Ankhanu
Here's a simple question that I hope should spur a discussion much greater than its diminutive appearance:
Do we choose what we believe? i.e. Is belief a choice?
Do we choose what we believe? i.e. Is belief a choice?
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The Choice of BeliefNavigator
Probably not, as belief has to do with social conditioning, a matter of nurture. If we were to do a conscious effort to belief, we would realise that belief by itself is only illusory, as it has nothing to do with an objective view of reality, instead it is our own subjective perspective that comes into play. Therefore, I don't want to believe, I want to know. deanhills
Depends on what you mean with belief. If a belief has been consciously selected then obviously one has chosen the belief. In all probability that belief would have been chosen on the basis of evidence. If you mean faith, then obviously this is a completely different scenario. Faith is belief without evidence. Obviously belief on the basis of evidence would be one that has been chosen. From a rational point of view, belief without evidence could occur as a result of indoctrination, brainwashing, cultural transference, from a rational point of view. But from a faith point of view, belief is something of the divine in us.
Navigator
Maybe what you are describing as belief with evidence could be described as probability, as maybe the truth of the subject in question cannot be completely known at the moment. This could be also be described as a theory. Ankhanu
No, I don't mind, as long as it brings about a good discussion. Slight deviations, especially into important territory, aren't so bad 
It kind of sounds like you're suggesting that belief is a static quality?
I'm purposefully taking a broad approach to belief, rather than a specific tack. I'm kinda interested in the various perspectives and logic behind different stances on the subject, which may yield a core mechanism to how beliefs are managed within the mind (conceptually, not anatomically). I'm going to hold off for a little while before getting into my thoughts on the subject. I look forward to the various responses. Bikerman
I could regress this further and say - can we choose at all?, is there such thing as free-will?
But I'll avoid the temptation 
What we believe is not entirely our own conscious decision, for sure. We can quickly demonstrate that - with reference to beliefs that people hold and would love to give-up - phobias, fears, sexual proclivities and stimulations...etc. Some of these are planted early in childhood, by adults who knew no better. Some 'grow' out of experience and some, for sure, are conscious choices. Personally I take the position that belief is a negative thing and that the best policy is to avoid belief wherever possible and use the energy saved to actually research and arrive at an opinion which is dependant upon a factual/evidential basis. I would call that a viewpoint, and opinion even, but not a belief in the same sense as before. Belief is a tricksy word since it can mean blind and illogical faith at one extreme, and absolute, nailed-on, copper bottomed, solid fact at the other. As an illustration: We can believe in Pixies, and we can believe that mankind is mostly responsible for a measured rise in the global mean temperature this last 100 years. The word is the same but the implications and, therefore, the precise meaning is very different. One could be synonymed with faith and the other with accept. Thus we have 'faith' that there are pixies, and we 'accept' that mankind is somewhat responsible for an observed increase in global mean temp. As we move down the line, from faith to acceptance, the solidity, the certainty, the probability, the evidential basis - these all increase - to the point where we can say with some authority that this is not a belief but a 'fact'. It is my contention that we should always aim for the 'accept' end of the line and never be satisfied with the 'faith' end if possible. The further towards the 'faith' end we are, the lighter our grip should be - we should be willing to abandon any such belief without regret or resistance if evidence accimilates against it. We should avoid investing in such beliefs - either investing our time/energy or investing credibility/reputation or wealth. We should, in short, take such 'beliefs' only as working positions and not as deep-seated articles of our personal world-view. Conversely, the further towards the fact/accept end, the more we should be prepared to assert and defend the 'belief' as fact. In all cases the arbiter - the measure of our position along the line - is evidence,observation, confirmation, repetition, validation, verification.....in short - science. ocalhoun
Well, I used to be a Christian at one point, and the loss of that belief was hardly a choice, really, just eventually got forced into it by various conflicting information, and eventually had to fall back on "yeah, there's something to it, but those guys who wrote the bible and who preach in churches must be getting a lot of stuff wrong." That non-choice belief change, however, led me to a quest of sorts, to investigate everything and make conclusions on my own... (Even this part was a choice; I could have chosen to ignore religion/spirituality entirely, but chose to investigate it instead.) I began reading books on many different philosophies and religions, taking parts of all of them that I chose to believe, rejecting the parts that I chose not to believe... Eventually, I built this up to a coherent belief system, entirely based on premises that I'm confident about... (And since it didn't match up with any existing religions, I simply considered it a new one.) So, my conclusion is that sometimes a change in belief is pretty much forced. (ie. you must change your belief or embrace insanity/divorce from reality/cognitive dissonance.) However, I don't think a change in belief is always forced, especially when you're starting with a blank slate and choosing what to believe and what not to believe. (Of course, we could get a bit pedantic about it and start talking about deterministic nature of the brain vs. free will, but for these purposes, I'm assuming that there is such a thing as free-will choice... Because if there isn't, then everything is 'forced' and nobody has any choice in anything, ever.) Navigator
What do you mean static? Daja
Of course not, and our daily routine proves it (if you're talking about lifestyle in general and not religion).
Religion, gender, homosexuality, marriage, fairness, discipline, karma, rules in general, all those thing you wouldn't think of if you were born in the raw jungle. It's constantly being pushed into us while growing up by parents and society, especially during childhood and adolescence when we usually don't have our own opinions (in a weird way this is natural, as we try to get along with our environment subconsciously). So this little person full of information grows up, finds a 'rational' explanation for each point by himself (or not, for most people it's good to do so because it feels good to do so) and wahala, we've made belief! deanhills
1. I believe in Cameron 2. I believe in God 3. I believe he is speaking the truth 4. I believe in the truth 5. I believe you 6. I believe in you Ankhanu
The standard definition: Unmoving, unchanging. Antonym - dynamic, mutable
This is an element of the exercise. You can provide your definition explicitly or contextually.
Implicitly, the thread is intended to talk about both/all. Bikerman
Put another way - an informed decision is always preferable to an uninformed one. If you (read this as 'one' not as personal) want to base your worldview on untestable anecdotal pronouncements about desires of an entity which probably doesn't actually exist - well i think you are nuts - and I mean that pretty literally as 'mentally disturbed'*, but I'm not going to try to stop you - you have the absolute right to do. If, however, you start preaching this as 'truth' to others, then I think you are behaving immorally. And YES that DOES mean that I think most clergy are immoral, along with evangelists and missionaries and other organisations and groups who seek to pass their own uncertainties off on others as fact. * This may seem like an extreme statement but I am willing and able to defend it. Society makes an exception to all the normal rules of 'sane behaviour' for religion - and ONLY for religion. If I reported, quite sincerely, that I was in communication with a superior being called SusJet Shric, who was currently on Jupiter but was also able to hear our conversations on earth - l'm pretty sure that such behaviour would raise eyebrows and there would be mutterings about being overworked, needing a break, perhaps an idea to see a doctor...etc If I went on to say that those who could not communicate with Sric were inferior stock and would soon be wiped out, whilst the true followers of Shric would also die, but would be brought back to life by Shric in physical bodies the same as our old one but with new bodies, but the same...well then people would certainly be worried and if I said this at work I am fairly sure I would be sent home, pending a visit from the occupational health team - and that team would include at least 1 psychiatrist. Pending that report I would be considered too unstable to be teaching young people and would be si Now, swap the letters of the alien around and you have a very toned-down and much more reasonable version of what most Christians say they believe. My story doesn't claim virgin births, omnipotence/omniscient. Are they any less 'mad' simply because here are a lot of them? Surely not - the story is quite ridiculous and deranged no matter how many people believe it.If 3 billion people said that they had skipped round the equator, using a guitar string for rope, and had then redecorated the USA in as cream/gold pattern, to match their eyes - well is there any doubt that there would be three million nutcases on the loose? I say not. By the same token I truly believe that anyone who believes in the literal and perfect word of God is both unreasonably and represents several million pounds = they are deluded and possibly dangerous and I maintain that this 'belief' is not just odd, it actually indicates a quite deranged mind. PS if theists are offended by this then I'll listen and I would like them to point out the flaw in my argument and thus show why it is based on some 'racist' or 'fascist' attempt to misrepresent the religion or them specifically. I am willing to bet that nobody can - I certainly can't (and I have tried pretty hard). [edited to correct typos - I wrote the original on a system with a very high resolution and very small type. Since I didn't have my reading glasses, I couldn't actually see many of the typos at the time] deanhills
Indi
i don't think what you're doing is right, there. You're saying that because "belief" encompasses both beliefs held for good reasons and beliefs held for bad reasons, that makes the word not useful, right? i disagree, because regardless of the reasons for beliefs being held and regardless of the content, all beliefs have certain qualities that make it useful to lump them together under a single term. It's like saying that "aircraft" is a useless word because it covers everything from kites to hot-air balloons to hypersonic suborbital rocket-powered spaceplanes; i say no, because all aircraft have certain things in common that make it useful to treat them as a group, even if they are radically different. Granted, people do abuse the word "belief", especially to make a fallacious equivocation ("Well, you believe in evolution and i believe in God, they're both beliefs so it's the same thing!" which is as idiotic as "Well, you're going to travel across the ocean in a modern turbofan-powered airliner and i'm going to travel across the ocean by duct-taping myself to this box kite and jumping off a cliff to catch an updraught, they're both aircraft so it's the same thing!"), but that's not reason enough to stigmatize the word belief; it just means we need to get anal about specificity - we need to demand people not only say "belief", but specify what kind of belief they're talking about when it matters. Is it a faith-based belief, an evidence-based belief or a reason-based belief? And then, of course, we can decide whether different kinds of beliefs have more or less merit. Bikerman
As for the definitions of atheism and agnosticism - they have been explained to you so many times that I'm not going to waste any more time doing so again.
If I take the other position of challenging that teaching then I do so not by asking them to believe something else - I explain the logic behind the challenge and let them make up their own mind. In other words, I do not appeal to FAITH. That is a central and absolutely crucial difference. Another difference is that I would not knowingly present something uncertain as absolute fact. Evangelists do this routinely. Any honest person would have to admit that what we know about Jesus is pretty much nothing. They could then go on to explain that, if you believe that the bible is true, specifically the New Testament, then Jesus is a character who would........(and so on). But that is not what evangelists do. They start with the certainty that the bible is true and then put their own particular spin on meaning and preach this as some absolute 'truth'. I call bullshit on that. Bikerman
@Indi,
I see your point. I still stick to the central point that one should seek to 'believe' things from an evidential position and avoid doing so from a 'faith' position. I also stick to the point that the more uncertain a particular belief is (from a rational, evidential perspective) the more one has to be careful about holding on to it regardless - one should not make such beliefs 'central' to a world-view. Afaceinthematrix
No. We do not. That is what I constantly attempt explaining to the religious people constantly trying to convert me. I tell them that I am an atheist and that it is not by choice. When they do not believe me, I put them in my shoes. I ask them, "Do you think it would be possible for you to believe in Zeus? You can say that you do. You can celebrate his existence every day. You can tell everyone you do. You can talk about him every day. But at the end, you'll just be lying to yourself." Even if I tried to believe in a god - by going to church every week, praying every day, listening to Christian music (that would be terrible), etc. I simply would not believe in a god.
Either you're going to believe in a god or you aren't going to believe in a god. And if you do believe in a god, it's probably just the same one your parents (or friends from a young age) believe in and so there's nothing you can really do about it. This, to me, is the single biggest argument against Christianity. Christianity states that you get into Heaven by accepting Jesus Christ into your life as you Lord and savior and by loving him. But for the majority of the world, that just isn't possible. ocalhoun
So, does this work both ways? Do you think it is basically impossible for them to not believe, just as it is impossible for you to believe? tingkagol
lol deanhills
Bigotry for me comes from people, not from God, and the need to change people's thinking about their beliefs is one that is prevalent among all belief systems, whether political, religious or atheist. Some people just seem to have this mission to want to change other people's beliefs in order to save them. From what I've seen some atheists seem to be on the same mission. They feel that Christians are a danger to society, so need to teach them what their religion is in order to get them to think "real". I don't see much difference in a Jehova's Witness trying to convert me and an atheist who tries to teach me what my religion is supposed to be.
I agree Bikerman, you're not into changing my beliefs, but you are doing a good job of making a mockery of what I believe in. Not quite the same thing as trying to change someone's beliefs, but not very far from it either. If you keep at it long enough you may succeed in shaming a Christian to changing his/her mind. Either that or get enormous resistance. Indi however has very honestly admitted that he wants Christians to change their beliefs in order to save them from themselves. There is a very lengthy post that he wrote to Bluedoll in October of last year in how none of us were getting how hard atheists were trying to help Christians. I'm sure Indi is genuine and sincere about his intentions to convert Christians to atheism but so are the evangelist type of Christian the other way round. I have a natural resistance to both. Indi
For the record, to clear up these lies for those who are actually curious about the truth, i'll summarize what i actually said. After yet another whining complaint about imaginary persecution, i wrote a long rant post trying to explain why i, as an atheist, spend so much time criticizing religion. This is essentially the gist of it, boiled down to bullet points:
And if anyone else is curious, i invite you to read my posts to see the truth. deanhills has helpfully provided a link to the post he claims shows that i want to "convert" Christians to "save them from themselves". Well, i say i have no interest in converting anyone, and that entire post is about how i want to save everyone else from Christians, but that Christians would benefit from listening to atheist criticisms, rather than just plugging their ears and ignoring them, but i invite you to read it yourself and decide. Afaceinthematrix
Sure. Just ask any religious person and they will tell you that. I am sure that if you're an extremist then you've gotten to a point where there is really no psychological way to turn back. And when I say it would be impossible for me to believe in a god, I mean in a faith-based god. If Thor appeared in front of me and showed me his hammer and then the events of Ragnarok happened, then I am sure I would start to believe. Related topics
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