To summarize, The Will to Believe by James Williams he describes beliefs as options. With that bing said he described three different types of options. The three options are live, forced or momentous.
To briefly describe a live option one can view it as subjective. Meaning that the person has to be able to connect to whatever is being proposed. In the text James described the different types of religion but if you are an atheist then neither options would matter because you don’t connect to it. My personal live option is being asked to decide between being a football fan or a hockey fan. This is a live option because i personally feel very passionate about football.
A forced option in my mind is not being able to wiggle your way out of something. In other words, its very black or white. The example given in the text was to “either take this as truth or go without it”. In this particular example one can’t stay in that moment and avoid making the decision between the two options. My personal example of a forced option would be to decide wether you die or your best-friend dies. You would have to choose between these options theres no “wiggle room”.
A momentous option could be viewed as an opportunity that if left being untaken can be viewed as a loss. For example if one were to be asked to dance with Jennifer Lopez. So many people like myself that option would be a “no brainer”. I would be willing to risk my job, all of my money in the bank in order to have that shot at potential success. Most people, especially dancers would jump at that specific opportunity to dance with Jennifer Lopez because if one were to pass on it that could/would be viewed as a “loss”. As the passage had mentioned, “Better risk loss of truth than chance of error,—that is your faith-vetoer’s exact position.” This quote was taken from the passage and i believe it was touching on the idea that its better to try at something that poses a risk than to play it safe.
I personally find it hard to find in favor of Clifford. Although I can see what he is saying i still think there is more in life than just being labeled or categorized as right or wrong. He is very critical of people as well. In short he basically believes that if a person believes the words of men then he is a waste of a human. People should only believe things that they have constructed and proven evidence for. Although i agree that everyone should form their opinions based upon facts or evidence its hard for us to go about our lives constantly finding evidence for every single thing we believe in. if we spend our life proving every single things as fact things can become very redundant. For example, am i suppose to live my life finding evidence for every small thing i believe in? Like why and how electricity exists? How my body is considered alive because of my heartbeat? there are some things that people should be able to take as facts or “evidence” based upon other peoples experiences. By doing that we can advance our thoughts to things of relevance of todays issues. By doing so we can advance our technology into other complex things. I do’t think that by believing other peoples evidence as my own should make me a waste of a human?
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