You can’t logically argue someone out of a belief they didn’t come to logically.
Not that you’ve ever really tried to have a logical talk on religion. Your interpretation of that seems to be that you tell people that their beliefs are wrong and why and then get frustrated when they don’t agree with you.
Or we can go with this time, where all you did was call bullshit and then ridicule the guy. If you think that would result in anyone having a “logical talk on religion,” then you are the one who believes in woo.
Santa Claus being a metaphor for the human spirit of giving is far from some odd belief. It is a belief held by many atheists. The only thing different about kanicbird is the spiritual belief in there being some sort of “truth” that can be found in metaphor. I’d suggest reading C.S. Lewis if you want someone who actually discusses this matter in an intellectual way.
As for the OP: all you have to do to prove that beliefs can be chosen is to look at how depression is treated. We have discovered that depression involves a lot of automatic negative thoughts about yourself and your environment. A depressed person believes these thoughts wholeheartedly. The method of dealing with this is to notice these thoughts, then counter them with positive ones. You don’t believe them, but you tell yourself them anyways, because you are willing to try anything to not feel so bad anymore. You also choose to act like you believe them. Over time, these counter thoughts will start come automatically after the negative thought. As you continue to act on the positive thought and not the negative ones, the positive thoughts become stronger, and occasionally they might come up first. Continuing even longer, and the negative thought is just a fleeting thought and the positive one is strongest. And, guess what? That stronger automatic thought now is the one you believe.
It’s hard work, don’t get me wrong. It’s not something that you can just one day choose to do. You have to continually change it. But, what it all boils down to is that beliefs are just automatic thoughts. And, like any habit, these can be changed. (Well, there is some lack of plasticity of thought over time, and there is treatment resistant depression in some people, but that’s the basic gist.)
The thing is, I have no reason to want to believe in leprechauns. Just doing it to prove what has already been proven is silly. So, in a sense, I can’t choose to believe in leprechauns. But I do choose to believe in Jesus because I have been convinced that there are good reasons for doing so. And, yes, part of that is in Pascal’s wager–although that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I can think of one example that I find myself accepting. I have always thought of any kind of telepathy as hogwash, due to a lot of small but very odd coincedences I now find myself believing that at some level we do communicate telepathicaly. I only very recently started to admit this although it has proably been at least a couple of years that I have actually started to believe it. I don’t have good evidence or any kind of proof at all I guess I have just chosen to start believing based on weak evidence, but a preponderance of it.
Something else I find myself questioning in recent years that I have always thought of as insanity is reincarnation in some form. I still don’t accept it per se but am interested in listening to cases that indicate its possible existence.
My old dad told me that compass needles pointed north because there was a vast natural deposit of lodestone near the North Pole. I believed that, but solely on the basis of authority. I did not come to it logically.
Later, I was told this was untrue, and shown facts. I was logically argued out of a belief that I had not come to logically.