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The principle of credulity states that religious experiences should be taken at their face value when we have no positive reason to doubt them. William James’ The will to believe suggests that perhaps proof, rationality, and scientific investigation are not the appropriate or relevant methods for deciding issues raised by religious experience. Lastly, religious experience claims direct and immediate awareness that is not dependent on direct sense experience or on reason. We will take a closer look at each of these principles as illustrated by William James and Soren Kierkegaard, to see how these concepts effect our views of religious experience. The thrust of William James’ argument in The Will to Believe is captured in the following argument; “Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, “Do not decide, but leave the question open, “ is itself a decision—just like deciding yes or no,--and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.” While not denying the importance of reasoning and evidence for many of our beliefs, James forsakes objective certainty. He claims that we can never be absolutely sure of anything except that consciousness exists. The belief in truth springs more from desire and feeling than from reason. James indicates that religious belief doesn’t have to be based on evidence, it can be a personal decision made from the heart. Central to Soren Kierkegaard’s religious thought is his distinction between the objective and subjective thinker, which is essentially a distinction between reason and faith. The objective thinker strikes an intellectual, dispassionate, scientific posture toward life. In effect, the objective thinker adopts the view of an observer. In contrast, the subjective thinker is passionately and intensely involved with truth. Truth for the subjective thinker is not just a matter of accumulating evidence to establish a viewpoint, but something of profound personal concern. Because questions of life and death, of the meaning of one’s existence, of one’s ultimate destiny, often preoccupy subjective thinkers, Kierkegaard sometimes calls them existential thinkers. Although Kierkegaard is primarily concerned with subjective thinking, he never denies that objective thinking has its place. He simply asserts that not all of life’s concerns are open to objective analysis. From Kierkegaard’s view, it would be fair to say that life’s most important questions defy objective analysis. A good example is religious belief. Religious belief is not open to objective thinking because it involves a relationship with God. In the end, rational thinking, which is the religious expression of objective thinkers, points to the existence of God but gives individuals little on which to erect a relationship with God. Faced with objective uncertainty, with the inconclusiveness of objective analysis and rational debate and “proofs,” we are anguished. We must make a decision. Kierkgaard calls this decision the “leap of faith”; it consists of a commitment to a relationship with God that defies objective analysis. Of course, we may choose not to make the leap of faith; we may, instead, try to minimize our suffering through professional understanding and knowledge, through objective analysis. But for this alternative, Kierkegaard has only sarcasm. “The two ways,” he says: “one is to suffer; the other is to become a professor of the fact that another suffered.” Thru the eyes of James and Kirkegaard, we recognize more clearly the roles of emotions and spiritual feelings in our lives and the limitations of logic and rationality. Religious experience simply cannot be quantified in objective terms. In the end, one must realize that religious experience is best viewed from a subjective viewpoint, and is best approached with a “leap of faith”. Bibliography: Word Count: 666
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