An Assessment of Clifford's Doctrine in Contrast to James's Thesis on the Rationality of Religious Belief

One of the crucial questions in philosophy of religion is the question of the criterion of the rationality of religious belief. The most influential response since the Enlightenment is the evidentialist approach to the rationality of religious belief. In this paper, the view of W. K. Clifford as a paradigm of the extreme evidentialism, and the pragmatist view of William James as a serious critic of evidentialsm will be discussed. Clifford claimed that "It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for any one to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." On the contrary, James attempted to reject Clifford's Maxim. He defends the idea that in many cases, like belief in God, one still has a right to believe in the absence of sufficient evidence. Although there are fewer problems in James's thesis, and Clifford's thesis entails more painstaking problems, but the modest evidentialism is still defensible.