Simple question for the hardcore born agains to answer...

[JThunder]

*Originally posted by DanielWithrow *
I disagree with the first part of the sentence and agree with the second part of the sentence. I have no idea how one goes about choosing to change one’s beliefs.

Interesting that you should say that. Just two days ago, I had an experience which compelled me to make a choice regarding my own beliefs.

I’ve been going through a series of tremendous trials in my life. I won’t go into detail, but suffice to say that the tragedy is unspeakably bad, and I contemplated suicide several times over the past month. I recognized this as a foolish solution though, and snapped out of that temporary depression.

Two days ago though, something happened which made my crises many times worse, and despair sank in once again. I had to choose. Was I going to trust that God was in control of the situation, or was I going to swallow a bottle of pills and fade into the night?

Things could have gone either way, but I chose to trust that God was still in control. I could have made the other choice, but I decided not to.

Was this just a blind leap of faith? Not at all, as I regard blind faith with great disdain. Rather, I reminded myself of many reason I had for believing that God was in control, even if my immediate circumstances seemed to dictate otherwise. I could not provide absolute proof that God was in control, but I did remind myself of reasons for believing that He was.

So it was a choice, a conscious, willful decision, and an act of faith based in part on evidence of which I continually reminded myself. (Oh, and in case you’re wondering… things have indeed gotten better. The crises are continuing to rage around me, but things have gotten a bit better, and my heart is more at peace.)

[Stoid]

Jthunder…choosing to trust a God you already believe in has nothing to do with what we’re talking about.

Originally posted by RickJay *
** You’ve chosen not to believe in God,*

No, I haven’t. That would be the point entire.

*Originally posted by Captain Amazing *
**
What if you start with the premise that everyone is doomed to go to hell. **

Then I’d have to also start with the premise that god is an asshole. That’s like giving birth to children and deciding that they are all going to get beaten daily, just for the hell of it, then creating some bizarro rituals and belief systems that some of the kids could buy into to avoid getting beaten. And any parent that would do that, I think you’ll agree, would be an asshole.

[JThunder]

*Originally posted by Stoid *
**Jthunder…choosing to trust a God you already believe in has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. **

Yes, it does. I could have chosen to abandon that belief – to choose not to believe in God at all. In fact, it was a tempting proposition, but I chose not to go that way.

Moreover, people have repeated asserted that belief (i.e. belief in general) is not a matter of choice or free will. My own experience shows otherwise, as my belief in God’s sovereignty was severely tested during that time… tested so severely that I considered ending my own life. Trivialize that if you wish, but that would be an act of sheer obstinancy.

[Latro]

JThunder

Could you expand on how, believing God is in control or take a bottle of pills, is one choice to you?

To me it sounds like two choices.
Believe God is in control or not believe.
Take the pills or not take the pills.

I can see how one could lead to the other but , with all due respect, is it possible that not choosing to take the pills might have influenced the other choice?
You chose life, I don’t see how that automatically means you chose God as well. Or, the other way around, not choosing God would automatically mean you would have to take the pills.

[Liberal]

Dr. Zoidberg

Peano’s arithmetic at least seems to correlate with our direct experience of the physical world. If I had 4 apples and add another I always have 5 (axiom 2). Likewise the choice to undergo a medical procedure to restore sight does not need to rest on faith alone. The doctor’s other patients can be interviewed and tests given to determine if they can really see. By contrast, the specific doctrines of, say Christianity, are always floating on air. There is nothing which is either testable or correlates well with observed reality. This is why so many of us find faith in specific religions difficult or impossible and leads to questions like the OP.

You’re drawing distinctions without differences. There are many people for whom Peano’s arithmetic contradicts their own realities. You might call them mentally ill, autistic, schizophrenic, delusional, or other subjective terms, but in order to invalidate their experiences, you must first establish that your own sort of experience is an objective standard. Doctors can sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, and so interviews with their patients might or might not be fruitful. Finally, there do exist those of us for whom “Christian doctrine” correlates perfectly with our experience. A man who has never seen snow and therefore declares that snow does not exist is committing a logical fallacy.

[Liberal]

Daniel

Second, for those who don’t know, Libertarian and some other folk ascribe to ontological proofs of God. These beliefs are widely held amongst religious philosophers and widely refuted amongst atheist philosophers. We’ve gone back and forth for pages and pages on these arguments without either of us making the least bit of headway convincing the other.

Set aside that your brush is overly broad — there do exist “religious philosophers” who do not accept the ontological proofs and there do exist “atheist philosophers” who do accept the ontological proofs. And nevermind that within those sets, there exist various opinions on both the soundness and validity of the proofs (not one “atheist philosopher” that I know of has ever declared that variations of the modal proofs are invalid … do you know of any?)

All that aside, you have cast a red herring by setting up “religious philosophers” as “holding” a view while setting up “atheist philosophers” as “refuting” a view. If you don’t mind your bias showing, that’s fine. But if you wish to be objective, you must say that one holds and the other does not hold, or else that one has proven while the other has refuted.

[Inoshiro]

*Originally posted by Libertarian *
**Dr. Zoidberg

You’re drawing distinctions without differences. There are many people for whom Peano’s arithmetic contradicts their own realities. You might call them mentally ill, autistic, schizophrenic, delusional, or other subjective terms, but in order to invalidate their experiences, you must first establish that your own sort of experience is an objective standard. Doctors can sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, and so interviews with their patients might or might not be fruitful. Finally, there do exist those of us for whom “Christian doctrine” correlates perfectly with our experience. A man who has never seen snow and therefore declares that snow does not exist is committing a logical fallacy. **

And if we cannot make any distinctions between the reality of sane people and the “reality” of a man who thinks he is an ambassador from the planet Mugu then we are incapable of saying anything whatever about reality and are stuck in a solipsistic hell. Fair enough, but it also invalidates all “truth” claims like those of Christianity. For you Jesus saves, maybe for me the prophet Xantor of Mugu is the only way to god and you will have you liver devoured for all eternity by the great Wugglemort for your heresy.

As for the medical analogy - statistical tests can determine whether a doctor’s therapy is effective beyond what a placebo achieves. A 100% success or failure rate is not required to make a decision based on objective data. No one who undertakes a possibly risky therapy is really going on faith. Even if you are the first patient there is at least a theory, grounded in medical science, on which the therapy is based. To argue otherwise is to place a witch doctor’s claim that he will remove the evil spirits from your eyes on the same level as a micro-surgical attempt, say, to reconnect the optic nerve. Both therapies might be untried but which can more reasonably be expected to work.

As for Christianity correlating with experience. I am talking about something rather specific when I use that phrase. Do the people of India or sub-saharan Africa independently arrive at the conclusion that there was this Jesus fellow who died for our sins, etc… No, they have to have such specific “truth” brought to them by missionaries. Peano’s axioms, and all the rest of mathematics, can reliably be expected to be independently discovered by any intelligent people anywhere precisely because they “correlate well with common reality”. I am adding “common” to make clear that I’m talking about the reality of the majority of sane people. You will argue that I still haven’t proven that common reality is more valid than any other. You will say that I am taking this reality on faith. Fine, we both agree that at some point certain things must be taken on faith. I simply accept a far smaller set of such things than you do.

And this all seems to bear out what the OP said. He claims that he is not capable of faith in Jesus and asks why god will damn him for this. This seems to mean that “in his reality” Jesus is a fairy tale in which he can’t believe. Why god would condemn him for this is a good question indeed since it seems equivalent to damning someone for be too stupid, crazy or whatever to accept Peano’s axioms. Pretty nasty diety that.

[Scylla]

Stoid:

There actually is a simple answer to your question. Please note that I don’t necessarily agree with it, just that there is a sound answer.

The answer is that God won’t do that to you. You may believe yourself as hopeless or incapable of faith, but God will at some point or points before you die reveal himself to you in his own way designed specifically for you.

When he does, at that point in time you will be capable of faith and have the opportuntiy to accept either what God has shown you, or reject it.

I don’t know what form it will take, or when it will happen. Personally I’m hoping for a Saul on the road to Damascus sort of thing, where God knocks me off my horse, and starts giving me shit for oppressing him.

There’s no reason why God just couldn’t show up for you the way he did for Saul, and kick your ass around until you see the light.

And, if that’s what you need, God will do it.

But anyway the point is that God will give you the opportunity in such a way that you are capable and do have a choice.

(that’s pretty much the stance of the born again types I’ve encountered.)

FWIW

[Dogface]

*Originally posted by Stoid *
Why would God create it so that the only conceivable way for my soul to be saved would be through faith in Him and Christianity, knowing that I am not capable of having such faith? Why would God demand what He knows I cannot give?

Well, that’s why some Christians who are not hardcore Evangelicals have the concept of “invincible ignorance”. It recognizes that, in a world of the Fall, it could very well be possible that somebody might be in a situation of not being capable of receiving the message or understanding it. For example, someone horribly abused by those who claim they do so “in Jesus’s name” can hardly be reasonably expected to be able to have an easy time with Christian doctrine. Only a sadistic and demonic parody of a “deity” would expect such a person to be able to overcome all hurdles without cutting that individual a bit of slack.

But even in that case, running around saying “I have invincible ignorance so I don’t even have to think about it.” as a sort of “Get out of Hell, free.” card could call into question the possibility that the specific individual in question does not have invincible ignorance but is merely using it as an excuse for personal laziness.

[JThunder]

*Originally posted by Latro *
**JThunder

Could you expand on how, believing God is in control or take a bottle of pills, is one choice to you?

To me it sounds like two choices.
Believe God is in control or not believe.
Take the pills or not take the pills.

I can see how one could lead to the other but , with all due respect, is it possible that not choosing to take the pills might have influenced the other choice? **

You’re missing the point completely.

My choice was to believe God was in control, or to disbelieve it. Swallowing that bottle of pills would have simply been a response borne out of disbelief, given the apparent hopelessness of my situation. It would have been the result of the choice that I was discussing.

It’s that simple.

I had a choice: Believe that God was in control, or not believe it. I had reasons for believing either option, but I chose the former. Several people here have said that we can not willfully choose our beliefs, but my own direct and immediate experience showed otherwise, and I’m much better off as a result.

[Ludovic]

*Originally posted by Libertarian *
**Dr. Zoidberg

You’re drawing distinctions without differences. There are many people for whom Peano’s arithmetic contradicts their own realities. You might call them mentally ill, autistic, schizophrenic, delusional, or other subjective terms, but in order to invalidate their experiences, you must first establish that your own sort of experience is an objective standard. Doctors can sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, and so interviews with their patients might or might not be fruitful. Finally, there do exist those of us for whom “Christian doctrine” correlates perfectly with our experience. A man who has never seen snow and therefore declares that snow does not exist is committing a logical fallacy. **

True. A man who has never seen snow cannot be shown snow and therefore must take its existence on faith. A blind man in a room where dozens of sighted people are in is told of the existence of an apple on a table. He reaches out to touch the apple. I guess he must take this sense called “sight” as a doctrine of faith, then, eh, even when it has been objectively shown to transfer information. (By the way, I’m being sarcastic)

When faith or a higher power or and IPU has been shown to transfer information,then its existence has been shown.

This does not invalidate one’s subjective experience, as defined by an experience which does not transfer information. It just means that it is unprovable.

I sort of agree and sort of disagree with the OP. It’s true that it’s very hard to change what one believes, indeed almost impossible. In fact if one has never had a subjective experience of a higher entity, I would say it would be foolish to believe in one. On the other hand, if you have had one, you have the choice to interpret your subjective experiences as existence of said higher power, or to refute them as delusions of some sort.

Where “faith” comes in is that you might choose to interpret your experiences as existence of a higher power despite NO objective evidence whatsoever that a higher power exists.

[Svt4Him]

Part of the problem is the issue of faith, and what that entails. Faith is not blind obedience to an unknown substance. If I said I installed a javascript code and, once you read this, you’ll have a virus on your computer, you’ll either through knowing me, knowing javascript, or knowing the security of this page, believe me or not. Either way, you are exercising faith in my not doing it, or doing it. Faith is a response to a statement, it never creates the statement. It’s not some mystical thing, we use it every day. The religious conotation to the word is wrong. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of God.

Now to clear up a statement I made, do you need faith in God to believe in God? No. I believed there was a God before I became a Christian. I look at a building, and I believe there was a builder. Do I know, or have faith in this builder? How could I. The only thing I know is there was a builder. Same with a painting, I can believe there was a painter if I see a painting, but not have any faith in that painter.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

Now to clear up a statement I made, do you need faith in God to believe in God? No. I believed there was a God before I became a Christian. I look at a building, and I believe there was a builder. Do I know, or have faith in this builder? How could I. The only thing I know is there was a builder. Same with a painting, I can believe there was a painter if I see a painting, but not have any faith in that painter.

It does not logically follow, though, that the universe requires a creator. You believed in God to begin with. You believed in a supernatural entity without any evidence. That is faith by definition. Your emotional response to that faith is neither here nor there.

[Stoid]

Continuing to call it a choice doesn’t really make it so, JThunder. You have identified that you chose to lean on your faith, that you chose to trust in god…but that’s not what I’m talking about. You cannot CHOOSE what you believe. You either believe or don’t believe, it’s something over which you have very little, if any, conscious control. How you ACT is entirely within your control.

[JThunder]

*Originally posted by Stoid *
**Continuing to call it a choice doesn’t really make it so, JThunder. You have identified that you chose to lean on your faith, that you chose to trust in god…but that’s not what I’m talking about. You cannot CHOOSE what you believe. **

YES WE CAN. I chose to believe in God and his sovereignty, even though I had reason not to. You can deny this all you want, but that would be both useless and future. It would be the intellectual equivalent of covering one’s ears and singing “La la la la la!”

I could have chosen not to believe in God, or to believe that He didn’t care about my situation… In fact, I came close to selecting the latter, but ultimately I did not. You can trivialize my near-suicide all you want, but I know the truth. I experienced the truth. I know that I had to make a choice, and I did.

Look, I’m not saying that we can simply switch our beliefs on or off, like a spigot. I’m not saying that at all. I am saying that when we are presented with two or more options as to what to believe, we can make a choice… and we often do.

[GodlessSkeptic]

As someone who absolutely NEVER employs or relies upon faith I am going to chime in here…
JThunder:You still have not shown belief to be a choice or how this is even possible.One cannot choose to believe in God anymore than YOU can choose to believe in Santa Claus.Try asking a stage magician to believe you have powers of sorcery by pulling coins from behind his ear.Even though many, if not most of us would like to believe in magic, we cannot(especially if we are, by professional vocation, aquainted with prestidigitation and sleight of hand) choose to believe such.

We can choose to lie about what we believe but that is as close as we can get.The OP in this thread hit the nail on the head.I can decide to listen to various god-claims(and I have since I was a child).I can choose to SAY that I believe one or the other(or all of them!) but I cannot force my mind to accept what sounds implausible or impossible to me.If God existed he would know that I was lieing when I said I believed in him so what would be the point?

MAny of you are confusing choice of action with choice of belief.Choice of belief does not exist.Your mind eitehr says “That sounds about right!” or “That doesn’t sound right”.You can choose to not take a bottle of pills but you cannot choose to believe a God is in control of your life no matter how emotionally distraught you become.PBS did an interesting show(I believe an episode of Frontline) about the religious views of people (mostly survivors and family members of victims)before and after 9/11 and they found that the atrocity was just as capable to shaking one free of faith as it was of plunging one deeper into faith depending on the mindset of the individual.However NO ONE was able to say “Well, I decided I wanted to believe in God so now I do!” or “I was tired of God and his seeming apathy/complacence so I decided not to believe in him anymore and now I don’t!!”

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

Libertarian: considering that I said these positions were widely accepted or refuted amongst different groups, I hardly see how I was painting with an overly broad brush. Widely, not universally, 'kay?

I did realize after I posted that that my choice of “refuted” was poor: I should have said “rejected.” My apologies; either it was my bias, or my lack of command of the language, showing there. I meant “rejected.”

JThunder, I in no way mean to minimize the crisis you’ve gone through. It sounds horrible, and I’m really glad you didn’t choose suicide, and I ohpe things are getting better for you.

That said, I cannot comprehend what you’re saying about “choosing” to believe in God. Choosing to trust in him, sure; choosing to pretend would make sense (but that’s clearly not what you said). Choosing to prioritize your belief in God’s goodness over your belief that life is ultimately terrible – I could get that. Lemme ask: why did you make the choice you made?

Skipmagic, I just don’t get what you’re saying either, I’m afraid. You say that you were aware and accepted the long shots against winning even while you chose to believe that “this quarter” would be the one. Were you believing two contradictory things simultaneously? Did you believe one of them more than you believed the other? If you’d been betting your life on whether the next quarter would win the jackpot, which way would you have bet? Are you sure you weren’t just pretending that the next quarter would win?

I have a good imagination, folks tell me, and I could definitely pretend that a particular coin would win. I can read a suspenseful story and completely lose myself in it, forgetting that it’s not real. But when I’m examining my beliefs, I have no more control over them than I have over the shape of my clavicle. They’re a part of me; they’re not under my control.

I do wonder, however, if some folks do have control over their beliefs in a way that’s just fundamentally incomprehensible to me. I try to put great credit in what people tell me about how they expereince the world, and even though I have no idea what it means to choose to believe something, I’ll take your word at it. I just want to make sure that we’re not talking about different things here. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll take my word when I say that my beliefs are a part of me but are not chosen by me.

Daniel

[JThunder]

*Originally posted by DanielWithrow *
[BJThunder, I in no way mean to minimize the crisis you’ve gone through. It sounds horrible, and I’m really glad you didn’t choose suicide, and I ohpe things are getting better for you.

That said, I cannot comprehend what you’re saying about “choosing” to believe in God. Choosing to trust in him, sure; choosing to pretend would make sense (but that’s clearly not what you said). **

Actually, that’s exactly what I said. Allow me to quote myself:

My choice was to believe God was in control, or to disbelieve it.

As I said, I had to choose whether to trust Him or not. Trusting God was contingent on the question of whether He was in control of the situation. In other words, I chose to believe that God was in control, which allowed me to trust Him. That trust is being vindicated, even as we speak.

**
Choosing to prioritize your belief in God’s goodness over your belief that life is ultimately terrible – I could get that. Lemme ask: why did you make the choice you made?**

I explained that earlier as well. Even though my immediate circumstances seemed to indicate that life was hopeless, I knew that I also had reasons to trust that things would work out. For this reason, I chose to believe that God was still in control, and I chose to act on that belief.

Now, people can object all they want and say, “You didn’t make a choice! You didn’t! Stop saying that you did!” Balderdash. I had a choice to make, and I distinctly recall asking myself what it would be. It was a deliberate and conscious decision, borne out of hours of great pain and anguish. Don’t tell me it wasn’t a choice, for that would be foolish.

[JThunder]

Looking back, I see that Daniel’s “but that’s clearly not what you said” comment pertains to the act of “pretending,” rather than the act of trusting. My mistake.

Now, I don’t know what he means by “pretending” in this context, but at any rate, my point remains. I wasn’t just talking about believing in God; I was also talking about believing He was in control – and that’s what trust is all about. I chose to believe this way, which is what enabled me to trust – for which I am tremendously thankful.

[GodlessSkeptic]

JThunder:Choosing to trust a god you have a priori concluded exists has nothing to do with what we are talking about.If a schizophrenic acts on the advice he is given by the voices in his head he is, in the same sense, making a choice.However if he hears voices in his head and cannot willfully disbelieve that they exist then he cannot “choose” whether or not he believes they exist(therapy would be pretty cheap and easy if he could).

If you could chose what you rationally believe or disbelieve then it would not matter what observations you made or experiences you had because even if you never saw a dragon you could simply choose to believe one was terrorising your neighborhood.
The belief mechanism is powerful but not THAT powerful!