Is It Reasonable to Be Agnostic?
Is the seemingly most viable religious option actually irrational? William James thought so.
Confronting issues of religion, the thinking person’s view may be that agnosticism presents the most reasonable alternative. To be a believer requires a leap of faith. Disbelieving — given the absence of empirical evidence — has appeal, but since God may exist, atheism appears based more on intuition than on reason. Hence, the abstaining, middle position of agnosticism comes across as the best alternative.
What for some is straightforwardly reasonable struck William James, no Bible-thumping evangelical, differently,
“…this command that we shall put a stopper on our heart…till (we)…have raked in evidence…seems to me the queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic cave…” -William James — The Will To Believe
How does James come to such an apparently paradoxical conclusion — that the religious position appearing most reasonable is profoundly irrational? Does he have anything fresh to say or does he dust-off tired Scholastic arguments for God’s existence?
