William James and Apologetics: Why ‘The Will to Believe’ Argument Succeeds in Defending Religion

Abstract

Broadly speaking, the criticism of religion can be classified into two groups, a priori and a posteriori sorts of criticisms. To the first group belong attempts to re-interpret religious claims in line with whatever world view the critic presupposes. To this group belong the Feuerbachian/Marxian line of criticism, the (later) sociological theories of religion (e.g. Durkheim’s), Freud’s etc. Those attempts are a priori in that they rule out the possibility of religion from the beginning on. Given e.g. the materialist world view, that Marx, and, to some extent Freud and even Feuerbach presuppose, religious claims are ruled out on a priori grounds. This sort of criticism has its roots in the classical Continental philosophical tradition with its openness towards grand metaphysical theories, such as materialism and whatever theories are built upon it (e.g. a materialist theory of history). Its weakness is, obviously, that its critique of religion makes sense only to those people already sharing whatever world view is at stake.