pragmatic Arguments and Belief,” below).

It is important to recognize the distinction between theoretical moral arguments for theism (arguments intended to show that God exists), and pragmatic moral arguments for the rationality of theistic belief. George Mavrodes, for instance, constructs a theoretical moral argument by contending that it would be extremely odd that we would have moral obligations the fulfillment of which results in a net loss to the agent. Such a world seems absurd (Mavrodes, 1986). His argument is built upon the idea of a Russellian world, a universe in which mental events are products of non-mental events, and in which there’s no human post-mortem survival, and extinction is the final end of every biological species. A Russellian world implies atheism. Summarized, Mavrodes’ argument is that there are real moral obligations in the actual world. But, real moral obligations would be absurd in a Russellian world, since fulfilling moral obligations often cause a net loss to the moral agent and there is no deep explanation of real moral obligation in a Russellian world (the deep features of a Russellian world would be things like forces and atoms and chance). But, fulfilling moral obligation is not absurd. So, in this respect, there is reason to think that the actual world is not a Russellian world.

Two examples of pragmatic moral arguments are Adams (1979) and Zagzebski (1987). Adams builds his argument on the concept of demoralization – weakening of moral motivation – and the concept of a moral order – roughly, the idea that to achieve a balance of good over evil in the universe requires something more than human effort, yet human effort can add or detract from the total value of the universe. While we cannot do it all on our own, the idea is, we can make a significant difference for better or worse. In short, Adam’s argument is that it is demoralizing not to believe that there is a moral order in the universe, and demoralization is morally undesirable. So, there is moral advantage in accepting that there is a moral order, and theism provides the best account of why that is. Hence, there’s moral advantage in accepting theism.

Zagzebski builds her argument upon the ideas of moral skepticism and moral efficacy, and, though she does not employ the term, moral order. Morality is efficacious if we can make significant contributions to the production of good in the universe and to the elimination of evil. Moral skepticism is a doubting of our ability to acquire moral knowledge, and a doubting of moral efficacy. Zagzebski argues that it is rational to try to be moral only if it is rational to believe that the probability that the attempt will succeed and will produce a great good is not outweighed by the probability that one will have to sacrifice goods in the course of the attempt. But given what we know of human abilities and history, it is not rational to believe that the attempt to be moral is likely to succeed if there is no moral order. Since it is rational to try to be moral, it is rational to believe that there is moral order in the universe, and Christian doctrine is, in part, an account of there being a moral order in the universe. So, accepting Christian theism is more rational than accepting that there’s no moral order in the universe.

Theistic moral pragmatic arguments may face an objection similar to the many-gods objection to Pascal’s wager. The many-gods objection contends that the betting options of the wager are not limited to Christianity and atheism alone, since one could formulate a Pascalian Wager for Islam, certain sects of Buddhism, or for any of the competing sects found within Christianity itself. [ 4 ] A similar problem arises for theistic moral pragmatic arguments, at least insofar as those arguments are intended to provide strong support for theistic belief. Let’s say that a pragmatic argument provides strong support for theism just in case it provides reason for thinking that theism alone provides the benefit; and let’s say that a pragmatic argument provides weak support for theism just in case it provides reason for thinking that theism is just one of several alternatives in providing the benefit. Pascal’s Wager, for instance, is intended to provide strong support for theism; while James’s Will to Believe argument is intended to provide weak support. Pragmatic moral arguments, if they are to provide strong support for theism, must provide reason to think that theistic belief alone is necessary for morality, or that theistic belief best facilitates moral practice. But it’s far from clear that theistic belief exceeds its competitors in facilitating moral practice. Until reason for thinking that is forthcoming, it would be premature to hold that theistic moral pragmatic arguments provide strong support.

The argument presented by William James (1842–1910) in his 1896 essay, “The Will to Believe”, extends far beyond the issue of the rationality of theistic belief to include various philosophical issues (for instance, whether to embrace determinism or indeterminism), and even matters of practical life. James’s argument, in its attack on the agnostic imperative (withhold belief whenever the evidence is insufficient), makes the general epistemological point that:

a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule. (James 1896, 28)

We might understand the agnostic imperative more fully as follows:

for all persons S and propositions p , if S believes that p is just as likely as not- p , then it is impermissible for S to believe either p or not- p .

If James is correct, then the agnostic imperative is false.

The foil of James’s essay was W.K. Clifford (1845–79). Clifford argued that:

…if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery. (Clifford 1879, 185–6)

Clifford presented evidentialism as a rule of morality: “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence” (Clifford 1879, 186). If Clifford’s Rule of morality is correct, then any one who believes a proposition that she does not take to be more likely than not, is, thereby, immoral. It may be worthwhile to note that Clifford’s argument here is itself a moral pragmatic argument.

James has two main concerns in the “Will To Believe” essay. The first is to argue that Clifford’s Rule is irrational (James 1896: 28). The second is that a theistic commitment is permissible. James contends that Clifford’s Rule is but one intellectual strategy open to us. A proponent of Clifford’s Rule advises, in effect, that one should avoid error at all costs, and thereby risk the loss of certain truths. But another strategy is to seek truth by any means available, even at the risk of error. James champions the latter via the main argument of the “Will to Believe” essay. To facilitate matters eight definitions employed by James are paraphrased:

• Hypothesis : something that may be believed.
• Option : a decision between two hypotheses.
• Living option : a decision between two live hypotheses.
• Live hypothesis : something that is a real candidate for belief. A hypothesis is live, we might say, for a person just in case that person lacks compelling evidence disconfirming that hypothesis, and the hypothesis has an intuitive appeal for that person.
• Momentous option : the option may never again present itself, or the decision cannot be easily reversed, or something of importance hangs on the choice. It is not a trivial matter.
• Forced option : the decision cannot be avoided.
• Genuine option : one that’s living, momentous, and forced.
• Intellectually open : neither the evidence nor arguments conclusively decide the issue.

The first main argument might be sketched as follows:

• Strategy A: Risk a loss of truth and a loss of a vital good for the certainty of avoiding error.
• Strategy B: Risk error for a chance at truth and a vital good.
• Clifford’s Rule embodies Strategy A. But,
• Strategy B is preferable to Strategy A because Strategy A would deny us access to certain possible kinds of truth. And,
• Any intellectual strategy that denies access to possible truths is an inadequate strategy. Therefore,
• Clifford’s Rule is unacceptable.

James asserts that “there are…cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming” (James 1896, 25). Among other examples James provides of this particular kind of truth is that of social cooperation:

a social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned. (James 1896, 24)

And if James is right that there is a kind of proposition that has as a truth-maker its being believed, what we might call “dependent truths,” then proposition (9) looks well supported.

Of course, accepting proposition (11), and advancing an alternative strategy of seeking truth by any available means, even at the risk of error, does not entail that anything goes. And an important part of James’s essay restricts what legitimately might be believed in the absence of adequate evidence. Among the requirements suggested by James the most important is:

Only genuine options that are intellectually open are decidable on passional grounds.

James is not arguing against conforming one’s belief to the evidence, whenever there’s a preponderance of evidence. Nor is he arguing against the importance of evidence. His is an argument contra the prohibition of believing whenever the evidence is silent, a prohibition implied by Clifford’s Rule.

The requirement that an option is intellectually open may be redundant. If the evidence were compelling, or even strongly supportive of, say, hypothesis a , and you recognized this, it may be that you would find only a alive. Since you’re aware that the evidence strongly supports it, you would not find not- a living. In other words, to say that an option is living may imply that it is intellectually open. Nonetheless, let’s proceed as if aliveness and openness are logically distinct notions. Additionally, we might ask whether the property of intellectual openness is to be understood as the evidence is lacking, or as the evidence is in principle lacking. That is, is an option intellectually open when the evidence is indeterminate, or when it is essentially indeterminate? James’s argument requires only the former. The lack of adequate evidence is sufficient to render an option intellectually open. If more evidence appears so that one hypothesis is supported by a preponderance of the evidence, then a commitment to abide by the evidence is triggered.

The relevance of all of this to theistic belief, according to James, is that:

Religion says essentially two things. …the best things are the more eternal things, the overlapping things, the things in the universe that throw the last stone, so to speak, and say the final word…. The second affirmation of religion is that we are better off even now if we believe [religion’s] first affirmation to be true… The more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is represented in our religions as having personal form. The universe is no longer a mere It to us, but a Thou …. We feel, too, as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own active good-will, as if evidence might be forever withheld from us unless we met the hypothesis half-way. (James 1896, 25–7)

James asserts that there are two affirmations of religion. By affirmation James means something like an abstract claim, devoid of much doctrinal content, and found in the major religions. The first affirmation is that the best things are the more eternal things, while the second is that we are better off even now if we believe the first affirmation. The first affirmation is particularly puzzling, since James does not assert that the best things are the eternal things; he says that the best things are the more eternal things. He explicates this affirmation with three metaphors and a slogan: “the overlapping things, the things in the universe that throw the last stone, so to speak, and say the final word. ‘Perfection is eternal,’ – this phrase of Charles Secrétan seems a good way of putting this first affirmation of religion” (James 1896, 25). Two ideas are suggested by James’s explication: sovereignty and perfection. If we understand “more eternal” as a kind of necessity, or non-contingency, then perhaps the first affirmation may be understood as asserting that the best things are those things that cannot fail to be sovereign and perfect. This interpretation resolves much of the first affirmation’s puzzle. The plurality though is still puzzling. We can resolve this puzzle by recognizing that, although he does not explicitly call it a third affirmation, James asserts that “the more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is represented in our religions as having personal form. The universe is no longer a mere It to us, but a Thou ” (James 1896, 26). If we take this as a third affirmation of religion (perhaps at the risk a charge of theistic parochialism), the possibility that the more eternal things are plural is foreclosed. Monotheism, in other words, and not polytheism is established by the third affirmation. Taken together, then, the first and the third affirmations of religion suggest that the supreme good in the universe is the existence of a personal being that is essentially perfect and sovereign. The second affirmation is that we are better off now by believing in the existence of this perfect being. At least in part, we would be better off now by believing the first affirmation because by doing so the possibility of a relationship with this being is established.

According to James, just as one is not likely to make friends if one is aloof, likewise one is not likely to become acquainted with the perfect being, if there is such, if one seeks that acquaintance only after sufficient evidence has been gathered. There are possible truths, James claims, belief of which is a necessary condition of obtaining evidence for them. Let’s call the class of propositions whose evidence is restricted to those who first believe “restricted propositions.” Dependent propositions and restricted propositions are James’s counterexamples to Clifford’s Rule. They are two examples of the kinds of truths that Clifford’s Rule would keep one from acknowledging. That is, Clifford’s Rule is problematic because following it would preclude access to restricted propositions and dependent propositions. The Cliffordian may be forever cut off from certain kinds of truth.

One might object that James has at best shown that theistic belief is momentous only if God exists. If God does not exist, and, as a consequence, the vital good of eternal life does not obtain, then no vital good is at stake. To answer this objection a Jamesian might focus on what James calls the second affirmation of religion – we are better off even now if we believe – and take that affirmation to include benefits that are available, via pro-belief, even if God does not exist. In The Varieties of Religious Experience James suggests that religious belief produces certain psychological benefits:

A new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism…. An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections. (James 1902, 475)

In any case, given that theism is intellectually open and that it’s part of a genuine option, and given that there are vital goods attached to theistic belief, James says, the hope that it is true is a sufficient reason to believe. In addition this objection is easily evaded if we revise the notion of a genuine option by removing the requirement that an option is genuine only if momentous, although James himself may have been loath to drop that requirement.

James’s second main argument proceeds:

• The decision whether to accept theism is a genuine option. And,
• Theism is intellectually open. And,
• There are vital goods at stake in accepting theism. And,
• No one is irrational or immoral in risking error for a chance at truth and a vital good. So,
• One may accept theism.

With this argument, James seeks to support the second of his two primary concerns of his essay, that a religious commitment is permissible.

An objection commonly leveled against James’s argument is that “it constitutes an unrestricted license for wishful thinking… if our aim is to believe what is true, and not necessarily what we like, James’s universal permissiveness will not help us” (Hick 1990, 60). That is, hoping that a proposition is true is no reason to think that it is . A Jamesian might contend that this objection is unfair. As we have noted, James does not hold that the falsity of Clifford’s Rule implies that anything goes. Restricting the relevant permissibility class to propositions that are intellectually open and part of a genuine option provides ample protection against wishful thinking.

A more significant objection contends that James’s argument fails “to show that one can have a sufficient moral reason for self-inducing an epistemically unsupported belief” (Gale 1990, 283). This objection contends that there is a weighty moral duty to proportion one’s beliefs to the evidence, and that this duty flows from moral personhood – to be a morally responsible person requires that one have good reasons for each of one’s beliefs. But to believe an epistemically unsupported proposition is to violate this duty and is thus, in effect, a denial of one’s own personhood. [ 5 ] Or think of it another way, as intellectual beings, we have the dual goal of maximizing our stock of (significant) true beliefs and minimizing our stock of false ones. Clifford’s Rule derives its moral validity, one might contend, from that intellectual goal. And from Clifford’s Rule flows our duty to believe only those propositions that enjoy adequate evidential support. James’s argument would, if operative, thwart our intellectual goal by permitting us to violate Clifford’s Rule. Can a morally and intellectually responsible person ever have a moral duty to believe a proposition that lacks adequate evidence, a duty that outweighs the alleged Cliffordian duty of believing only those propositions that enjoy adequate support? To answer this, let’s employ what we might call the “ET” thought experiment. Suppose Clifford is abducted by very powerful and very smart extraterrestrials, which offer him a single chance of salvation for humankind – that he acquire and maintain belief in a proposition that lacks adequate evidential support, otherwise the destruction of humankind will result. Clifford adroitly points out that no one can just will belief. The ETs, devilish in their anticipation as well as their technology, provide Clifford with a supply of doxastic-producing pills, which when ingested produce the requisite belief for 24 hours. It’s obvious that Clifford would do no wrong by swallowing the pills and bringing about a belief lacking adequate evidential support. [ 6 ] Moreover, since one is never irrational in doing one’s moral duty, not only would Clifford not be immoral, he would not even be irrational in bringing about and maintaining belief in a proposition lacking adequate evidential support. As we mentioned earlier, given the distinction between (A) having reason to think a certain proposition is true, and (B) having reason to induce a belief in that proposition, it may be that a particular proposition lacks sufficient evidential support, but that forming a belief in that proposition is the rational action to perform.

A very interesting objection to James’s argument is that it falls prey to the very principle it invokes against Clifford:

James writes: “A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there would be an irrational rule”. This may sound like sweet reason itself, but a moment’s reflection should convince us that it is nothing of the kind. Any rule whatever that restricts belief in any way might conceivably shut us off from some truths. (Wood 2002, 24)

According to James, Clifford’s Rule is problematic because, if followed, it would preclude access to restricted propositions and dependent propositions. According to this objection, this alleged flaw of Clifford’s Rule is true of any epistemic principle. Every epistemic principle that divides beliefs into those that are permissible and those that are not runs the risk of shutting off access to certain possible kinds of truth. James’s restriction of the permissible use of the passional nature only to when one faces a genuine option that’s intellectually open is just as guilty of the alleged flaw as is Clifford’s Rule. But an alleged flaw found in every possibility is no flaw. Hence, James’s objection to Clifford fails.

This objection is interesting since it is in one sense true. It’s obvious that any rule that restricts belief in any way might shut us off from certain truths. Still, while interesting, this objection is irrelevant. James’s argument is not predicated on the abstract proposition that “any rule whatever that restricts belief in any way might conceivably shut us off from some truths.” It is predicated on the principle that there are dependent propositions, and there are restricted propositions. His examples of social trust, and acquiring friends, and of social cooperation are intended to make that clear. If theism were true, then it is very likely that there would be dependent propositions and restricted propositions in that realm as well. Clifford’s Rule would preclude access to any restricted or dependent proposition, whether religious or not. James is not arguing against conforming one’s belief to the evidence, whenever there’s a preponderance of evidence. He is arguing against the prohibition of believing whenever the evidence is silent. Since James’s argument specifies the irrationality of Clifford’s Rule’s exclusion of dependent and restricted propositions, and not just the abstract possibility of some kind of true belief or other being excluded, it escapes this objection.

William Wainwright has argued that James’s argument properly fits within an old Christian tradition, which asserts that:

Mature religious belief can, and perhaps should, be based on evidence but… the evidence can be accurately assessed only by men and women who possess the proper moral and spiritual qualifications. This view was once a Christian commonplace; reason is capable of knowing God on the basis of evidence – but only when one’s cognitive faculties are rightly disposed. (Wainwright 1995, 3).

If Wainwright is correct, then James’s argument is not just a pragmatic argument, but also an epistemic argument, since he is arguing that one of the pragmatic benefits is a more reliable access to reality (see also the explication of James’ argument via contemporary epistemic utility theory in Pettigrew 2016). So, the chasm between the epistemic and the pragmatic is not unbridgeable, since James’s Will to Believe argument spans the gulf between the pragmatic and the epistemic. Importantly, we should keep in mind that whatever else it is, James’s argument is, at least in part, a pragmatic argument, and, moreover, James probably saw his argument as having a similar status as Pascal’s Wager, since he offers a positive evaluation of the Wager, very often overlooked by commentators, “Pascal’s argument, instead of being powerless, then seems a regular clincher, and is the last stroke needed to make our faith…complete” (James 1896, 11).

The posthumous publication of Mill’s Three Essays on Religion (1874) drew criticism from the faithful, but it also drew a surprising disappointment from those who expected the “saint of rationalism” to argue for agnosticism. The cause of this consternation is found in the third of the three essays, “Theism,” a short work begun in 1868 and unfinished when Mill died in 1870. The faithful found “Theism” objectionable because of Mill’s criticism of several of the standard arguments of natural theology. The disappointment of the other side flowed from Mill’s endorsement of a position that can be summed up by the principle that where probabilities fail, hope can properly flourish. As Mill expressed this principle when discussing immortality, “…to any one who feels it conducive either to his satisfaction or to his usefulness to hope for a future state as a possibility, there is no hindrance to his indulging that hope” (Mill 1874, 210). Mill thought that belief in a creator of great but limited power was supported by the design argument, and one could certainly erect the superstructure of hope upon the base of a belief in a creator who would extend human existence beyond the grave:

Appearances point to the existence of a Being who has great power over us – all the power implied in the creation of the Kosmos, or of its organized beings at least – and of whose goodness we have evidence though not of its being his predominant attribute; and as we do not know the limits either of his power or of his goodness, there is room to hope that both the one and the other may extend to granting us this gift provided that it would really be beneficial to us. (Mill 1874, 210)

Since we do not know that granting postmortem existence to humans is beyond the capability of the creator, hope is possible. As Mill puts it:

…in the regulation of the imagination literal truth of facts is not the only thing to be considered. Truth is the province of reason, and it is by the cultivation of the rational faculty that provision is made for its being known always, and thought of as often as is required by duty and the circumstances of human life. But when reason is strongly cultivated, the imagination may safely follow its own end, and do its best to make life pleasant and lovely… On these principles it appears to me that the indulgence of hope with regard to the government of the universe and the destiny of man after death, while we recognize as a clear truth that we have no ground for more than a hope, is legitimate and philosophically defensible. The beneficial effect of such a hope is far from trifling. (Mill 1874, 248–9)

For our purposes the item of interest is Mill’s claim that “any one who feels it conducive either to his satisfaction or to his usefulness to hope for a future state as a possibility, there is no hindrance to his indulging that hope” (Mill 1874, 210). Mill’s license to hope is issued on pragmatic grounds: it is permissible to hope if and only if:

The second condition (L2) is straightforwardly pragmatic and restricts hope to those who have goals either of personal happiness, or of contributing to the well-being of others. Believing that hope will result in the increase of happiness or well-being is a necessary condition of permissible hope.

There’s little doubt that Mill agreed with Clifford’s Rule. Mill was no subjectivist or fideist. But hope and belief are not the same; and the standards for the permissibility of the latter are considerably higher. Mill thought that (L1) and (L2) were the relevant standards for permissible hope. If one believes that Clifford’s Rule should govern any and all propositional attitudes and not just belief, then it is easy to see why Mill’s liberal treatment of hope would disappoint.

Mill held that one may hope that God exists, but one may not believe that God exists, as the evidence is lacking. Suppose one agrees with Mill, that faith can subsist on hope, trust, or some other non-doxastic attitude other than belief. Suppose further that one seeks to build a theistic commitment on hope. The acceptance of theistic hope provides reason to act as if theism were true, not because one believes that it is true, but because one hopes that it is. What is it to act as if theism is true? It is to put into practice behaviors characteristic of a particular religious tradition, such as Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. Acting as if a certain religious tradition were true would include reorienting one’s values, priorities, and life-projects in order to reflect a commitment to a particular tradition. It would also involve engaging in the rituals and behaviors associated with the particular tradition; and investing a significant portion of one’s time and money in support of causes associated with the tradition.

A problem arises however. Social psychology, with its theories of biased scanning, social-perception theory, and cognitive dissonance theory, advances the idea that behavior can alter, influence, and generate attitudes, including beliefs (see Jordan 2016). By regularly engaging in behaviors and practices characteristic of a particular religious tradition, one engages in actions that tend to inculcate religious belief. Belief is catching, as associating with and imitating the faithful is an effective way of self-inducing the beliefs of the faithful. Those who seek to replace belief with hope will find themselves taking steps to build a theistic commitment on hope, while holding that they ought to avoid theistic belief. Yet, the very steps involved in fostering a commitment on hope – immersive role-playing as a theist, or acting as if theism were true – tend to generate theistic belief. Those who habitually or chronically imitate the actions and rituals of theists find eventually that those are not just tasks they perform, but are at the heart of who they are and what they believe. Yet, theistic belief is off-limits.

One would have to take steps that inoculate against the contagious theistic belief. Yet, the reasons one has to build a theistic commitment on hope and not belief, would conflict with one’s reasons to inoculate against catching belief. One is pushed to act as if theism were true, yet pulled to act to ensure that one does not come to believe that it is. Whatever commitment might emerge out of this dynamic is not likely one characteristic of a mature or wholeheartedly committed theist.

This problem of catching belief flows out of the fact that chronically acting as if something is true is an effective way of inculcating the belief that it is true. Any non-doxastic account of faith put into regular practice, coupled with Clifford’s Rule, is exposed to the problem of catching belief. Religious Fictionalism, for example, which holds that faith that p does not require belief that p , has to deal with the problem. For more discussion, see Malcolm and Scott 2017, and Jordan 2016.

In 1770 James Beattie (1735–1803) published a long response to Hume entitled An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism . The essay was a 300 page best seller, which, most commentators agree, was unfair in many respects to Hume. As was his practice, Hume never made an effort to answer Beattie in public; in correspondence, however, Hume referred to Beattie as that “bigoted silly fellow.” [ 7 ]

Despite the general weakness of many of his arguments Beattie does offer an interesting pragmatic moral objection to Hume’s attack on religious belief:

…they perhaps have little need, and little relish, for the consolations of religion. But let them know that, in the solitary scenes of life, there is many an honest and tender heart pining with incurable anguish, pierced with the sharpest sting of disappointment, bereft of friends, chilled with poverty, racked with disease, scourged by the oppressor; whom nothing but trust in Providence, and the hope of a future retribution, could preserve from the agonies of despair. And do they, with sacrilegious hands, attempt to violate this last refuge of the miserable, and to rob them of the only comfort that had survived the ravages of the misfortune, malice, and tyranny! Did it ever happen, that the influence of their execrable tenets disturbed the tranquility of virtuous retirement, deepened the gloom of human distress, or aggravated the horrors of the grave? Is it possible that this may have happened in many instances? Is it probable that this hath happened, or may happen, in one single instance? – ye traitors to human kind, how can ye answer for it to your own hearts? (Beattie 1776, 322–23).

Beattie argues that Hume’s clear cutting of the theistic forest in his attack on the credibility of miracle reports, his criticism of the design argument, and his attack on the cosmological argument resulted in a desolated landscape that does a serious disservice to humankind. Since in some cases, Beattie contends, despair flows from the loss of faith. And he assumes that no justifying good exists for Hume to risk causing despair.

Let’s understand desolation as a profound sense of hopelessness and purposelessness. Beattie believed that Christian belief provided consolation, especially to those suffering or oppressed. His argument might be reconstructed as there exists a person S , such that:

• Theistic belief provides the great good of consolation for S . And,
• S cannot receive a comparable good from any other source. And,
• The deprivation of this good is a significant loss for S . So,
• Depriving S of the great good of theistic belief renders S significantly worse-off. And,
• It is wrong to render someone worse-off without compensation. And,
• Public atheistic attacks provide S with no sufficient compensation. Therefore,
• Public atheistic attacks are wrong.

While Hume never directly responded to Beattie’s Consolation Argument, Mill had it (or something very much like it in mind) when he wrote:

That what is called the consoling nature of an opinion, that is, the pleasure we should have in believing it to be true, can be a ground for believing it, is a doctrine irrational in itself and which would sanction half the mischievous illusions recorded in history or which mislead individual life. (Mill 1874, 204)

This is an odd objection coming from one who argued in Utilitarianism “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” If the sole criterion of action is the production of happiness, and if forming a belief is an action, then it is hard to see what answer could be lodged against Beattie’s Consolation Argument (or at least some argument very much like it). [ 8 ] If happiness and consolation are irrelevant, and if Clifford’s Rule that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence” is correct, then Beattie’s consolation argument can be rejected as being itself an immoral subornation. [ 9 ]

An argument similar to Beattie’s consolation argument is found in a suggestive passage of John Henry Newman’s 1870 An Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent , famously known as the “factory girl” argument. Newman (1801–1890) did not formulate the “factory girl” argument as a pragmatic argument, but the argument certainly lends itself to such a formulation:

Montaigne was endowed with a good estate, health, leisure and an easy temper, literary tastes, and a sufficiency of books; he could afford thus to play with life, and the abysses into which it leads us. Let us take a case in contrast. “I think”, says the poor dying factory-girl in the tale, “if this should be the end of all, and if all I have been born for is just to work my heart and life away, and to sicken in this dree place, with those mill-stones in my ears forever, until I could scream out for them to stop and let me have a little piece of quiet, and with the fluff filling my lungs, until I thirst to death for one long deep breath of the clear air, and my mother gone, and I never able to tell her again how I loved her, and of all my troubles, – I think, if this life is the end, and that there is no God to wipe away all tears from all eyes, I could go mad!”

Here is an argument for the immortality of the soul (Newman 1870, 299–300).

This argument lends itself easily to a pragmatic cast since it places great weight on the idea that certain human needs support the rational and moral legitimacy of religious belief:

• We have existential needs – a need for a deep meaning in life, a need for hope, a need for cosmic security, a need for consolation from despair – which are necessary for our well-being. And,
• Belief in God satisfies these existential needs. So,
• Belief in God is overall justified.

This sort of argument faces many questions and issues that we cannot explore here. Among these issues and questions are: suppose that one, morally and rationally, may satisfy a need, it does not follow that one can satisfy that need in any old way. Some ways of satisfying a need are permissible while others are not. Is belief in God a permissible way? Do humans in fact have the alleged needs? Is belief in God the only feasible way to satisfy those needs? See Williams 2011 for further discussion.

A popular pragmatic argument in support of theistic belief is built upon a saying erroneously attributed to Pascal that humans have a god-shaped hole in their hearts that can be filled only by committing to God. Any finite filler will prove futile, pernicious or hollow. While Pascal nowhere mentions a god-shaped hole, in fragment 148 of the Pensées , he argues that,

All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. … Yet for very many years no one without faith has ever reached the goal at which everyone is continually aiming. … A test which has gone on so long, without pause or change, really ought to convince us that we are incapable of attaining the good by own efforts. … What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself. (Pascal)

The argument suggested in fragment #148 is that faith in God alone provides happiness, as theistic commitment alone results in happiness; while all other causes and commitments are chimera too small to fill the hole in our lives. While Pascal wrote of happiness, his argument might be re-focused toward meaning in life, perhaps by arguing that a genuinely or truly happy life will be a meaningful life. Would the existence of God make our lives meaningful? In this context “meaning in life” is a life that makes a positive objective difference in the world. As we have seen, a pragmatic argument in support of doing a particular action conforms to the general scheme that:

Some have contended that inculcating a theistic commitment plays a vital role in bringing about meaning in one’s life, whether as a sufficient condition or as an enhancement (for discussion see Metz, 2019, and see Mawson, 2019). The view that a theistic commitment is required for meaning in life is voiced by W.L. Craig with his claim that:

If God does not exist, then both man and the universe are inevitably doomed to death. Man, like all biological organisms, must die. With no hope of immortality, man’s life leads only to the grave. His life is but a spark in the infinite darkness, a spark that appears, flickers, and dies forever… If God exists, then there is hope for man. But if God does not exist, then all we are left with is despair. …if God does not exist, then life is objectively meaningless; but man cannot live consistently and happily knowing that life is meaningless… If God does not exist, then life is futile. If the God of the Bible does exist, then life is meaningful. Only the second of these two alternatives enables us to live happily and consistently. Therefore, it seems to me that even if the evidence for these two options were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose biblical Christianity. It seems to me positively irrational to prefer death, futility, and destruction to life, meaningfulness, and happiness. As Pascal said, we have nothing to lose and infinity to gain. (Craig 2013)

An argument hinted at in the passage above might be reconstructed as:

• A human life has objective meaning only if that life is unending. And,
• An unending human life – immortality – is meaningful only if God provides a purpose or point to that life. And,
• Immortality would not be surprising if God exists. So,
• Human life has objective meaning only if God exists. And,
• There are no dispositive reasons to deny Theism. And,
• The value associated with one’s life being meaningful is very great. So,
• One has pragmatic reason to cultivate a theistic commitment.

This argument rests on several controversial assumptions. For one, the argument assumes that a divine conferral of purpose is necessary for one’s life to have meaning and purpose. Presumably, the idea is that a self-conferral of purpose would be arbitrary and limited by human ignorance or uncertainty as to what is genuinely worthwhile. A conferral by God, however, would not be arbitrary as God would confer only a purpose that is objectively worthwhile. Another assumption is that objective meaning in life requires immorality. One might respond that this assumption neglects that increasing the balance of objective value (good) to disvalue (evil) can make a real difference in the world, even if one lacks immortality. The actions of Lincoln made the world better than it would have been absent those actions. Arguably, then, Lincoln’s life had meaning. More generally, the achievement of good works, or the mitigation of suffering and pain, might be ways that an objective positive difference results from one’s actions. Here is where the stipulation of immortality is supposed to play a role – if one knows that one’s achievements are like footprints on a beach, which the tides of time will eventually sweep away, a sense of futility is, one might argue, unavoidable, whether we admit this or not. Immortality is supposed to ensure, along with the divine conferral of purpose, a permanence which evades futility. Finally, note that premise (31) is particularly contentious, as some would argue that the problem of evil, the problem of divine hiddenness, or the lack of evidence supporting Theism, for examples, puts Theism beyond the rational pale.

While Craig holds that God and immortality are required for meaning in life, one could argue that even if not strictly necessary, immortality and God would enhance the value and meaning of one’s life and that prospective enhancement is reason sufficient to hope that God exists and for human immortality. All else being equal, if one’s achievements were to have an eternal positive effect that does seem more valuable than if they had a limited effect. Is hope motivated by pragmatic reasons a sufficient basis upon which to erect the superstructure of theistic commitment? With this question, we are back to issues concerning the permissibility of hope. There are those who argue that the existence of God would render the world worse-off than if God did not exist. That we should hope that this is not a God created universe. For example, see Kahane 2011, and the last section of this entry for a discussion.

Clifford’s Rule is a vivid presentation of an influential and long tradition in philosophy that carries the name of Evidentialism. We can understand Evidentialism as the thesis that:

Clearly enough, pragmatic arguments run afoul of (E), since pragmatic arguments are employed either when the evidence is inconclusive, or it is conclusively adverse. Consider the latter case first. Earlier it was mentioned that Pascal’s Wager is the most famous example of a theistic pragmatic argument. Pascal in fact has not one version of the Wager in his Pensées (1660) but four. The third version of the Wager is what Ian Hacking (1972) entitles the “Argument from Dominating Expectation,” and it employs the Expectation rule. We can represent it by letting p stand for a positive probability greater than zero and less than one-half, and letting EU stand for “expected utility,” and employing F2–F4 as finite values:

No matter how unlikely it is that God exists, as long as there is some positive non-zero probability that he does, believing is one’s best bet:

• For any person S , and alternatives α and β available to S , if the expected utility of α exceeds that of β, S should choose α. And,
• Believing in God carries more expected utility than does not believing. Therefore,
• One should believe in God.

Because of its ingenious employment of infinite utility, the third version has become what most philosophers think of as Pascal’s Wager. The appeal of the third version for theistic apologists is its ready employment as a worst-case device. Suppose there were a strong improbability argument for atheism. With the third version the theist has an escape: it can still be rational to believe, even if the belief is itself unreasonable, since inculcating theistic belief is an action with an infinite expected utility. This use as a worst-case device is something like a trump card that can be thrown down defeating what had appeared as a stronger hand. Pascal’s third version clearly violates (E).

Now consider James’s Will to Believe argument. As we saw, James’s contention is that any hypothesis that’s part of a genuine option, and that’s intellectually open, may be believed, even in the absence of sufficient evidence. No rule of morality or rationality, James argues, is violated if one accepts a hypothesis that’s genuine and open. If James is correct, then (E) should be replaced with:

According to (E′) if the evidence is adequate, then the question is settled. If there’s a preponderance of support for p , then one is required to believe p . Where the evidence speaks, one must listen and obey. (E′) differs from (E) in part since it says nothing about those occasions in which the evidence is silent, or is inadequate. If one assigns p a probability of one-half, then there’s not a preponderance of evidence in support of p . (E′) says nothing about believing p in that case. Principle (E), on the other hand, forbids believing p in that case. While a proponent of theistic pragmatic arguments cannot swear allegiance to (E), she can, clearly enough, adhere to (E′). Let’s call (E) Strong Evidentialism, and (E′) Weak Evidentialism. So, an employer of theistic pragmatic arguments can conform to Weak Evidentialism, but not Strong Evidentialism.

Is there a good reason to prefer Weak Evidentialism to Strong (in addition to James’s argument)? A promising argument in support of the moral and rational permissibility of employing pragmatic reasons in belief-formation is erected upon the base of what we might call the Duty Argument (or perhaps more precisely, the Duty Argument scheme):

• It is necessary that (no one is (overall) irrational in doing what he’s morally obligated to do). And,
• It is possible that (doing α is a moral obligation). So,
• It is possible that (doing α is (overall) rational).

The Duty Argument employs the box and diamond in the standard fashion as operators for, respectively, conceptual necessity and possibility. The alpha is just a placeholder for actions, or kinds of actions. The locution “(overall) rational” or “(overall) irrational” presupposes that there are various kinds of rationality, including moral rationality, epistemic rationality, and prudential rationality. [ 10 ] The idea that there are various kinds of rationality, or put any way, that one can be under conflicting obligations at a particular time, recognizes that dilemmas are possible. One can be obligated to do various things even when it’s not possible to do all of them. Overall rationality is the all-things-considered perspective. It is what one ultimately should do, having taken into account the various obligations one is under at a particular time. Overall rationality, or all-things-considered rationality (ATC rationality), is, in W.D. Ross’s terms, one’s actual duty in the particular circumstances, even if one has other conflicting prima facie duties. The Duty Argument can be formulated without presupposing that there are various kinds of rationality, by replacing the principle that no one is ever irrational in doing her moral duty , with the principle that moral obligations take precedence whenever a dilemma of obligations occurs . In any case the Duty Argument assumes that if in doing something one is not ATC irrational, then it follows that one is ATC rational in doing it.

The relevance of the Duty Argument is this. The action of forming and sustaining a belief upon pragmatic grounds can replace α. That is, pragmatic belief formation could be one’s moral duty. Consider the following four cases in which pragmatic belief formation is, arguably, morally required:

Devious ETs : Suppose you are abducted by very powerful and advanced extraterrestrials, who demonstrate their intent and power to destroy the Earth. Moreover, these fiendish ETs offer but one chance of salvation for humankind – you acquire and maintain a belief for which you lack adequate evidence. You adroitly point out that you cannot just will such a belief, especially since you know of no good reason to think it true. Devilish in their anticipation and in their technology, the ETs produce a device that can directly produce the requisite belief in willing subjects, a serum, say, or a supply of one-a-day doxastic-producing pills. It is clear that you would do no wrong by swallowing a pill or injecting the serum, and, hence, bringing about and maintaining belief in a proposition for which you lack adequate evidence, done to save humankind. Indeed, it is clear that you are in fact obligated to bring about the requisite belief, even though you lack adequate evidence for it. Pain case : Jones knows that expecting an event to be painful is strongly correlated with an increase in the intensity of felt pain (as opposed to having no expectation, or expecting the event to be relatively painless). Jones is about to have a boil lanced, and believing that she is obligated to minimize pain, she forms the belief that the procedure will be painless. She does so even though she lacks evidence that such procedures are in fact typically painless. Because of her action, the event is in fact less painful than it would otherwise have been. Small child : Suppose you are the parent or custodian of a small child, who has been hurt. You know that studies support the thesis that the felt pain reported by patients is typically higher in cases in which the patient expected the event to be painful than in cases where the patient did not have that expectation. You have no idea about the relative pain associated with a particular medical procedure that the child is about undergo. The child asks you if the procedure will be painful. Desiring to lower the pain the child will feel, you tell the child that the procedure will not hurt, hoping that the child will form a belief not supported by the evidence, but thereby lowering the child’s felt pain. Doctor case : Dr. Jones knows that the prognosis for Smith’s recovery is poor, but if she acts on that knowledge by telling Smith of his poor prognosis, she may well strip Smith of hope. Jones believes that maintaining hope is vital for quality of life. Overall, Jones decides it is better not to inform Smith just how poor the prognosis is and she does not disabuse Smith of her evidentially unsupported belief.

These four cases provide possible scenarios in which pragmatic belief formation, or suborning pragmatic belief formation in others, is morally required.

Although controversial, the Duty Argument, if sound, would provide good reason for thinking that there are occasions in which it is permissible, both rationally and morally, to form beliefs based upon pragmatic reasons even in the absence of adequate evidence. If the Duty Argument is sound, then (E) is false.

The Duty Argument presupposes that there are various kinds of rationality. Many Evidentialists, as well as many opponents of Evidentialism, also assume that there are various kinds of rationality. What if however there is only one kind or standard of rationality? What impact would that have on the debate? Susanna Rinard argues that it is best to reject the idea that there are various kinds or standards of rationality, and replace that idea with an equal treatment idea that all states – whether doxastic or not – face a single standard of rationality (Rinard 2017). Equal treatment of states – states like carrying an umbrella, or walking the dog, or voting for this candidate over that, or forming a belief in God – provides greater theoretical simplicity than does the idea that there are various standards or kinds of rationality. Equal Treatment also better explains the methodological attraction of simplicity in science than does the idea that there are various kinds of rationality, Rinard argues. If the equal treatment of all states idea is correct, then doxastic states would face the same standard of rationality as states of action. The Equal Treatment idea provides an additional objection to Evidentialism insofar as Evidentialism implies that beliefs are subject to one standard, while other states are subject to another standard.

Whether it is via Rinard’s Equal Treatment argument, or the Duty Argument, there is, arguably, good reason to reject Evidentialism.

The idea that persons can voluntarily and directly choose what to believe is called “Doxastic Voluntarism”. According to Doxastic Voluntarism, believing is a direct act of the will, with many of the propositions we believe under our immediate control. A basic action is an action that a person intentionally does, without doing any other action. Jones’ moving of her finger is a basic action, since she need not perform any other action to accomplish it. Her handing the book from Smith to Brown is not basic, since she must intentionally do several things to accomplish it. According to Doxastic Voluntarism, some of our belief acquisitions are basic actions. We can will, directly and voluntarily, what to believe and the beliefs thereby acquired are freely obtained and are not forced upon us. In short, one can believe at will. The proponent of Doxastic Voluntarism need not hold that every proposition is a candidate for direct acquisition, as long as she holds that there are some propositions belief in which is under our direct control.

It is widely thought that Doxastic Voluntarism is implausible. Opponents of Doxastic Voluntarism can present a simple experiment against it: survey various propositions that you do not currently believe, and see if any lend themselves, directly and immediately, by a basic act of the will, to belief. Certainly there are some beliefs that one can easily cause oneself to have. Consider the proposition that I am now holding a pencil. I can cause myself to believe that by simply picking up a pencil. Or more generally, any proposition about my own basic actions I can easily enough believe by performing the action. But my coming to believe is by means of some other basic action. Since I lack direct control over what I believe, and there’s no reason to think that my lacking in this regard is singular, Doxastic Voluntarism is implausible. Does the implausibility of Doxastic Voluntarism show that pragmatic belief-formation is also implausible?

Not at all: think of Pascal’s advice to act as if one already believes (by going to masses and by imitating the faithful) as a way of inculcating belief. Pragmatic belief-formation neither entails nor presupposes Doxastic Voluntarism. As long as there is indirect control, or roundabout control, over the acquisition and maintenance of beliefs, pragmatic belief-formation is possible. What constitutes indirect control over the acquisition of beliefs? Consider actions such as entertaining a proposition, or ignoring a proposition, or critically inquiring into the plausibility of this idea or that, or accepting a proposition. Each of these involves a propositional attitude, the adoption of which is under our direct control. Indirect control occurs since accepting a proposition, say, or acting as if a proposition were true, very often results in believing that proposition. Insofar as there is a causal connection between the propositional attitudes we adopt, and the beliefs that are thereby generated, we can be said to have exercised indirect, or roundabout, control over belief-formation.

One objection to the foregoing is that pragmatic arguments are, by and large, pointless because beliefs are, by their very nature, psychological states that aim for truth. That is, whenever one believes a proposition, one is disposed to feel that that proposition is probably the case. A person ordinarily cannot believe a proposition that she takes to have a probability of less than one-half or whose probability is uncertain since such propositional attitudes do not aim for truth. The upshot of this objection is that strong evidentialism is unavoidable.

If it is true, as this objection holds, that believing a proposition ordinarily involves being disposed to feel that the proposition is the case then it does appear at first blush that pragmatic belief-formation, as such, is ineffectual. But all that follows from this fact, if such it be, is that some sort of belief-inducing technology will be necessary in order to facilitate the acquisition of a proposition that is pragmatically supported. Now it is true that the most readily available belief-inducing technologies – selectively using the evidence for instance – all involve a degree of self-deception, since one ordinarily cannot attend only to the favorable evidence in support of a particular proposition while neglecting the adverse evidence arrayed against it and, being conscious of all this, expect that one will acquire that belief. The fact that self-deception is a vital feature of the readily available belief-formation technologies leads to another objection.

This second objection is that willfully engaging in self-deception renders pragmatic belief-formation morally problematic and rationally suspect, since willfully engaging in self-deception is the deliberate worsening of one’s epistemic situation. It is morally and rationally problematic to engage in pragmatic belief-formation, insofar as belief-formation involves self-deception.

This second objection is powerful if sound, but we must be careful here. First, while self-deception may be a serious problem with regard to inculcating a belief which one takes to be false, it does not seem to be a serious threat involving the inculcation of a belief which one thinks has as much evidence in its favor as against it, nor does it seem to be a threat when one takes the probability of the proposition to be indeterminate, since one could form the belief knowing full well the evidential situation. Even if it is true that believing that p is being disposed to feel that p is the case , it does not follow that believing that p involves being disposed to feel that p is the case based on the evidence at hand . Second, this is an objection not to pragmatic belief-formation per se , but an objection to pragmatic belief-formation that involves self-deception. Although it may be true that the employment of self-deceptive belief-inducing technologies is morally and rationally problematic, this objection says nothing about those belief-inducing technologies that do not involve self-deception. If there are belief-inducing technologies which are free of self-deception and which could generate a belief on the basis of a pragmatic reason, then this objection fails. [ 11 ]

Is there a belief-inducing technology available that does not involve self-deception? There is. Notice first there are two sorts of belief-inducing technologies distinguishable: “low-tech” technologies and “high-tech” ones. Low-tech technologies consist of propositional attitudes only, while high-tech ones employ nonpropositional techniques along with various propositional attitudes. The nonpropositional techniques could include actions like acting as if a certain proposition were true, and morally questionable ones like hypnosis, or indoctrination, or subliminal suggestion. Consider a technology consisting of two components, the first of which is the acceptance of a proposition, while the second is a behavioral regimen of acting on that acceptance. Accepting a proposition, unlike believing, is an action that is characterized, in part, by one’s assenting to the proposition, whether one believes it or not. One accepts a proposition, when she assents to its truth and employs it as a premise in her deliberations. One can accept a proposition that one does not believe. Indeed, we do this much of the time. For example, think of the gambler’s fallacy. One might be disposed to believe that the next toss of the fair coin must come up Tails, since it has been Heads on the previous seven tosses. Nevertheless, one ought not to accept that the next toss of a fair coin must come up Tails, or that the probability that it will is greater than one-half. Acceptance, we should remember, unlike believing, is an action that is under our direct control.

If one accepts a proposition, then one can also act upon the proposition. Acting upon a proposition is behaving as though it were true. The two-step regimen of accepting a proposition and then acting upon it is a common way of generating belief in that proposition. And, importantly, there is no hint of self-deception tainting the process.

One might object that employing a belief-inducing technology at all, whether low or high tech, is enough to entangle one in issues implicating the rationality of the belief induced (see, for instance, Garber 2009). A friend of the pragmatic, however, might argue that that this objection presupposes Strong Evidentialism, and arguments found in William James, the Duty argument, the Equal Treatment argument, have already provided a dispositive ruling on that issue.

While not as common as theistic arguments, there have been atheistic pragmatic arguments offered from time to time. These arguments often arise within the context of a purported naturalistic explanation of the occurrence of religious belief and practice. Perhaps the earliest proponent of an atheistic pragmatic argument was David Hume (1711–1776). In chapter X of his 1757 The Natural History of Religion , Hume wrote:

Where the deity is presented as infinitely superior to mankind, this belief … is apt, when joined with superstitious terrors, to sink the human mind into the lowest submission and abasement …

The idea of Hume’s argument here and elsewhere in his writings (see for instance Dialogue XII of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , and appendix IV of the second Enquiry) is that theism, or at least theism of the popular sort – that conjoined with “superstitious terrors,” degrades individual morality, thereby devaluing human existence. Theistic belief, Hume contended, inculcates the “monkish virtues of mortification, penance, humility, and passive suffering, as the only qualities which are acceptable…” But not only does theistic belief harm individual morality, according to Hume, it also harms public morality. In chapter IX, Hume suggested that theism (again he qualifies by writing of the “corruptions of theism”) leads to intolerance and persecution.

Another atheistic pragmatic argument is that of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who in The Future of an Illusion (1927) contends that religious belief perpetuates psychological immaturity among individuals, and cultural immaturity on the social level. To make sense of Freud’s argument requires knowing that he employed the term “illusion” in an idiosyncratic way. An illusion in the Freudian sense is a belief that is caused by and in turn satisfies a deep psychological need or longing. Illusions are not held rationally. Illusions stick even in the absence of any supporting evidence. Indeed, according to Freud, they stick even in the face of strong contra-evidence. An illusion could be true, but often they are not. Delusions are false illusions. Religious belief Freud thought was an illusion. While it may have been a beneficial illusion at an earlier time, it no longer is. The religious illusion now, Freud asserted, inhibits scientific progress, and causes psychological neuroses, among its other pernicious effects.

Another atheistic pragmatic argument is Richard Dawkins’s contention that religious belief is a “virus of the mind” (Dawkins 1993). One is religious, according to Dawkins, because one has been infected by a faith meme. A meme is Dawkins’s imaginative construct, which he describes as a bit of information, manifested in behavior, and which can be copied from one person to another. Like genes, memes are self-replicating vehicles, jumping from mind to mind. One catches a meme by exposure to another who is infected. Dawkins claims that the faith meme has the following traits:

Dawkins’s meme idea, and his dismissal of faith as a virus of the mind, is both a purported naturalistic explanation of religious belief and a pragmatic dismissal of it as a harmful phenomenon.

A contemporary atheistic pragmatic argument is that the existence of God would make the world far worse in some respects than would be the case if God did not exist, even if it did not make the world worse overall (Kahane 2011). As Kahane notes, if God were to exist, then a full understanding of reality by humans, may in-principle be unachievable. Additionally, if God were to exist, moral autonomy may be limited, since humans, as creatures, might be subordinate to God’s demands, including demands for worship, obedience, and allegiance. Finally, if God were to exist, complete privacy may be lost, as an omniscient being could, presumably, know one’s thoughts and attitudes.

Kahane’s intricate argument is counter to the conventional view that God’s existence is something that all should hope for, since this world would, arguably, be the best or among the best of all possible worlds if God were to exist. Even so, Kahane argues that one could rationally prefer that God not exist. The argument involves a distinction between evaluations from an impersonal viewpoint, and from a personal viewpoint. It is the latter, which proves the most promising for the argument as Kahane contends that the existence of God could undermine the meaning generating life-projects of some. If his argument is sound, Kahane has provided a kind of atheistic pragmatic argument that one could prefer that God not exist, even if God’s existence would render the world better overall than it otherwise would be.

Much of Kahane’s argument consists of comparisons between possible worlds in which God exists (“Godly worlds”), and those in which God does not exist (“Godless worlds”). The modal reliability of these comparisons is far from obvious, since God is standardly seen as a necessarily existing being. For a critical examination of Kahane’s arguments, see Kraay 2013.

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Essay on Why Do You Believe In God

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Personal experience.

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Why do i believe in god, personal experiences.

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My belief in god.

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Does God Exist

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Published: Jul 17, 2018

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Works Cited

• Aquinas, T. (1981). Summa Theologiae: Volume 1, God: 1a. 1-13. Cambridge University Press.
• Descartes, R. (2008). Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies. Oxford University Press.
• Gaunilo. (2007). In Defense of the Fool. In M. J. Murray (Ed.), Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy (pp. 152-156). Oxford University Press.
• Kant, I. (1998). Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge University Press.
• Paley, W. (2006). Natural Theology. Oxford University Press.
• Rowe, W. L. (2004). The Cosmological Argument. In W. L. Rowe & W. J. Wainwright (Eds.), Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (4th ed., pp. 63-73). Oxford University Press.
• Stump, E., & Kretzmann, N. (2001). The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas. Cambridge University Press.
• Swinburne, R. (2008). The Existence of God (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
• Tennant, F. R. (2002). Philosophical Theology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• Zimmerman, D. W., & Taliaferro, C. (2019). Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology (8th ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.

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