Can You Choose to Believe?

[Jumi]

Choosing doesn't sound like it applies to belief in any sense that I use.

 

[Sir Doom]

If 'believe' here means something like 'accept as irrefutably true in the absence of supporting evidence acceptable to reasoned enquiry, or in the face of such evidence to the contrary' then no, I can't choose to do that.

A more pressing problem is my inability to believe that being overweight according to my BMI is good for me. Others, I gather, have overcome this difficulty ─ is my technique faulty?

Eat two pounds of bacon and call me in the morning.

 

[Pudding]

Suppose there are different ways of knowing and/or believing something. Say, one way to believe something is to become intellectually convinced of it through reasoned argument, but another way to believe something is to experience it.

The difference between believing the tree in my back yard is real because I told you it is, and one night stumbling into it.

So, can you choose to believe?

On some situations, "choose to believe" can be happen.
Example: A man is charge with rigorous crime, there are strong evidence imply he did commit crime. He say he is guiltless. Will his family and friends believe him? Some may say they choose to believe him base on his past behavior. Cases of people deem guilty of crime but some time later find out being wronged does happen from time to time.

 

[Muffled]

Suppose there are different ways of knowing and/or believing something. Say, one way to believe something is to become intellectually convinced of it through reasoned argument, but another way to believe something is to experience it.

The difference between believing the tree in my back yard is real because I told you it is, and one night stumbling into it.

So, can you choose to believe?

I believe so. I don't believe a well reasoned argument is a guarantee that the belief is valid. Experience can sometimes be deceptive as well.

 

[Muffled]

It is easy enough to believe that a person can have superpowers for about two hours. Belief is actually rather malleable.

We tend to forget that during discussions about theism and religion because the standard case involves belief in a creator God, and that is a pretty tall order.

Anthropologists, from what I know, often immerse themselves in different cultures and end up "borrowing" their beliefs to some extent. Such changes of belief are not necessarily deep and very meaningful, but I don't think that means much in and of itself.

I believe I wonder why it is difficult for you and easy for me.

 

[PureX]

While I admire and embrace science and all it offers, it is a perception of life and reality that is not the full picture, by any stretch of the imagination. I get this image in my mind of someone who goes to gym everyday and builds their body in a highly organized and systematic program. On a scale of 1 to 10 of physical fitness, they are a 9.5. But they are socially inept, uneducated with no more than a 3rd grade level education, they have bad hygiene, etc. Then you have others who look at them and say, "I need to be fit like him! Then I'll find out who I am!"

Admiring science is like admiring focusing on maximizing the potential of our bodies. But without equal focus on the rest of life, which the gym does not give you access to, other than pictures on the wall, you're not a fully awakened or alive human being.

This "objectivity" claim, is like artificially imagining that if we can just get that buff body, we will have arrived as a whole person. In reality, all "objectivity" is defined and held by our subjectivity. To pursue "objective truth" will not teach you about subjective reality, which is where you and I and everyone else who has ever been alive have lived our lives. We live on the inside of this sack of skin, and peer out at the stars and mountains and wonder about ourselves. But if we don't look inside the mind itself, not its "brain-bits" but how we exist as you or me to ourselves in this world, all we will ever see is a projected image of ourselves in the various mirrors we find in other people. This is not finding truth. This is not discovering reality.

Science is a great tool. It's not the Answer to life.

This is very well stated, and I thank you. What you are referring, here, to is "scientism": the belief that the scientific process is the one and only pathway to any 'meaningful' truth.

 

[LuisDantas]

I believe I wonder why it is difficult for you and easy for me.

Social conditioning plays a role.

So do life experiences and education.

But there are also personal inclinations, perhaps even neurological in nature. Those vocations involve not only the ability to believe and to disbelieve in a creator God, but also the ability to transition between the two states as well as to decide on how significant the belief would be.

There are some fascinating combinations of those parameters, and some of the contrasts can be very disturbing when first met.

 

[Muffled]

Many do. You see that here quite often. When a person has an irrational belief and they are shown why it is wrong to maintain that false belief one has to choose not to accept evidence.

I used to reject AGW and did not want to believe the evidence to the contrary. Luckily I did open my eyes eventually.

I believe on here not only do people choose to not accept evidence, they also choose to ignore it completely. At least if someone says my evidence doesn't work because of "X" I can say it does because of "Y" but a person who reverts to insulting my intelligence has in effect ignored the evidence.

 

[Muffled]

Social conditioning plays a role.

So do life experiences and education.

But there are also personal inclinations, perhaps even neurological in nature. Those vocations involve not only the ability to believe and to disbelieve in a creator God, but also the ability to transition between the two states as well as to decide on how significant the belief would be.

There are some fascinating combinations of those parameters, and some of the contrasts can be very disturbing when first met.

I believe that didn't work for two out three of my kids and the one that acknowledges God has issues.

I believe that is a crap shoot. That also didn't work for my kids.

I don't remember when I started to believe in God. I do remember having an affinity for religious things and probably believed most of what I was told when I was a child. At age thirteen I started to develop my own philosophy of life and at that time had an experience of God speaking to me so the evidence was already strong at a pivotal point in my youth.

 

[LuisDantas]

I believe that didn't work for two out three of my kids and the one that acknowledges God has issues.

I believe that is a crap shoot. That also didn't work for my kids.

I don't remember when I started to believe in God. I do remember having an affinity for religious things and probably believed most of what I was told when I was a child. At age thirteen I started to develop my own philosophy of life and at that time had an experience of God speaking to me so the evidence was already strong at a pivotal point in my youth.

It is entirely possible that, having direct experience with your take on theism, your children learned firsthand that such is not their way.

While I sympathise that it can be frustrating and painful for a parent to see such a thing happen, and I wish that you could be spared of such heavy feelings, I know for a fact that many, many people simply can't come to believe in the God of the Bible, let alone to perceive Him as a very central fact of their lives.

I don't know if it helps, but maybe you could reflect on the fact that if God wanted your children to be believers, nothing could possibly stop them from being such.

If you will forgive me for being so generous with assumptions about your life and God's wishes about it, allow me to propose also that it is conceivable that God may want you to learn better the difference between the joys of parenthood and the joys of having brothers of faith.

 

[Sir Doom]

Re: Science

The scientific method is 'merely' a formalized version of typical human perception. Observe, test, observe, test, and so on. It's detailed deduction. You cannot make decisions or believe anything without using what is essentially an expedient, self-reviewed science.

What we act on is a system of interrelated and experientially consistent 'internal truths' (what we as individuals consider true) our actions are the experiments based on those and our conclusions become the hypotheses for our following actions.

I am oversimplifying here, I admit but hopefully that doesn't detract from my point.

The reason the scientific method works so well is because it serves to eliminate personal biases from the natural human process of investigation. It's not 100% effective at this, but I have never concieved of any improvements to make, and seems to be working as designed thus far (formulation of hypotheses and interpretation of results remain subjective to some degree, necessarily I believe).

 

[Shadow Link]

 

[MonkeyFire]

There is but one who possesses faith, other than he himself you must be loved or befriended by the deity.

 

[viole]

Suppose there are different ways of knowing and/or believing something. Say, one way to believe something is to become intellectually convinced of it through reasoned argument, but another way to believe something is to experience it.

The difference between believing the tree in my back yard is real because I told you it is, and one night stumbling into it.

So, can you choose to believe?

Can we choose what to believe?

I do not choose so.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Agent]

The red pill or the blue pill?
It seems obvious enough. How could you say Morpheus made me do it? Do you expect me to believe that?
You have a choice. You put the pill in your mouth. Morpheus doesn't do it for you.

 

[lukethethird]

Sometimes I don't know what to believe, other times the choice is easy. I don't know where this fits into the discussion other than to say that it's not always easy to make a choice on what to believe.

 

[`mud]

There's a lot wasted words in this thread, and not one olive in the salad.
I believe in Life and it's Stuff, that which turns into new Life.
And into the Cosmos from where we came, and we will return to.
If one believes in other entities, well good with that,
but enjoy the Stuff while it's still here

 

[Trailblazer]

I believe I wonder why it is difficult for you and easy for me.

Because you are gullible and you have been brainwashed!
No, just kidding, that is what all the atheists say to me...

I also believe God exists, I know God exists, but how I know with absolute certitude I cannot explain in words.
I wonder why it is so difficult for others and so easy for me.

I know it is easy for me because I believe that that Baha’u’llah is God’s Representative on earth.
But why do *I* believe that whereas other people don’t? Baha’u’llah wrote that some people are guided by God...

“Great indeed is this Day! The allusions made to it in all the sacred Scriptures as the Day of God attest its greatness. The soul of every Prophet of God, of every Divine Messenger, hath thirsted for this wondrous Day. All the divers kindreds of the earth have, likewise, yearned to attain it. No sooner, however, had the Day Star of His Revelation manifested itself in the heaven of God’s Will, than all, except those whom the Almighty was pleased to guide, were found dumbfounded and heedless.” Gleanings, p. 11

“So blind hath become the human heart that neither the disruption of the city, nor the reduction of the mountain in dust, nor even the cleaving of the earth, can shake off its torpor. The allusions made in the Scriptures have been unfolded, and the signs recorded therein have been revealed, and the prophetic cry is continually being raised. And yet all, except such as God was pleased to guide, are bewildered in the drunkenness of their heedlessness!” Gleanings, p. 39

However, it also says that people who make efforts will be guided...

“Whoso maketh efforts for Us,” he shall enjoy the blessings conferred by the words: “In Our Ways shall We assuredly guide him.”” Gleanings, pp. 266-267

And in this passage it indicates that those who rebel against God will not be guided, which makes sense because God does not override free will to MAKE the rebellious believe in Him.

"Some were guided by the Light of God, gained admittance into the court of His presence, and quaffed, from the hand of resignation, the waters of everlasting life, and were accounted of them that have truly recognized and believed in Him. Others rebelled against Him, and rejected the signs of God, the Most Powerful, the Almighty, the All-Wise.” Gleanings, p. 145

 

[Trailblazer]

I believe on here not only do people choose to not accept evidence, they also choose to ignore it completely. At least if someone says my evidence doesn't work because of "X" I can say it does because of "Y" but a person who reverts to insulting my intelligence has in effect ignored the evidence.

Baha’u’llah wrote that the Bible is God’s Greatest Testimony to His Creatures. I guess it means it is evidence.

They say we do not evidence and that the Bible and the Writings of Baha’u’llah are not evidence at all, but as yet I have not encountered an atheist who has any better ideas of how God could communicate to humanity.

Insulting our intelligence just demonstrates that they do not have any good arguments to refute our evidence. That is what people do when they cannot refute, they insult.

 

[osgart]

I can be very highly motivated to believe something and have no belief in that something whatsoever. No matter how hard i try it falls flat. And no amount of convincing works either. Such is the case of religion in general.

Other times and other things belief sticks right in my craw totally unwanted.

Of all the things i chose to believe most of it has failed to convince me.