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Philosophy
‘The Will to Believe’ is a speech written by William James. This lecture was published for the first time in the year 1896. In this lecture, James defends the concept of people adopting a belief without having any former proofs about the truths of the belief. The primary concern of James in this lecture is about supporting the reasonableness of religious faith without having adequate evidence to substantiate the truth behind the religious belief. James also provides difference between science and religion in this lecture.
This paper basically aims at identifying the difference between science and religion, with specific reference to the knowledge based and traditional assumptions and beliefs that regulate the way these types are perceived and built. In this effort to present the difference between science and religion, the William James’s ‘The Will to Believe’ is analysed.
There have been many discussions regarding the difference between science and religion. Science and religion are believed to be two various fields of study. James presents a lot of differences between these two in his lecture. His work gives out many benefits through its structure and also from the way the author has presented the issues. James describes that a religious tradition cannot be considered to be merely a set of rational beliefs or nonconcrete ideas. It is rather a way of life for the members of the religion. According to James, “Religions differ so much in their accidents that in discussing the religious question we must make it very generic and broad.” Religious experience, James says, paves way to the numerous rational accounts of religion, like philosophy and theology.
He strongly believes that reason can play a constructive role in religion. Every religious community in the world today has its typical forms of separate experience, customs, and ethical concerns. In particular, the main aim of religion is to alter or impact the personal life through liberating the believers from self-centeredness and this is got from a commitment to a broader devotion. Yet, each of the individual patterns of life and training puts on a blend of mutual thoughts and ideas.
James says that religion offers itself as an important choice to people. “We are supposed to gain, even now, by our belief, and to lose by our non-belief, a certain vital good. Secondly, religion is a forced option, so far as that good goes. We cannot escape the issue by remaining sceptical and waiting for more light, because, although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve.”
Religion, according to the oriental and Eastern belief is the belief that the omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient God is in sufferable and incapable of emotions and suffering. Being the supreme creature, God is unmoved and unaffected by the sufferings of the mortal body. Both scientific materialism as well as biblical literalism seeks systematic review. While the advocates of scientific materialism begin with science, and later make broad insightful and religious claims, it is not possible to validate such claims by using science. On the contrary, biblical literalists begin from theology and then make their way towards comprehensive scientific claims which are based purely on scientific data and concepts and the same is limited to their constricted interpretation of the scripture.
According to James, “the world is rational through and through,--its existence is an ultimate brute fact; there is a personal God,--a personal God is inconceivable; there is an extra-mental physical world immediately known,--the mind can only know its own ideas; a moral imperative exists.”
There is also a different approach towards this debate that is based on the belief that the areas of science and religion essentially make use of their own individual data, practice, and models of inquiry for examining the completely different “realms” or the fields of knowledge. While science explores the physical world, religion on the other hand looks into the spiritual purview. As such, there exists no communication between the two activities. It looks as if science and religion while are tightly bound, yet are detached from each another.
James claims that philosophy can make religion increasingly universal by removing those features of religion that are rare in precise time and locations. It can also liberate religion from the variety of claims that are irregular and not consistent with the outcomes of scientific inquiry.
In case of science, James says that it has not evolved but progresses slowly and very often. This progress of science happens in a unique way, and looking at it deeply, it can be understood that the progress of human race is normal. Science can later take the lasting claims of religion and test them.
There are a number of concerns and areas where scientists and religious leaders can come together and start a discussion. Mostly, such mutual discussions would happen well within the boundaries of both science and religion. For instance, scientists are interested in knowing about the way in which the physical world operates, while religious leaders believing more in God and faith search for a deeper meaning about the very existence of the physical world.
While scientists try to understand a period of time how the universe created, the theologians and the believers are the ones who can explain the reason for the very existence of the universe - and that God sees creation as noble. They believe that God’s need from human kind is to recreate that difference between the ideas of scientists and religious leaders and enjoy partnership with God’s creation. Likewise, geneticists can describe how the genes function, but ethicists and priests help us think through the prudent use of this information.
According to the Christian view, our origin of human nature may be learnt by work in fields like the behavioural science and the aspects dealing with human origins. Moreover, it is necessary that faith has its strong foundation in the scripture, custom, and knowledge. Therefore, as for the human nature is concerned, the scripture will always be the central theme of the understanding of Christianity. Yet, the exact origin of the believers about the scripture may be learnt in a better way with the help of science.
There is a famous passage written by Pascal that is named as Pascal's wager in literature. In that passage, Pascal tries to force us into “Christianity by reasoning as if our concern with truth resembled our concern with the stakes in a game of chance. Translated freely his words are these: You must either believe or not believe that God is--which will you do? Your human reason cannot say.”
In a nutshell, it is clear that the framework to know the relationship between science and religion as proposed by William James’s speech has its base on the choice of critical realism that has given way to logics more responsive to the historical, contextual and ideological impacts on science and religion as traditional phenomena. This essentially is a result of the pressure of postmodern philosophies of epistemology.
While it is extremely imperative that the domains of both science and religion exist for a greater benefit of the humankind, it is almost certain that they must harmonize and become independent of each another. This is so because, though science and religion look similar in a few ways, the basic differences that exist between these two domains pose a conflict which basically resonates to the basics of each of the fields of study.
James states that, “Science says things are; morality says some things are better than other things; and religion says essentially two things.” Combination of these two fields though is likely to have its own set of benefits, is also not so realistic and possible because scientific standards for classifying an idea as truthful, surely challenges most religious philosophies and views that are highly important for the well-being of human beings. It is thus recommended that the optimal way to understand the relationship between science and religion is to treat them independently because such a view has more benefits than problems.
Works Cited
James, William. The Will to Believe and Other Essays. London: Longmann, Green & Co., 1897.
