esy. We see what we want to see, and we see those things which reinforce our previously acquired belief systems. We may use reason to establish that God exists, but James asserts that a need for God to exist is enough justification for belief. He adheres to this standard when considering living, as opposed to dead, hypotheses. In this manner, a believer will see evidence of God's will, while the non believer, for whom God is not a vital issue, will see the absence of God's presence.
In his essay, James repeatedly makes the point that we have to choose one way or the other: there is a God, or there is not a God. He argues that even an agnostic (and, by extension, an atheist) such as the "enfant terrible" Clifford, who neither affirms nor denies God's existence, has already decided against such an existence. The agnostic decides to give up all hope of winning a possible truth in order to avoid a possible error in a situation for which evidence must in principle be inconclusive. The agnostic's right to disbelieve in this case is no greater than the religious man's right to believe.
The atheist and believer may end up in the same place, having arrived there by differen
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