I'm pretty sure reading his posts made Watson retarded.
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Can a person choose to believe?
- Thread starter Nerissa
- Start date
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
You know, the best way to get to the bottom of what you believe or choose to is simply run the gauntlet come hell or high water.
Unification
Well-Known Member
Beautiful links for any human.
The Nature of God
Did Jesus Believe All Is One?
JACOB'S LADDER | "You Are More Than You Know"
The Nature of God
Did Jesus Believe All Is One?
JACOB'S LADDER | "You Are More Than You Know"
Baladas
An Págánach
Well, one can definitely lie to themselves and bury their beliefs under the lies. Then eventually, come to believe that the lies are an accurate representation of their beliefs.
I've been there...but I suppose that the buried belief was primarily unchanged by the process of burial and suppression.
I've been there...but I suppose that the buried belief was primarily unchanged by the process of burial and suppression.
While I agree with the others that belief (being convinced that something is true) cannot necessarily be chosen, I do think that we have some control over it. For instance, we can choose to surround ourselves with certain people, read certain books, follow various trains of thought. We can attempt to "fake it till we make it"-- go through the motions until it ends up ringing true. Different people will have different thresholds and requirements to be met before they'll be convinced of something, so other beliefs or values you hold could effect your ability to believe in other things that are seemingly unrelated. Essentially, I just don't want you to feel powerless in regards to your beliefs. They are not something that happens to you. They are yours to pursue.
speaking as a commie, the question of what it means to be a 'true believer' is one I'm familiar with. to describe it as a 'choice' is a gross mischaracterisation as it under-estimates the emotional depth and intensity of the changes involved. There is an inherent uncertainty in all forms of knowledge and "faith" (if you will forgive an atheist using the term) is the ability to believe something in spite of this uncertainty. it is therefore a somewhat universal human characteristic of knowledge and not simply religion. there is a lot we don't know- but the "faith" part is over whether we can or can't know something. If you say you can know X without having evidence, that is an act of faith. The Communist example is "can we predict that the future will be Communist (and better than the present) without actually knowing that in advance?"
It's more the product of a long inner monologue over what it means to be "true" to your beliefs and changing your sense of self incrementally over time. having doubts is perfectly healthy and giving yourself permission to express them and to find out what your comfortable with and what you think is true is a good thing. it's part of the process of not simply working out your beliefs but working out who you are with them. Beyond a certain point all forms of knowledge break down and rational objections just won't stick anymore. when you reach that point you have to embrace the spontaneity of your own emotions and convictions rather than more authoritarian modes of thought based on proof or reason which inhibit depth of feeling, as you simply won't know where they will take you. "belief" is a choice on a rational level, but "faith" is a much deeper psychological process and I think the 'need' to believe is not a choice but comes from something that over-rides the more rational side of our personality.
I think faith is learning to find peace with the inherent uncertainty of any belief system because it is emotionally fulfilling. part of you knows it's insane and the other part of you has stopped caring; the rational part of you saying "that's impossible, wtf is wrong with you? stop it!", and there's that bad, dangerous, crazy, emotional part of you saying "oh, you're listening to reason. how cute. stop caring what everyone else thinks. you don't want to do that... go on- be a **** up! it feels better"
. getting them to agree is the basis for faith. it's a form of madness, only really fulfilling.Mohammad Nur Syamsu
Well-Known Member
Obviously the way you choose matters. On a whim, or with your heart. With honesty, or with some ulterior motive. The feeling is the content of it, but to confirm the feeling with deliberate choosing makes it human, brings the human intellect into faith as well.
Rick O'Shez
Irishman bouncing off walls
No, I don't either, except perhaps in the case of somebody who is not sure but feels a need to believe. Maybe sometimes people begin to question existing beliefs but haven't the courage or inclination to continue with serious questioning?
Mohammad Nur Syamsu
Well-Known Member
speaking as a commie, the question of what it means to be a 'true believer' is one I'm familiar with. to describe it as a 'choice' is a gross mischaracterisation as it under-estimates the emotional depth and intensity of the changes involved. There is an inherent uncertainty in all forms of knowledge and "faith" (if you will forgive an atheist using the term) is the ability to believe something in spite of this uncertainty. it is therefore a somewhat universal human characteristic of knowledge and not simply religion. there is a lot we don't know- but the "faith" part is over whether we can or can't know something. If you say you can know X without having evidence, that is an act of faith. The Communist example is "can we predict that the future will be Communist (and better than the present) without actually knowing that in advance?"
It's more the product of a long inner monologue over what it means to be "true" to your beliefs and changing your sense of self incrementally over time. having doubts is perfectly healthy and giving yourself permission to express them and to find out what your comfortable with and what you think is true is a good thing. it's part of the process of not simply working out your beliefs but working out who you are with them. Beyond a certain point all forms of knowledge break down and rational objections just won't stick anymore. when you reach that point you have to embrace the spontaneity of your own emotions and convictions rather than more authoritarian modes of thought based on proof or reason which inhibit depth of feeling, as you simply won't know where they will take you. "belief" is a choice on a rational level, but "faith" is a much deeper psychological process and I think the 'need' to believe is not a choice but comes from something that over-rides the more rational side of our personality.
I think faith is learning to find peace with the inherent uncertainty of any belief system because it is emotionally fulfilling. part of you knows it's insane and the other part of you has stopped caring; the rational part of you saying "that's impossible, wtf is wrong with you? stop it!", and there's that bad, dangerous, crazy, emotional part of you saying "oh, you're listening to reason. how cute. stop caring what everyone else thinks. you don't want to do that... go on- be a **** up! it feels better"
To say there is uncertainty in all knowledge is just more confusion of opinion with fact. Opinion and fact are categorically different, one cannot put beauty and weight in the same category, it is a fallacy of logic.
For opinions one must choose, in freedom, for facts one must copy forced by evidence.
.
You obviously solely understand about facts, and do not understand about how statements about what is good, loving and beautiful are arrived at, opinions.
jtartar
Well-Known Member
Nerissa,
To me what you are saying makes no sense. How can you come to know some?? With a person you can spend time with that person, and the more time you spend with that person the better you come to know that person.
How exactly, do you expect to have faith in God when you do not spend time with Him. When a person prays, he is speaking to God, and when a person reads the Bible, God is speaking to him.
What is the reason that a person would want to know God, Heb 11:6. For most people the desire to know God is innate, and Christian Exestentialism is the desire to find and know your Creator. Most people believe that there is a God who is responsible for all good things that we have, including our lives. It seem that most people have the desire within them to look for and worship something greater than themselves.
God has had a book written to all people, a book unique in all the world, a book that is completely accurate, even though it has been written by 40 men, over a period of 1,610. This alone, to a reasonable person, is manifest the impossibility of this, without a God guiding the writers, 2Tim 3:16,17, 2Pet 1:20,21.
Then consider all that God created!! Everything we see is a miracle to us. Nature is studied constantly to find things in nature that can help mankind to enjoy a better life. When someone discovers a way to copy the original creation of something, he is extolled as a great creator, while not even thinking about the Great Creator that created the real thing.
This is without excuse! Rom 1:18-23.
The greatest single proof, to many people, that there is a God, is that about one third of the Bible is prophecy. When you consider that man cannot, with 100% accuracy, prophesy what the next day will bring, and God has prophesied many, many times, with perfect accuracy, short prophecies, and others extending for thousands of years. Any reasonable person knows this cannot happen without a God guiding the writing, and being able to make certain that what He says always is fulfilled, Isa 14:24-27, 55:11.
Another thing that should prove the existence of God, is the information that is contained in the Holy Scriptures, that no one on earth knew, when these things were written. Things such that the earth is round, and that is has been hung on nothing, Job 26:7,10, Isa 40:22. Even though a seemingly simple thing as the rabbit chewing it's cud, was denied by scientists until the middle of the 19th century.
Another miraculous thing, the appearing on earth, the Son of God, and him fulfilling scores of prophecies recorded that he should do on earth.
For a second, let's go to mathematicians, of today, to get an idea of the odds of things happening as they have, without an Almighty God, and creator. Mathematicians say that any fulfilling of the prophecies about Jesus, would be completely impossible, if they went past 10. Most of the prophecies about Jesus, Jesus had no possible control over.
Even more astounding is the impossibility of creation being as it is without a God. Mathematicians again say that when the odds are above 40,000 to 1, it cannot happen. That say the odds of creation being as it is stands at, every atom in the known universe to 1. I would say that if anything could prove something to a thinking person, that should do it.
There MUST be a God!!! He even gives us His name, so that we can distinguish Him from every other, called gods, and can call on Him at any time. That Holy Name is Jehovah!!!
Jonathan Sherman
New Member
Very good question. Let me tell you that most religions are based around belief. I am one of the many who are not interested in believing, only in knowing. I found that there is some proof that the Torah (Jewish Bible) is a book from God. There are lots of prophecies that have come true, for example, the nation of Israel will be scattered among all the other nations, like they are today. Also, there are some codes in the Torah, predicting future events, such as "Holocaust." Feel free to look up "Torah codes." The point is that this book could only have been written by God. I'm not saying that this is "the right religion" and everyone should convert. Far from that. I'm just saying that Judaism seems to me the most logical and rational.
Whilst truth is primarily objective, it always contains an element of subjectivity, whether this is of an initial person who perceives the object. This subjective element is also relative, in so far as our language can never describe all aspects of an object and our ability to understand an objective process is limited by the means we have at our disposal, e.g. the degree to which we can focus a telescope on a planet will affect the extent to which we have knowledge of it. knowledge is a human attribute derived from our activity and therefore comes with human limitations, even if it is knowledge of the external and objective world. This combination of subjectivity and relativity means there is always a degree of uncertainty in knowledge. We can know something in practice in our activity, but we cannot know it in an absolute sense in the abstract.
Robert Vincelette
Member
Many religions have God holding you accountable for what you believe, damning you into eternal darkness if you don't believe what you are told, by people who wrote scriptures, to believe. This describes an unjust and unfair god who will punish you for something you cannot choose, what you believe.
So by extension I should assume that you are certain that life just sprung up spontaneously and then started forming fantastic creations all on its own without any intelligent force or designer? Some mindless “process” willed wings and feathers and eyeballs and livers all into existence? And that is not an act of faith? That is not a choice to believe such?
People choose to believe in God because it is rational and makes far more sense than no higher intelligence. There is compelling accounts of divine intervention by the followers of the Judeo or Christian faiths. I cannot speak for Hindus, Buddhists, Animist, Muslims or other tribes but I am certain as the Bible says that the desire for God is written it upon the hearts of man.
Of course the unbeliever will deny every sign or miracle provided by God. And their “rationale” for not believing only tells me they are choosing not to believe. Why, I cannot say.
SkepticX
Member
I see at least three questions in the OP:
1) In order to believe something do we have to be truly convinced or compelled (does belief have to pass through veracity filters)?
2) Can we believe proactively (can we convince ourselves to believe)?
3) What's the difference between proactive belief and pretense, and does that distinction matter across its full spectrum (is there a point at which pretense can turn into genuine belief)?
1) In order to believe something do we have to be truly convinced or compelled (does belief have to pass through veracity filters)?
2) Can we believe proactively (can we convince ourselves to believe)?
3) What's the difference between proactive belief and pretense, and does that distinction matter across its full spectrum (is there a point at which pretense can turn into genuine belief)?
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
I think so, though maybe just being open is not enough, as difficult as it can be to be truly open. Perhaps we have to make the first connection ourselves, a leap of faith? maybe that's the only way it can ever work.
illykitty
RF's pet cat
I don't think we can chose to believe or not believe, I think we are pre-disposed and there's life experiences that veers us along the way. Sure one can lie and say they believe, but that's not the same. Perhaps eventually one starts believing in their own lies with enough time, as repeating the same message becomes the truth, with confirmation bias, anecdotes...
I can say, for example, that I "felt" things, but being sceptical by nature, I don't assume they mean something specific. It could be god, it could be awe. I could lie to myself and speculate, but I realised it runs contrary to my nature and try to remain true to myself.
I can say, for example, that I "felt" things, but being sceptical by nature, I don't assume they mean something specific. It could be god, it could be awe. I could lie to myself and speculate, but I realised it runs contrary to my nature and try to remain true to myself.
Nerissa,
re: " I consider myself agnostic because I have never felt any certainty about a God."
And that would also make you an atheist because you are without theism - not convinced that there is a supreme being/s.
re: " How is it possible to choose what to believe? Either you believe it or you don't, right?"
I think that you can choose "what" you would like to believe but as others have said, you can't then go ahead and consciously choose to actually believe it.
re: " I consider myself agnostic because I have never felt any certainty about a God."
And that would also make you an atheist because you are without theism - not convinced that there is a supreme being/s.
re: " How is it possible to choose what to believe? Either you believe it or you don't, right?"
I think that you can choose "what" you would like to believe but as others have said, you can't then go ahead and consciously choose to actually believe it.
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