A PHILOSOPHICAL LOOK INTO RELIGION AND FREEWILL IN THE LIGHT OF JAMES …

Freewill in the simplest term means the freedom to make choice.
Moreover, man in his own very nature cannot extricate himself from the bondage
of making choice. In the same vein man is equally held bound by religious tie,
so man cannot but be religious. For man to choose otherwise, is already a
choice of its own and a religion of its own. That is why I maintain that man is
condemned to be free and equally religious. No wonder Jean Paul Sartre asserts.

I am
condemned to be free. This means no limit to my freedom can be found except
freedom itself, or if you prefer, that we are not free to cease being free. 2

It seems unthinkable to imagine a world without
freewill, that type of world should be devoid of punishment and reward. This is
because in such a deterministic world, what ought to be will come to be, at the
time it was destined to be, and through the agent it was destined to come
through. 

However this freedom man enjoys is not unconnected
to the very fact that man is the only being endowed with a conscious thinking
faculty. Ekwutosi has this to say: “that human act is the result of a
complex process in which the decisive point is the will after a deliberation of
the intellect…….. Specifically human action possesses the following
constitutive qualities knowledge, voluntary/freedom. 3

This question of freewill is ontological to
man. To talk of man without freewill, is to create a different kind of being
which cannot occupy the “status quo” of man. So it is a contradictio interminis
to talk of man without freewill. No wonder the issue of freedom was given a
prime position in the constitution of United States of America. In the first
ten amendments known together as the bill of rights, it clearly stipulates such
basic rights as the freedom of speech, of religion and of press. Deleuze said that:
The doom of Europe is predicted because with the death of God and religion from
their life and culture, a period of instability, aimlessness, emptiness and
darkness sets in4.This goes to underscore
the importance and inevitable role of religion in human life. No wonder
Omoregbe asserts that: 

religion is such a sticking
and interesting phenomena to human life that it cannot be ignored even by sceptics,
agnostics or the atheists. There is no phenomenon which moulds and controls
man’s life as much as religion does. Men have given up not only their life but
even their possessions for their religious beliefs- — — thus religion has
such a powerful grip on man that it cannot be ignored in human society5

Here we are not going to give a detailed
account of freewill and religion, but will do so in subsequent chapters. So let
us have an insight into William James view.  

William James was a New York born pragmatic
philosopher. He started from physiology to psychology and finally to
philosophy. However, just like other philosophers did not philosophize in
isolation; his contemporaries include: Charles Sanders Pierce and John Dewey.
They are known as classical pragmatists. Moreover, we may not be able to
understand William James unless we are at home with his pragmatic theory, which
serves as a gate way to all other of his philosophy.

This word pragmatism
has a rich evolution; Pierce derived the word from Kant’s usage of German word
“pragmatisch”. He then applied it to an empirical condition which was founded
by three American philosophers Charles Sanders Pierce, William James and John
Dewey. Three of them fought to save philosophy from metaphysical idealism, and
equally save religious and moral ideals from empiricist, positivist scepticism.
However, the three classical pragmatists had very different philosophical
concerns, though they still share one foundation, and that is pragmatism. This
their pragmatic theory manifested in every of their philosophical endeavour,
that is why James who was more interested in religion said  that a belief in God is at least practically
verified if it provides comfort to the believer, the satisfactory  consequence of holding the belief as well as
of the proposition believed are to constitute verification6

Pragmatism concerns itself with purposeful action
and the interplay of theory and practice. It stresses on what James called cash
valueof beliefs. In all, pragmatism can be defined as: a philosophy
that attempts to apply the methods of science to philosophy, its central idea
is that the meaning and truth of an idea are determined by the idea’s effect in
practice and conduct.7

Having gathered some indebt knowledge to what I
am going to examine, let me then stipulate the pattern the long essay will
take. This work is composed of four major chapters. The chapter one includes
the following; Introduction, statement of problem, purpose of studies, scope of
study and methodology. Chapter two will be applied in exposing the nature and
notion of religion and freewill, their origin, their characteristic features
and their functions. The third chapter will be a critical analysis of the
religious experience, Mystical experience as a base for belief about God,
problem of religious experience, William James pragmatic religious experience,
and William James pragmatic verdict. Having gone thus far, the chapter four
will be a critical evaluation and conclusion.