Choosing to/not to Believe? Not Possible?

[robvalue]

Even those who aren't indoctrinated still live in societies saturated with religious thinking and mythology.

I think the problem here is what you mean by "faith". It's a vague word if you don't pin down exactly what you mean. It could be, for example:

(1) Probability-based confidence in a particular outcome, based on previous relevant experiences

(2) Trust placed in a person that they will very likely act a certain way, or achieve a goal, based on your previous knowledge of that person

(3) Continuing to hold onto a belief, in spite of there being a lack of evidence for it, or indeed evidence to the contrary

(4) Picking an answer at random, or based on how the answer makes you feel, without any way of estimating the likelihood of it being correct

(5) Claims of absolutely certainty as opposed to provisional analysis of possibilities

I can choose to revisit relevant information I have to see if a better understand develops, which might change my beliefs. I can choose whether or not to look at new information that is presented to me which I'm told is relevant, to see if it changes my beliefs. I can choose to tell people I believe something that I don't. I can even try to lie to myself, and to eventually delude myself into believing something I otherwise wouldn't, over a period of time. I can pick an answer to a question as a guess. But I cannot choose to truly believe something I didn't before, just because I want to, or because someone pressures me to do so.

I think that holding onto beliefs (and lack of beliefs) until new evidence/understanding emerges came about as an evolutionary benefit. Imagine the danger of being able to choose to genuinely believe you can't be killed, or to stop believing that gravity will take effect on you if you walk off a cliff. Someone able to do this wouldn't survive very long to pass on their genes. The effort with which brains hold onto beliefs can be so strong that situation (3) from above occurs, with the brain throwing up all kinds of mental defences. It seems to me that the longer a belief has been held, and the more emotionally invested a person is in that belief, the harder the brain will fight to keep it in place.