Many people defend agnosticism by arguing like this:Pragmatism and ReligionWe can't prove or disprove that there is a God.
Against the second premise, William James here argues that it can be perfectly permissible and rational to follow our feelings and believe what hasn't been proved. He defends this idea: "Our passionate 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."
What we can neither prove nor disprove, we should take no stand on.
Therefore, we should take no stand on whether there is a God.This exercise deals with a reading from James (called "The Will to Believe") in our anthology (pages 86-94 of Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (second edition), edited by Peterson, Hasker, Reichenbach, and Basinger). These computerized exercise materials are copyrighted (c) 2002 by Harry J. Gensler; but they may be distributed freely.
James, as a pragmatist, evaluated ideas by their practical results. This comes out clearly in Lecture 1 of his book on mysticism (The Varieties of Religious Experience).James thinks that psychology is relevant to our appraisal of religious beliefs, but not in the way many people think. Many try to explain religious beliefs as coming from some kind of neurosis; they conclude that religion is false. James objects that, even it religion had this origin (which he doubts), that would prove nothing -- since God could use such a neurosis to communicate himself to us.
James is more concerned about the pragmatic consequences of religious beliefs. He tries to show that religious beliefs make a very positive concrete difference to our lives -- and that this counts in favor of their truth.