Clifford's Argumentative Analysis

Clifford and James are two philosophers who have contradicting opinions on whether having sufficient evidence is always necessary to believe in something. Where Clifford believes you cannot believe in anything without sufficient evidence, James believes that if the evidence doesn’t point in one way or another, it is justified to believe something based on our will. I will be arguing that James’ side is indeed correct.
In James’ paper, he provides concrete evidence as to why his opinion is correct. One of the reasons I support James’ argument is because James does not disregard the importance of evidence. He believes that if there is sufficient evidence, then you should believe it (James 13). However, he also emphasizes that if adequate evidence …show more content…
The case where this occurs is when it is forced, momentous, and live. Following this, one of the examples James gives of this situation occurring is the choice of whether you believe in God or not. He believes that you cannot have no opinion on the matter, but instead are forced to choose whether you believe or not, so it is forced (James 17). He also believes that this is a momentous and live option (James 17). Clifford could potentially argue that there is more evidence for believing God does not exist than that he does exist. However, it is important to note that he is not forcing you to believe in God, but instead saying you must choose between the two. Another point brought up by James was that there were no negative consequences that would occur with deciding either to believe or disbelieve in God. James used Pascal’s wager to prove this point (James 17). The argument James’ presented was convincing that even though sufficient evidence is not always present, you can still believe in it. The reason I found it convincing was that if there is no evidence proving your belief to be incorrect, then you should not have a reason to not believe in