Refuting the Evidentialist Challenge to Religion: A Critique Inspired by William James

Abstract

In this article, evidentialism is refuted by relying on William James’ article ‘The Will to Believe’. After an introduction into the notion of ‘evidentialism’ and James’ attack on it (section 1), I distinguish between two sorts of evidentialisms, truth-oriented evidentialism and quiescent evidentialism (2.1). In 2.3-2.5, I criticize these forms of evidentialism on the grounds that the first has very limited applicability and the second leads to absurd consequences when applied in the moral domain. In section 3, the evidentialist challenge to religion is refuted by arguing that, first, truth-oriented evidentialism is of only very limited applicability for criticizing religion and second, that quiescent evidentialism cannot be applied in certain situations (3.2.1), particular religious claims being among them (3.2.2).