The book titled “The Varieties of Religious Experience” by William James was first published in 1902 and is still published regularly in various languages. The author is the 19th century Harvard psychologist and philosopher, concerned through all his life with the problems of the existence of a human on Earth and the role of religion in human’s life. The questions spoken about in this book are quite interesting and important for any representative of a civilized human society because religion is an integral part of life, especially when a person faces some obstacles on his way.
In this case religion becomes the last resort for a human being who has already lost all the trust in people and can hope only for the divine help. In this work we are going to try to examine the actual importance of religion in human’s life, exemplifying our opinions with the statements and thoughts of William James. We will speculate on the point whether the religion contributes positively to an adult life or not, try to find out if it gives people hopes, helps them to live esthetically and to get so badly wished peace of mind.
The first reason to prove the crucial importance of religion for any o us can be that religion gives people hopes. Let us put the statement under the scope and analyze it in trying to investigate its essence. From one hand, it is nice when someone finds the “substance” where he feels peaceful, even if this finding needed some difficulties to have happened in a person’s life to be made. But from the other hand, despite the fact that religion does give people hopes, if we want to argue we can say that it is a person who looks for hope in religion when there is no other source of hope.
The example here can be a person with a serious disease, doctors can not help him so his choice is to give up or try to fight the problem with the help of religion, with the help of faith. In the history of the mankind the people choosing the second alternative are known as Mind-Cure Movements, social groups promoting positive thinking as the way of curing diseases and depressions(William James, Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, 2002).
But in other words such a person can be called a timeserver – he or she would not come to religion if there were any other help in a particular situation. It seems at least unfair in relation to the religion, to that divine power the person addresses his prayers to.
And in connection to this question of decency here comes the second point – does religion help to live ethically if some people, as is exemplified above, change their views with no hesitation and no promise not to change the religion for something else if such a necessity appears with the purpose to satisfy the needs of the person? Many religious people are really ethically conditioned and well-bred in their behavior but it is probably much more connected with their own selves rather then with their religious views. The history gives us lots of examples of crimes and inhumane deeds of religious people, even religious leaders – the crusades, religious wars in France and Germany in the Medieval times, the inquisition in Spain in the 14 – 16th centuries.
These events can not be called the illustrations of the ethical and gentle actions which nevertheless were carried out headed by religious leaders and with the purpose of converting people into one or another religion. It would be appropriate to mention here another William James’ idea – people are divided into “healthy minds” and “sick souls”, the first being happy and enjoying life with all its colors and problems and their religion plays no role in their self-identity, and the second ones being permanently depressed and looking for negative emotions in every life situation (William James, Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, 2002). So here we deal with optimism and pessimism, to my mind, but not with the religious ethical upbringing.
And as a logical consequence of the two reasons mentioned above we are now able to express our thoughts on the third position of this work. Religion is said to give people the so-called peace of mind. This point of view also has right for existence because great numbers of people really changed their lives for the better thank to the religion in them. Firstly, people learn to perceive the objective reality as it is so that not to be frustrated with any expectations which did not come true – they just take what the God gives them without demanding anything more. Secondly, religion helps certain categories of people overcome the consequences of their, for example criminal, past as well as cope with the prejudices of the society towards them.
This point of the work seems to be one of the most convincing because it can easily be illustrated with a plenty of examples, even famous Hollywood stars, whose lives could be called “the life of sin” have recently started taking up religion, to be more exact – different kinds of it, including Kabbalah, Scientology, Islam, etc. Of course, their examples do not mean much to a clever person with his own thoughts and attitudes but they are important for the mass-media and for public understanding of the importance of the problem.
Concerning my personal opinion about the reasons and facts enumerated and discussed above, I do not think that religion makes positive contribution to adult life because William James says that the origin of a thing has nothing to do with its value for a human, for example atomic energy was invented to serve peaceful purposes but we all know how it is used nowadays. By this I want to say that the value of a person in the society does not depend on the religion this person worships, and vice versa – the image of the religion should not be worsened in the eyes of the mankind because of actions of a certain number of its representatives.
I am strongly convinced that nice upbringing, ability to foresee the consequences of your actions accompanied by optimism make much positive contribution to adult life. In my opinion religions can be completing elements which form the entity called “A Human Being” but they should not be this or that person’s everything.
In the conclusion it is necessary to mention that in this essay I covered the points confirming and denying the great positive contribution of various religions to adult life, expressed my thoughts concerning the hope which is given to people by religions, also said a few words about the connection of ethics and religion.
I keep to the position that it is not right to change principles, i.e. I do not understand the people who start worshiping a religion when they need an urgent help and drop at once when things begin to get better. Although Professor W. James considers the people who took up religion after some emergency events in they lives to be the happiest ones because they felt the only two states of a human soul which he singled out – “sick soul” and “healthy mind” (William James, Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, 2002), I stick to the point that a person should define hi or her position in life because there will be no position at all if the fits from side to side are the norm of behavior.
Another point covered in the essay is the ethical life given by a religion to its parishioners. I have described several examples from the history of religion and they contradict to the statement taken by us as an argument in favor of the use of religious experiences, so I can not but disagree with it saying that the ethics in the life of a person is the result of his or her upbringing and presence of the consciousness only completed by religious views.
As I have said above I do not agree with the statement that it is religion that brings positive in the human life. Religion can be one of these positively contributing thing but not the only one.
References
James, William. Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. London: Routledge, 2002.