Do you believe that unicorns and leprechauns are real?
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Can You Choose What You Believe?
- Thread starter SalixIncendium
- Start date
Do you believe that unicorns and leprechauns are real?
In the common vernacular, the word "believe" is used in too many contexts, such that there's no black and white answer. But in its natural sense, to believe is to see and register something as true, so you can no more choose a belief than you can choose the truth that you see. If you want to know if you believe something, a proposition (belief that or belief what), just ask yourself, "Is that so?" That sense of belief is malleable, changing with each moment, with each new set of information. Each new decision. As it should be. To fix "beliefs" in stone, or paper, is to "kill" them, render them useless. Mental bias relies on the information set as if it were fixed, casting truth in memory, in mind, in stone--let it be malleable and present, and the truth is "out there."
Depends. I don't think it's a binary choice
If the object for belief goes against your worldview then to believe would hurt so disbileaf is the most likely course.
If the object slots nicely into your worldview then belief is comfortable.
Then there is the middle ground, overwhelming evidence forces you to take the opposite course
No. It isn't. Not if belief is actually genuine. I can't genuinely choose to believe something is worthy of my trust if I dont think it is. That's a contradiction in terms. I can want to believe the world is flat all i want, but I genuinely dont think it is. I would have to be presented with convincing evidence that flat earthism is true to change my mind.
Wrong again. If you're convinced something is true, you already believe it, by definition.
I understand that, people believe all kinds of unreasonable things. That doesn't mean they choose those unreasonable beliefs. They are genuinely convinced those beliefs are true. They can't just abandon them on a whim. They have to be convinced there is a reason to reject them.
Unveiled Artist
Veteran Member
Yes (for example). Doesn't make it true. If I find reason to accept it's true (believe), I can. If I dont, I can "choose" to move on.
That's not what I'm asking a hypothetical. I'm asking if you actually believe they're real.
PureX
Veteran Member
Actually, you can. All you have to do is let go of the idea that your convictions are undoubtably right, so that you can become open-minded, again. If you can't do that, then you've trapped yourself in your own bias (because, of course, we can always be wrong).
Unveiled Artist
Veteran Member
Edit.
No. I don't believe unicorns are real (never thought about it). If I wanted to accept it is true, I can make up a bunch of reasons that would justify why I choose to believe it is real. Maybe the unicorn helped me when I was a child and I want it to help me again. So, I choose to accept it is true despite the "fact" that it is not.
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So one can't just choose your beliefs without an experience to affect that choice. One needs a reason to believe. You can't just choose to believe in unicorns, correct?
I made a topic and proven you do.
Unveiled Artist
Veteran Member
I'm trying to follow my argument. I tend to "loose it" after awhile.
I accept unicorns are fake
For "whatever reason" now I believe they are real
I believe they are real now because of, say my experience, observation, justification, or maybe my interpretation of facts
Unicorns are real because I accept it as a fact based on the evidence above
Maybe my belief would change if someone challenged me to these facts. That, or I just decide not to accept it is true and move on. The point is I can change what I accept is true. Whether it makes sense or not is irrelevant.
Maybe those who accept something is true that the rest of us do not are in an illusion or in an imaginary world of some sort, I don't know. But it's possible despite how illogical it is from outside perspective.
Why then is it that another seeing the same convincing things you are seeing, is not convinced? Is it that you are more intelligent than them? I am convinced for instance, that being convinced has more to do with one's willingness to be convinced by the evidence than the evidence itself. This is true for all of us, for everything we elect to be convinced by. But you aren't convinced of that.
One could argue that you lack seeing the evidence that I am seeing, which may be the case. It may also be that it is foreign to your ways of thinking about these things, and therefore it takes a considerable willingness to entertain a different perspective (true for all of us).
Or other causes, for others maybe, would be that they aren't willing to believe something, no matter the evidences to others, because believing that thing could make something else they believe in to be untrue or questionable. There are emotional investments to play a major part surrounding the choice to be open to something or to not be open to it.
Being open to evidence in this instance, is clearly a choice, as all the evidence of all Creationists flying against science proves. They are choosing to deny it, without valid supporting evidences.
It's a little complex, but not really once we see that we are a lot more than just rational reasoning binary decision machines. Our will is central to the whole shebang. The will is the Master at the helm of all of it, and everything the will directs, is a choice of the will. Choice is a matter of the will. We choose what we believe, even while that happens subconsciously. Choice is the spigot on the faucet that lets evidence do it's thing, or blocks it.
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Samantha Rinne
Resident Genderfluid Writer/Artist
You most definitely have experiences and they do have the ability to shape your life. But you can decide how they do so.
Since this is on everyone's mind, let's use as an example the Coronavirus. Some people will decide to believe the newspapers, and become convinced this is a "pandemic" and to not invite others into their house (my older sister). Some, like my sister-in-law will believe in family, and travel despite the risks. Some will believe God cures all disease, and continue to hold services because giving hope outweighs any risk of contagion. Some will believe that anyone health is privileged somehow and has secretly been receiving better treatment. Still others will believe in conspiracies about it.
Same exact experience, but your choice as to what you believe. God is talking to us in the same way, but it is our beliefs that determine what we hear.
The only way for me to "let go" of the conviction that I'm right (and my conviction doesn't havent to be absolute, it can be probabilistic) is to be presented with evidence that my conviction is unjustified. And that's not something I choose.
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No doubt we get to choose, but it takes strength and conviction to find what is good in us and to make that good become our way of life.
Regards Tony
WhyIsThatSo
Well-Known Member
They are based on the "experiences" of multiple ( even hundreds) of life times.
And some of us , as humans, are much "older" than others. (hint, hint).
No. But that's just my view. For me, it's a matter of discovering what you believe, not choosing. Indirectly, I suppose, by choosing certain experiences, since those same experiences determine beliefs. One can't really say if he likes or dislikes a certain type of food, until he chooses to taste it. But that too is a discovery.
Many reasons. Bottom line, they don't have the same criteria for what is convincing that I do.
Or they're more intelligent than me. Or something totally unrelated to our IQs.
Correct. And I can't just up and choose to believe your perspective is correct for no reason. I need to be convinced by some type of evidence.
Also correct. And I can't just choose to be more willing. I either see evidence that convinces me to change my mind, or I don't. If I don't, I'm not going to change my mind. It's not something I choose. If you genuinely convince me you're correct, I can't just not believe it. I believe automatically.
Again, not true. Creationists can't just simply choose not to be creationists. They are genuinely convinced creationism is true based on the evidence they've seen. That doesn't mean they're being rational, or that they have seen accurate or sufficient information to inform their belief. It simply means that, for whatever reason, they are genuinely convinced. And they can't just turn that off. They have to be presented with new information that contradicts their paradigm before that paradigm shifts.
Our wills are constrained in 1,000 different ways, from the moment we have anything we could call a will: by our genetics, our upbringing, our culture, our religion, the information we are and aren't exposed to and so on.
That would be true. And you don't have the same criteria as them. It is a selective lens that sees what it will see. It is conditioned, and ultimately is a choice. One can either follow the conditioning, by implicitly or subconsciously choosing to continue to follow it, or to make a conscious choice to examine it and challenge its presumptions, or basic lens it sees the world through.
Yes, but at the gate is a choice to be made. "Could it be that my perception is not allowing me to see something because of my conditioning? Can I set that aside and truly try to see through a different perspective?"
Now, while someone can say yes to that, because we like to believe we are so self-aware and full of integrity, there are many layers to that. We may be willing to bend a little, to see another's perspective on something. But if that perspective seems far too much of a bend, then we are not so willing, as that now pushes over into emotional comfort zones, senses of security, etc. So at each one of these vectors, is a choice. And that choice, will absolutely determine the outcome of what can or cannot be seen.
So choice, sticking again with my metaphor of the faucet, is the opening and closing of the amount of what that is allowed to flow in, so as to not disrupt the system too far. Each incremental opening, is again a matter of choice, which is determined by signals of threat to its own well being, or sense of security in the world.
Point being, we are not nearly so rationally driven and in control of truth of knowledge as we'd like to believe!
But actually, yes. You can choose to be more willing. Absolutely yes. That's where one's emotional sense of security comes squarely into play. Fear, is a major motivator to make one retract into "safe spaces". In the case of having one's sense of reality utterly thrown upside down, then they will instinctively, through evolution, protect that at all costs. Violently if necessary in extreme cases, such as terrorists.
If someone through emotional development is able to find that sense of security in themselves, without their ideas of reality absolutely needing to be right or they will be lost, that person is much more willing to be challenged. It's all a matter of how tightly one holds on to that need for their views to be safe for them, that will determine how evidence is seen and received. All of that is the program, and choice to follow or break the program is made every step of the way.
You're close. Yes, they cannot just turn that off, because it is the program that informs their worldviews, which creates the filter through which all other information must pass, and then be sorted into the structures of that worldview's framework. Therefore, that which threatens it, or they can't "bend" enough to allow a different perspective through, will disallow everything that you see and celebrate as true.
It's the proverbial round peg into a square hole, in other words. "What we are, that only can we see", said Emerson. That's it right there. And those are choices, at a subconscious level to continue the functioning program, perceived as necessary for survival.
Oh absolutely, I agree with this. Perhaps, maybe the will is more subject to our desire for a sense of security? A desire to know love? At a really deep level, that is probably true.