What you believe, what you have posted here, your views on science and reaity-I put forth that these are solid examples as to why one should never abandon hard-earned knowledge and common sense for baseless fantasy. Every post you make on the subject of science and religion only strengthens my resolve.
No idea, and I don’t have any recommendations for you.
Someone in a position to want to ask may already have some notion of the appropriate entity to whom the request should be addressed - often as a result of persuasion from existing believers. To be clear: I’m not arguing that such a notion would have any foundation in truth.
I’m thinking you’re likely to have a serious problem finding a solid, black-and-white answer on this board. We’ve had people show up before who insisted on one in Great Debates, and they were both dissatisfied with the answers they got and unwilling to listen to or learn from the detailed explanations of why they weren’t getting acceptable answers.
Czarcasm I am not here to have you believe me, my point of view or convert you as that is not my job. My job is really to exchange ideas and believes and that will effect people. You seem to think that our exchanges serve to push you further away from belief on God. I see it quite the opposite, that because you have considered what I said enough to respond (negatively or positively it doesn’t matter) that God has used me to move you in a certain direction that He wants for you.
So in short any interchanges we have just move you further towards God’s path for you, though you may believe you are going the other way.
Peace
No, that’s actually not a reason why one must go instantly from total disbelief to total belief. You are once again creating a false dichotomy.
Yeah, well, I don’t see where you’ve started to format your posts correctly. We don’t always get what we want. But if you’re really desperate for an example, take a look back at your own post. First you asked me to provide you with an example of an illogical belief, then you said that you already agreed with me that people are capable of holding illogical beliefs and denied ever saying otherwise:
And now you’re demanding that I provide you with an example of something that you already agreed was true. That’s the sort of thing people do when they don’t agree that something is true. So either you’re not posting in good faith, or you’re your own example as you both believe and do not believe that people are capable of holding beliefs that do not make any logical sense.
First, let’s assume we have free will, or at least, that the appearance of free will in terms of choice is sufficient. That is, I can choose to raise my right hand, or not. (At least, I sure think I can, and that’s what matters here.)
I can’t choose to believe. I tried very hard to believe in Christ as my personal savior, but try as I might, I realized that I was fooling myself.
The evidence either convinces me or it doesn’t.
That said, we can make choices that can affect our beliefs. Sometimes you can’t believe something at first, but if you simply put faith in it and live as if it were true, you can find out that it is indeed true and that it works for you (the evidence piles up). I have little doubt that this can sometimes happen even when the premise is untrue.
I can’t choose whom I love, either. I’ve known people I’ve wanted to love but didn’t.
A stickier wicket is whether we choose our values or our tastes. I can’t choose to like beets, but I did choose to like pickles, and trained myself to enjoy them. That worked because I found that I could enjoy a tiny bit of pickle, and so I did, and slowly built the amount each time I had a deli sandwich. Now I look forward to the pickle like desert. Can’t do it with the beet, though. I dislike even a tiny bit.
I have faith in the proposition that it’s best to lead an ethical life. This feels a lot like a choice, and I sometimes have to do something I don’t want to do, thanks to ethics. I call it faith because I don’t know it’s true but I live as though it is. I suspect it’s true and I have a lot of evidence to support that, but I’ve also seen evidence against it. But it’s certainly not a simple choice like raising my hand or not; it’s now part of my identity. (Not quite as much as I wish it was … tsk tsk.)
Old fashioned telephones would connect you with the local operator. Prayer is like that: you just get on the line as it were and according Christian doctrine, God will hear.
That sounds a lot like you’ve chosen a particular path which leads predictably to a given belief.
Likewise for kanicbird.
As I see it, it’s a matter of moving the needle. And if you don’t have a solid underlying scientific or even methodical epistemology, adopting a metaphysical system that you find attractive might even be easy, especially if it’s socially sanctioned and reinforced.
I think some people are still reading this as if you’re being asked out of the blue to choose to believe in something and then BOOM you have to believe in it right there on the spot.
But instead if you think about situations where over time someone really wants something to be true, then yeah it’s quite possible for someone to convince/delude themselves.
On the Dope there are many former believers who are now atheists, but Out There I’ve met many former atheists who are now “born again”. In every case they are people who were at a low point in their life then comes a book which tells them exactly what they want to hear (well, provided you interpret it “correctly”), they go to church a couple of times and make lots of friends, maybe meet a hottie. And here the desire to believe can overpower all reason.
Also note that post hoc rationalization is very common; we don’t like to accept that our past views on something, and especially not our past intuitions could have been wrong.
What I mean by that is, if you’re an atheist now, but used to be a believer, it’s natural to make up a narrative of “I always knew it wasn’t true”, just as it’s natural for the born again believer to say “Deep down, I always knew there was a god”.
(Obviously in some cases such a narrative will be true, but a lot of the time, it isn’t. Our subconscious chooses to believe it :)).
I think belief in a higher power (whether it be God or FSM) starts as a maybe and moves along the spectrum with reinforcement.
Prayer (to anyone) that appears to be answered reinforces belief. In my own life I have had so many of these that my belief is pretty unshakeable. Let me give you one example that I can vouch for on my end and speculate on the other.
I carry mail. I was approaching the home of people I never liked. Their dog was always loose and not very nice, but probably nicer than the residents. I got this overwhelming urge (I don’t know how else to describe this) to leave money in the mailbox. I disagreed. Argued that it would go for drugs or booze. Argued that all I had on me was a 20. The urge persisted. As I approached, the 20 hidden behind the mail, I could hear the folks arguing behind their van. Dropped everything in the mailbox and left.
I watched in the rearview as the lady collected the mail then ran back to the van. I know on my part (20 dollars poorer) I was filled with happiness.
Now lets suppose for a minute that the lady in question was a new doper and had just heard of the FSM. Let’s say she was broke and out of milk for her baby and had prayed just that morning to the said FSM. Her belief would have moved up the spectrum a notch or two.
All that to say…Belief is so many times based on personal experience (good and bad). In the case of religion, that’s why we have so many of them.
And this sounds a lot like more “disbelief is a kind of belief” nonsense.
Correction: he’s taken a particular path. It’s not clear that he took this path simply because he selected it as preferable (which is what I mean by choice). He might have; he might not have. Speaking for myself, the same is true and I really can’t tell which. I’ll admit it: I’m seduced by reason and evidence. Maybe that’s a choice
I’m also a musician, but that doesn’t seem to me as by choice. When I’m in a room with an instrument, it takes more energy to leave it alone than to pick it up and play it. Is that a choice? True, I could have girded my spirits and chosen not to, had there been some reason to. But there was a reason for me to want to believe in Christ, and yet I failed. I tried very hard, but was powerless to believe. Definitely not a choice. Perhaps a consequence of earlier choices, but not ones I was cognizant of making.
IMHO, “choose to believe” is a figure of speech with little relation to reality.
I’m not sure I get all your meaning here, but I think I agree. 
No argument there! We’re terribly good at reinforcing our beliefs, and nearly as good at finding reasons to support what we wish to be true. If that’s what we mean by the phrase, it makes sense. But is it really “choice”?
Or perhaps, what they need to hear. Sometimes belief isn’t a function of what’s wanted, but what’s needed to swing the needle (as Measure puts it).
There’s remarkably strong evidence that we’re masters at it. My favorite is the split brain studies where one hemisphere is signalled to do something and when the other is queried, it makes up an obviously fabricated excuse. Now that we know more (or really, learned that we know less) about separation of functions in hemispheres, I wonder if this study would hold up. But it was startlingly simple and clear.
I think it’s more often the opposite. We grow up accepting most of what are parents say until we hit an age when we start denying just about everything they say. After that, who knows?
I understand and agree with your point. To not be convinced is very different from being convinced; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
But let’s try to see if we can learn anything from the claim we’re disputing here: that disbelief is a kind of belief.
First, a lot of “unbelievers” believe pretty damn hard in their disbelief. I call myself an agnostic and say I’m “unconvinced”, but I have to admit that in my heart of hearts, if I had to lay my money down on red or black, there’s no question where I’d place my bet. I guess I’m not really an agnostic in good faith. I’m certainly not alone, which is clear from discussions on this forum.
I was a little surprised to learn how committed I was to nonbelief. I’d had some discussions with seemingly rational educated people who challenged evolution, so I decided to study the question as seriously as I could as a layman with a ful-time job. I read a lot of books. At one point, I read a probabilistic argument that at first seemed valid, and it seriously rocked the foundation of my nonbelief. I was literally and viscerally stunned. That was a clue I couldn’t ignore. (I subsequently saw the “obvious” flaw in the argument … or did I rationalize my position?)
But even leaving that aside, we “free thinkers” as we used to be politely called: are we really so free? Is there an element of belief in our disbelief? Well, yes, there are a lot of elements of belief: belief in reason, math, the scientific method, etc. Not the results of science, because if tomorrow someone proved (to a jury of peers) that our understanding some subject like gravity, quantum mechanics, or evolution was deeply wrong, we’d wrangle with it but be fascinated and try to understand the new paradigm.
But we’re definitely committed to rational thought, and our commitment to that might have a tinge of the irrational about it.
BTW, I’m also an agnostic from a theoretical standpoint: given the evidence, there’s no way to tell whether there is or is not a “conscious prime mover”. (I wouldn’t call an unconscious prime mover “god”, I’d call it “reality”.)
Yet I admit it’s possible that, if there is a god, it’s even possible that there’s evidence of it. If the probability argument for the origin of life had been on a sound scientific and mathematic basis, it would have been pretty clear that either there’s a man behind the curtain, or else there must be infinite (or an astonishingly large number of) worlds. Which option would Occam’s razor slice off, and what might that say about our beliefs or choices?
So, as a challeng to those who say “nonbelief is not belief”, what evidence would you find compelling?
I’m wondering if any of the people in the ‘hard evidence driving belief’, camp are into their second marriages. Because when you think about it, every second marriage is a triumph of hope over experience. Those entering a second marriage are choosing to believe, over evidence to the contrary, that they have what it takes to be successful and go the distance.
Seems to me people ‘choose’ that ‘belief’ every day. It also seems quite likely to me, that the ‘belief’ is more than a small influence on them actually achieving that goal and going the distance.
The OP has misunderstood that belief being a choice means that one can choose to beleive anything. It’s sort of the difference in choosing the color for a new car, I might choose red or blue or grey, but wanting it to be some sort of metallic rainbow means I’ll have to get that done later, and invisible just isn’t possible.
That is, we have choice, but our choices have limited options. A child growing up as one of many families in a white protestant suburban community isn’t realistically going to be able to choose to become a Hindu over night. He might still choose to do that, but he’ll need to put in a lot more effort to get the exposure and support to do so.
Similarly, with the mentioning of leprchauns, I couldn’t choose to believe that because it’s inconsistent with my world view. If I decided I really wanted to believe that, I’d have to do a lot more than just believe in them, I’d have to set up my world view to be consistent with that, which means believing a lot of other things I also don’t believe at this point, like magic.
In all of that, there are a few times when I have chosen to believe new things. Particularly within the realm of religious beliefs, there are a few different things that are pretty consistent with my experiences. To give an example from my own experiences, I was raised to believe certain things, particular a pretty bleak image of the nature of God. I really didn’t want to believe that, so I started exploring a lot of other options and views, and in that I changed my world view.
From the other end, it’s not like an atheist can decide he wants to believe in God for some reason, wish really hard, and suddenly have an epiphany and become a devout whatever over night. A lot of these sorts of choices, like many other choices, require work on the part of the person making the choice. Why would someone who doesn’t believe in God want to believe in God? It is that motivation that really helps do the legwork, get the exposure, that it takes to changes one’s beliefs. For my part, though I am a theist, I think if I wanted to be an atheist, I probably could be, I actually have given consideration to that very thing, but I don’t have a desire to be, so why would I choose it?
Evidence-believer, 1st (and hopefully last) marriage for 25 years. One inconclusive data point.
Right, but despite that there’s a good issue lurking, which many have addressed above.
Even with the legwork, it doesn’t necessarily work. Why would a non-believer want to believe? Lots of reasons, including peer group and the hope of an eternal life, and unwillingness to give up on how I was raised.
I didn’t want to be a nonbeliever. I discovered I was one to my dismay, after refusing to acknowledge it for quite some time.
It wasn’t accurate when Samuel Johnson said it, either.
Lamia,
re: “No, that’s actually not a reason why one must go instantly from total disbelief to total belief.”
Sure it is, unless, as I asked you previously, you can come up with an example where a person doesn’t believe - isn’t convinced - that something exists AND at the same time believes - is convinced - that the same something DOES exist.
re: “… if you’re really desperate for an example, take a look back at your own post. First you asked me to provide you with an example of an illogical belief…”
I haven’t done that. You must be thinking of someone else.
re: “… you said that you already agreed with me that people are capable of holding illogical beliefs and denied ever saying otherwise…”
Yes, that is what I said. What is your point in mentioning that?
re: “And now you’re demanding that I provide you with an example of something that you already agreed was true.”
I haven’t done that. If you think that I have, how about providing a quote where I’ve made that “demand”?
re: “… you’re your own example as you both believe and do not believe that people are capable of holding beliefs that do not make any logical sense.”
Once again, I haven’t said that. If you think that I have, please provide the quote where I wrote that.
Okay, take the leprechaun example. I don’t currently believe they exist, but if I wanted to, could I choose to believe this? And how would I go about it?
I could choose to claim that I believe in them, to consistently insist that I believe.
And I could choose to act consistently as though I believed in them. (Though in the specific case of leprechauns, I’m not sure what such action would involve. But some beliefs certainly do imply certain actions.)
And it’s possible that if I did this long enough, I would come to actually, sincerely believe it—that belief would follow action. I think it’s a well-established psychological principle that acting as if something is true can nurture belief that it is, in fact, true. But, there are limits to what you can make yourself believe.
The more intellectual approach: I could question my own current disbelief in leprechauns, explore what that disbelief is based on, ask myself “How can you really be so sure?” about the assumptions I make that lead me to believe leprechauns don’t exist. I could talk to people whose judgment and reliability I respect who believe in leprechauns, especially if they claim to have actually encountered them, or seen evidence for them. I could read, with an open mind and a willingness to be persuaded, books describing leprechaun encounters or evidence or arguments for their existence. I would go into it willing to adjust my preconceptions about what leprechauns are like, and to separate what’s really true about them from the myths and folklore and silliness that may have grown up around them.
So, if I wanted to believe in leprechauns, that’s how I’d set about it. I might not be successful, but I could at least make the attempt.
By the way, I recommend you read, or at least read about, William James’s essay “The Will To Believe.”
Several years ago I developed warts. Three of them. One was on the knuckle of my right thumb, which was interfering with my job. I had read about duct tape being used for warts, but looked it up and could find no real evidence to support it.
After trying over the counter products without success I went to my Doctor and she froze the two bigger ones. It didn’t work and she froze them again. Eventually, she resorted to surgically removing the one on the thumb that was the most problematic.
The huge bandage prompted questions at work. One coworker (a rather intelligent sort) told me he had rid himself of several warts with duct tape. “I kid you not” were his words.
If I was succeptible to the placebo effect, the surgery would have worked as I fully expected it to. I was shocked when the thing came back on the thumb, and of course the other two smaller ones never left.
With nothing to lose I tried the duct tape. Cut the strips the size of bandaids so I could then cover them with bandaids and not run around looking like I really believed duct tape would fix this.
In two weeks or so they were gone. Completely. Never came back.
If you got a wart, I would not hesitate to recommend duct tape. Might even hook you up with my particular brand of duct tape, though I suspect it really doesn’t matter.
And the doper in you would promptly google it. You would get lots of hits for duct tape as a cure for warts as there are lots of believers out there. But the legitimate sources would tell you that there is really little evidence to support it, and probably dismiss it out of hand.
That would not change the fact that if I were to ever acquire another wart I would KNOW without a doubt that the cure is as close as my tool box. You won’t change my mind and I am not likely to change yours. Belief systems are hugely personal.
Great qualification and solid characterization (IMHO). Kudos.
I’m coming around to the thinking that saying that you “Choose” a belief gives a misleading view of the process. But try this thought experiment: say you discovered you were a talented music producer or music critic and believed that (in your case) playing an instrument interfered with your career. Maybe you thought that picking up an instrument when you’re with a band takes them away from their music and you were best off shutting up about it. Over time you might discover that you like practicing less because (unlike now) it doesn’t do anything for you, or maybe it just felt less rewarding.
You might sense that ahead of time. You might choose to guide yourself towards one sort of man, rather than another.
It seems like there was too great a conflict between your self-image as a believer and your self-image as a thinking person. I wonder whether a Jesuit or mainline Protestant church could have papered that over. As a kid, my church never brought up the “Accept as your personal savior” schtick. He was just Our Savior.
On duct tape and warts: Huh. I thought that was an accepted treatment. I see from wikipedia and here that the scientific evidence is mixed.