Definitely a broad spectrum of things. For instance, I could far more easily persuade myself to believe that Oxford wrote the works of Shakespeare than I could wrestle myself into believing that the Apollo moon-landings were hoaxed. The evidence against the former is distant and impersonal to me, whereas I watched the moon-landings and am much more immediately involved in the belief. Also, I kind of want to believe the Oxford thing, but very much want not to believe in the Apollo hoax.
As I’ve been saying, wanting to believe in something makes it a lot easier to do the mental judo.
Good point…
I’ve only been a little bad; can I get sent to the “mercilessly tickled by cute demonesses” part of Hell?
Why does this require belief? My knowledge would be based on the last factual update. Knowing that there is an aging process, I am aware that the current facts will likely change in the future. As such, I know how much hair I have based on my last inspection, and I know I may develop a bald spot, to be discovered in a future inspection. If I have a bald spot in a blind spot, I would rely on others to update me. All of the above involves using the brain. The act of thinking. So in my opinion, I think my hair is still complete, would be the right term as it is open to correction once new data updates your brain and therefore your thoughts on the subject matter. You may be using belief in the same context, but the word is not used in the proper manner in this case.
In all of your above examples, using the word think and thought would be a better choice of word to describe those situations. Belief in this circumstance is misused and changes the original definition.
The point is in this context belief is used to mean think.
So this isn’t an example that can be used for the question if belief is a choice.
Where the question is belief a choice comes in is when belief as used in its proper definition which is to accept something as fact that which is not proven or indeed provable.
To that I say, I choose not to believe and with my answer, answers the OP question. Yes, belief is a Choice. You can chose to believe or not to believe.
When you “think” your hair is complete you “believe” your hair is complete.
It’s the same thing.
That’s what a belief is, something in your set of things considered to be true.
It’s a perfect example and shows exactly why belief isn’t always a choice.
If you want to use a different word for the things that are only arrived at by rational choice, then we can discuss that, but beliefs in humans are clearly not only based on reason and logic.
There is a less common definition that matches that but really that describes faith more than the generally accepted notion of belief.
Its interesting that you say nudity is a tradition where we broke what’s “natural” and traditional but religion is one we cannot win. I see that as a contradiction. We did “break” what is natural about nudity and regulate it. Yet we cling to what is unnatural, which is a belief in a deity and say that’s untouchable. I think its a battle that can be won, and a fight that needs to start as soon as possible. We can make it illegal to hand out religious materials just as its illegal in most places to hand out naked pictures.
You can’t say it doesn’t harm you personally so you wouldn’t want to ban it. I’m assuming that you favor criminalizing murder even though you haven’t been murdered. The point is that it is a harmful practice, that’s why it should be banned. Just as stabbing a Martian should be illegal, or at least prosecutable under some other, wider ordinance, even though none of us are Martians. If we get into the “it doesn’t harm ME so it should be ok”, then most crimes would be legal.
Instead, I think you’d agree that if something is bad, is harmful, or can be, then it should be regulated. Murder can be harmful, so it should be banned even if you may never be murdered. Stealing someone’s car should be illegal even if you don’t own a car. I think you are having a hard time equating religion with harm. Well, I don’t have that problem. I find religion harmful, maybe not immediate harm, but long term harm definitely exists, and affects a whole lot more people than just one instance of murder. Therefore, because religion is harmful, I want to ban its practice. Even if you don’t agree with my premise that it is harmful, can you at least agree with the logic to someone who does believe its harmful?
Well I think that’s a little short sighted. I believe religion in general does lead to those things. We criminalize firing bullets into the air for celebrations even if it may never harm anyone, but the logic behind that law is that it might harm people and we don’t want to wait until it does to do something about it. Just as I’ve made it clear that I think religion is harmful, a prayer circle may not lead to immediate harm, but let’s say its the Westboro Baptist Church and they end up attacking a gay person walking down the street. To me, ALL religious faith leads to a myopic, life or death struggle versus forces you believe to be pure evil, with the very fate of a person’s immortal soul at stake. This is dangerous, stupid, and harmful belief and leads to behavior that should be banned just as if someone believes children can consent to sex and that leads to him raping kids. We can’t criminalize the beliefs, but we can criminalize the practice.
And if this is a group of fundamentalist Christian Klansman, openly burning crosses, should we not be able to ban that too? And do you consider it a celebration of diversity to allow pedophiles to practice their beliefs or do you consider it ok to prevent that harm because their behavior is intrinsically bad?
We have laws that address hate speech and discrimination.
We have laws that address protection of minors.
We have laws that address freedom of religious expression.
We have laws that address freedom from religion as well.
I think we can agree that greater separation of church and state in the US would be a welcome change. e.g Politicians need to shut up about god while executing their public duties in office. But I’m not sure I would support oppression of religion among civilians as stridently as you seem to advocate.
Well, I’ll just have to disagree with this. I don’t think it’s a battle that can be won…and it isn’t a battle I would even choose to support. I must (with some distaste) stand behind people’s rights to hand out religious materials. This is largely because it indirectly helps support my right to hand out the kind of materials I might want to promote.
I don’t want to empower the government to pick and choose among which non-harmful activities people are allowed to practice.
People I know and love have been murdered.
I never made that argument. I specified people in a park handing out prayer materials. I never generalized it to all activities, and most certainly not to violent crimes.
Murder hurts us all. It hurts the entire society. It hurts civilization itself. If there are murders in my community, it hurts me by making me afraid. It makes me worry about my own safety, and the safety of everyone I care for.
So, both on abstract grounds of theoretical harm, and on immediate personal grounds, murder is harmful.
People handing out religious documents is not harmful.
By and large, yes. And I do not think that religious activity is harmful, so there you go.
Of course. Your logic is impeccable. If you (generic “you” – any person reading this) believe that religion is harmful, then it follows perfectly well that you should also believe it needs to be regulated or even banned.
I don’t agree with the major premise, and so I don’t agree with the conclusion.
“If chocolate were poisonous, it should be banned from kids’ candy.” Yes, that’s perfectly valid. In my opinion, most conventional religious activity is about as harmless as chocolate candy.
I hold to a more conventional view: one doesn’t penalize harmless behaviors that might lead to other, harmful behaviors, but only address the actual harmful behaviors. We tried the national prohibition of alcohol, on the entirely correct grounds that alcohol leads to public drunkenness, accidents, crimes, medical harm, suicide, economic harm, etc. We should have learned our lesson from this. Today, our practice is to punish people for actual crimes committed while drunk, but not to punish people for buying drinks or for the mere act of getting drunk.
(I would have been in favor of the Prohibition amendment when it came out. But I also would have been in favor of the repeal amendment in its own time.)
Actually, I’m an ACLU liberal, and believe that people should be allowed to practice ceremonial racism. I supported the right of neo-Nazis to march publicly in the street, just like any other parade of circus clowns. So long as the KKK has a valid burning permit and makes safety arrangements, I support their right to burn a cross, or an effigy of the President, or a stack of Korans, or any other odious and hateful act of symbolic evil. I don’t like it one goddamn ounce, but I hold that the act of banning it is worse.
Pedophilia is a crime that actually hurts someone; it is not a symbolic or abstract crime, but a serious and meaningful act with a victim. It is banned on the same grounds that robbery, rape, or assault are banned. I think this is a bad comparison.
Mental acceptance of a claim as likely true
Her belief is that this is/is not the case.
Faith or trust in the reality of something; often based upon one’s own reasoning, trust in a claim, desire of actuality, and/or evidence considered.
My*** belief ***is that there is a bear in the woods. Bill said he saw one.
Based on this data, it is our belief that X does not occur.
(countable) Something believed.
The ancient people have a*** belief ***in many deities.
(uncountable) The quality or state of believing.
My*** belief ***that it will rain tomorrow is strong.
(uncountable) Religious faith.
She often said it was her*** belief ***that carried her through the hard times.
(in the plural) One’s religious or moral convictions.
I can’t do that. It’s against my beliefs
[/QUOTE]
Where applicable, I would use a different word than belief for example:
Her*** thought ***is that this is/is not the case.
My conclusion is that there is a bear in the woods. Bill said he saw one.
Based on this data, it is our hypothesis that X does not occur.
The ancient people have a belief in many deities. (Acceptable use).
My feeling that it will rain tomorrow is strong.
She often said it was her belief that carried her through the hard times.(Acceptable use, describing someone else’s faith).
I can’t do that. It’s against my beliefs (I would never use this sentence, if I couldn’t do something I would be honest about why I couldn’t, for example: I can’t do that. I don’t have the skills. I don’t have the courage. I am against killing whales. I don’t have a license. It’s against the law. etc).
I think I have proven that the word “belief” in many contexts are used incorrectly. As such they are interchangeable with more appropriate words.
Personally, I choose note to believe, and I choose not to use the word incorrectly.
The only time I will use the word is in the context it is meant to be used, such as describing someone else’s belief;
“He believes in an all-powerful invisible supreme being.”
“His belief in heaven and the reward of 72 virgins made him strap dynamite around his waist and kill himself and 15 other people.”
“Her belief in the all healing God made her ignore seeking a simple treatment for her sick, now dead child.”
I accept the definition, which is why I choose not to use it in my day to day thoughts and opinions.
In the following definition:
“Mental acceptance of a claim as likely true.”
If that is the definition of belief, then the definition of dis-belief would have to be
“Mental acceptance of a claim as unlikely true.”
Both mean exactly the same thing which means they are too vague and I choose not to use either in such contexts as it lacks clarity.
I am aware of the definition, and I find the word vague and therefore do not use it where other words suffice with much better clarity.
You believe the word must be used in all context defined, when in fact it does not. I do not and I limit my use of the word to describe someone else’s belief in the unlikely and unproven.
Religion is many things, but unnatural isn’t one of them. It wasn’t imposed by aliens, it arose organically, and it’s thought to be about 300,000 years old. It may even be hardwired into humans; see the God gene.
NiceGuyJack, I’ve seen/read some wacky things in my life but none so wacky as your non-belief in belief. And furthermore, that you think you chose it, when it’s my opinion that you can’t even choose your beliefs. So you therefor cannot choose not to believe in belief.
I really don’t understand what point you are trying to make but this whole thing is pretty simple.
The word “belief” is a label for a set. The set of things a person would categorize as likely “true”.
It sounds like you want to talk about a subset of those things. Not the entire set of likely true things but just some of those likely true things. And you want to assert that the things in this unlabeled subset are the things that are always arrived at by choice.
Ok, well what is the definition for that subset of things, which ones are they?
I assume you wouldn’t want to just pick out the subset of items that were arrived at by choice to support your choice argument.
No one can prove any God exists, but if they Can prove that a lot of people’s descriptions are not as they say. The actions of such a God would not be the OT, NT, or the Koran. The way his actions are portrayed show their god to be unjust, not loving, cruel, and unknowing etc. They portray a parent if he were human would be put I jail.
Let me give you an example so, you can see my POV.
Earlier this year (about 10 months ago), I had a Jehova’s Witness at the door with leaflets and questions. I was respectful, let them know that I was an atheist and that I was not interested. Well, I guess that made them more determined, because they started arguing the existance of God.
I guess he was going to lead down the creationist argument as he slapped his hands at the wall of the building and asked; “Do you believe someone built this house”? I said “No”. No need to believe that someone built the house, it’s a fact that someone built this house. No need to believe in a fact. That did take the prothelysist back for a few seconds, but it didn’t slow him down for long. In the end I just told them I had to go and closed the door on them.
The point is, by definition, I could say I believe the house was built by someone. But there is no need to use that word in this context since the standing building is evedence enough to conclude that someone had built that house. Even though I don’t know who the builders or the achitects were.
This is, I think, a non-standard use. In traditional philosophy, we “believe” things which we also “know.”
In fact, one of the traditional definitions of knowledge is “justified true belief.” Under that definition, you cannot know something without also believing it.
(You can, however, believe things without knowing them…)
(The definition is tricky… What “justifies” a belief? And how do we know it’s true? It’s all well and good to define knowledge as truth…but that just kicks the can down the road a bit. How do we define truth?)
2 - As I said, “belief” is simply a label for a set of things. It’s the term that refers to the complete set, but it seems like you would prefer to discuss a subset of those things.
So let’s move forward by defining the set you want to discuss, then we can determine if they are all arrived at by choice or not.
Philosophical and traditional definitions just show you that many people have differing views of what the true definition of belief is. And if it is open to interpretation, it means the definitions are not set.
As for the word “truth” or “true”, I’m afraid they can be used where the content cannot be verified by fact, as in “Is the witness telling the truth?” “He swore on the bible, therefore he must tell the truth or he will go to hell”. If he doesn’t believe in the bible, could he still be telling the truth?
Personally, I would use “True” and “Truth”, when referring to fact. Of course if that truth refers to a personal experience, only I would know it as truth. For example, “I dreamt of a giant lobster last night”. This may be true for me, but you would have no way of verifying this as fact, so you can chose to accept it as true or not, the knowledge of truth here remains with the author.
So instead of defining “Truth”, why not just define “fact” and “data”. If you live only by verifiable fact, you would never need to use the words believe or belief as they would be pointless.
Agreed. I wasn’t trying to be dogmatic, merely offering one rather conventional definition. (And I did point out that it has holes.)
These are allusions to the existence of a truth, without specifying exactly what it is. Pretty much everyone in a courtroom agrees that there is a truth. Somebody shot the guard and robbed the bank. But who?
You still have the problem of verifying facts and data.
The problem is that we have no “ground” to stand on. We can never escape Cartesian doubt and the seductive certainty of solipsism. The best we can do is say, “Okay, let’s assume a ‘real reality’ and the existence of ‘other minds.’” The fixed point is only subjunctive.
Next: what about errors in procedure and observation? “He thought he saw a saucer, flying without wings. He looked again and saw it was a pie-plate held by strings. ‘That will teach me,’ he averred, ‘to look once more at things.’”
Worse, what about liars and frauds and hoaxes? “Bigfoot? Hell yes, my daddy shot one of them back in '74. I’d still have the skull, if the dawgs hadn’t gotten to it…” Now you have to build an adversarial system…
To date, the scientific method is the best example of this…and it does, as you advise, try to avoid words like “true” and “fact.” It does, however, still rely on concepts such as “evidence” and “data.”