{"id":41,"date":"2009-04-23T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-23T07:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/william-james-on-faith-echoing-exodus.html"},"modified":"2009-04-23T07:30:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-23T07:30:00","slug":"william-james-on-faith-echoing-exodus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/william-james-on-faith-echoing-exodus.html","title":{"rendered":"William James on Faith, Echoing Exodus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The great psychologist writes wonderfully in &#8220;The Will to Believe&#8221; (1897):<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p>We feel, too, as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own active good-will, as if evidence might be forever withheld from us unless we met the hypothesis half-way&#8230;.I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth-seeking, or willfully agree to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do so for this plain reason, that a <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule<\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>This is nothing other than, put in philosophical terms, the affirmation of the Jews at Mt. Sinai upon receiving the Torah: &#8220;All that God hath said we will do and [then] hear&#8221; (Exodus 24:7). In Hebrew, the verb for hearing, <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">sh&#8217;mah<\/span>, also means to understand. The assembled Israelites vowed that they would do God&#8217;s will on the faithful assumption that later, and <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">as a consequence<\/span>, they would understand its wisdom.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The great psychologist writes wonderfully in &#8220;The Will to Believe&#8221; (1897): We feel, too, as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own active good-will, as if evidence might be forever withheld from us unless we met the hypothesis half-way&#8230;.I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hebrew-bible-oral-torah"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>William James on Faith, Echoing Exodus - Kingdom of Priests<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/william-james-on-faith-echoing-exodus.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"William James on Faith, Echoing Exodus - Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The great psychologist writes wonderfully in &#8220;The Will to Believe&#8221; (1897): We feel, too, as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own active good-will, as if evidence might be forever withheld from us unless we met the hypothesis half-way&#8230;.I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/william-james-on-faith-echoing-exodus.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-23T07:30:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Klinghoffer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"William James on Faith, Echoing Exodus - Kingdom of Priests","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/william-james-on-faith-echoing-exodus.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"William James on Faith, Echoing Exodus - Kingdom of Priests","og_description":"The great psychologist writes wonderfully in &#8220;The Will to Believe&#8221; (1897): We feel, too, as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own active good-will, as if evidence might be forever withheld from us unless we met the hypothesis half-way&#8230;.I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/william-james-on-faith-echoing-exodus.html","og_site_name":"Kingdom of Priests","article_published_time":"2009-04-23T07:30:00+00:00","author":"David Klinghoffer","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/william-james-on-faith-echoing-exodus.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/william-james-on-faith-echoing-exodus.html","name":"William James on Faith, Echoing Exodus - Kingdom of Priests","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-04-23T07:30:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-04-23T07:30:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/6e6734f7e172e24221264a565e8f4454"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/william-james-on-faith-echoing-exodus.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/william-james-on-faith-echoing-exodus.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/william-james-on-faith-echoing-exodus.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"William James on Faith, Echoing Exodus"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/","name":"Kingdom of Priests","description":"David Klinghoffer","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/6e6734f7e172e24221264a565e8f4454","name":"David Klinghoffer","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/285\/28517f740f5d348f010a20178619ea6cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/285\/28517f740f5d348f010a20178619ea6cx96.jpg","caption":"David Klinghoffer"},"description":"David Klinghoffer is an author and senior fellow in the Religious, Liberty & Public Life program at the Discovery Institute. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Jewish Forward. A California native, he currently lives on Mercer Island, Washington, with his wife and five children.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/author\/dklinghoffer"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}