Belief

[Simon Moon]

I asked this question in another thread but it seemed to get ignored amongst all the more attention-demanding argumentation that seemed to be galvanizing it, so I'll rephrase the question here, because I'm super curious about the various responses atheists may give.

Basically, can any belief be changed?   I know that most can, but I often wonder whether some people's belief in God is sometimes just unable to be changed, particularly since I've believed in God my whole life and nothing seems to have swayed me out of it.  I will qualify that by saying I was raised in a God-believing family and sustained a belief in God throughout my adult life even though my conception of God's nature/requirements of me have changed.  I've also found most Athiest arguments on God's existence to be far superior to most if not all Theist arguments.  Yet the superiority of arguments do nothing to convince me that my basic belief in God is a flaw.  At worst, it's just a seemingly permanent part of my psychological make up.  Neither good nor bad, just part of me.  So I'm wondering if sometimes, theism is just there permanently, like breathing.  Would be interesting to hear thoughts on this from an atheist's perspective.

Belief is defined by contemporary analytic philosophers of mind as being; the psychological state in which one is convinced that a premise or proposition is true.

So, if you say you believe in a god, that means you are convinced it is the case that a god exists. One can be convinced for good reasons, and one can be convinced for bad reasons. If you say the arguments against the existence of a god are far superior to the arguments for the existence of a god, yet you continue to believe anyway, you have just admitted that you believe for bad reasons.

You are also admitting that you don't care what is actually true. Which is an attitude that I just can't understand. I live my life wanting to have as many true beliefs as possible, and as few false beliefs as possible. I want my internal representation of the world to map as closely as possible to reality. I do not want to believe things just because they make me feel good, they are a long held belief, many people close to me believe them, etc. I want to believe them because they are most likely true.

And the most reliable method, by far, of determining what is most likely true, is demonstrable and falsifiable evidence, reasoned argument and valid/sound logic. Faith is not a path to truth.

As far as your question as to whether beliefs can be changed, the answer is, in general, yes. For specific people, the answer is no. There are countless people that were very strong believers, even many that are clergy, or ex-clergy, that are now atheists. Dan Barker, Jerry Dewitt, Anthony Pinn, Andrew Johnson are just a few.


EDIT: let me add, that not every belief can be changed. No matter what, I could never believe I have the ability to fly unaided.

But I could have my belief that gods don't exist changed. All it would take is demonstrable and falsifiable evidence, reasoned argument and valid/sound logic to support the claim.