Abstract

In this dissertation, I shall investigate, compare and critically assess the views of John Hick and William James on the problem of faith and its justification. We shall see, I think, that neither Hick nor James is entirely correct, but that both can make valuable contributions to a workable solution to this problem. Hick provides a fruitful analysis of faith as "experiencing-as," but fails to show that this analysis can make rational. James, on the other hand, offers a good defense of the rationality of faith, but is mistaken in his characterization of the epistemological situation confronting someone who is deciding whether to believe in God. I shall argue that by combining the insights of Hick and James, a view of faith and its justification can be developed which eliminates the deficiencies in their respective views and which, accordingly, provides a workable solution to the problem of how believing that God exists can be rational. ;James, on the other hand, represents the view that we may properly ask for the evidence for and against God's existence, but it is not evidence which makes the belief in God rational. The evidence in this case is inconclusive: it does not point more in one direction than another. Ordinarily we should withhold judgment in such cases, but here, since the decision as to whether to believe is live, forced, and momentous, we may legitimately and rationally suspend the normal requirement of adequate empirical evidence, and believe what is most in accord with the dictates of our passional natures. By so doing, we shall be seeking rationality in the only way that it can be sought in this case, since the evidence does not point more in one direction than the other . ;Hick represents the view that this is not a case of evidence being insufficient to establish a claim; there can be no evidence either for or against the existence of God. Faith is a kind of "experiencing-as," a way of interpreting and responding to the world which cannot be justified by an appeal to the evidence, since what we count as evidence in the first place will be determined by our way of experiencing. As a kind of "experiencing-as," belief in the existence of God is epistemologically on a par with belief in the existence of a physical-object world: that is, both are ways of "experiencing-as." Thus, according to Hick, belief in the existence of God is no less rational than belief in the existence of a physical-object world. ;Some philosophers--both theistic and atheistic--have concluded that belief in God is not rational. Others, however, have attempted to maintain the rationality of religious faith, despite the inability of inductive evidence to establish the truth of religious claims. John Hick and William James are representatives of the two basic sorts of ways this latter position has been maintained. ;Contemporary philosophers generally agree that neither empirical investigation nor deductive reasoning can show us that God exists. In so far as "God exists" is intended to be making an empirical claim, most philosophers would not expect the truth of this claim to be demonstrated by pure logical reasoning; but the inadequacy of inductive evidence to show that the claim is true does raise serious questions for the rationality of believing that God exists