Is belief in God a choice

[fr0d0]

In fact being open-minded is about:

• Establishing exactly what claim is being made, what phenomenon is being tested or evaluated.
  
• Establishing all possible explanations to account for the phenomenon and, if possible ...
  
• Setting up and executing a series of strictly controlled tests or observations designed to systematically and rationally eliminate the wrong possibilities and establish which accounts for the phenomenon in question.

Precisely. Being open minded is being open minded using your own narrow definition of open mindedness. I could maybe live with that if you then didn't justify your worldview with some bullshit marginalist philosophy. You prove yourself that your limitations are not sustainable.

I don't have to dismiss any of the above to hold my worldview. I just don't limit it to only those, as it's impossible to do so and remain rational.

To quote Spock ("Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country"), "An ancestor of mine maintained that when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

So you are, by allegiance with that statement, 100% certain there is no God. This is not what you've said before, a position regarded as the lunatic fringe.

I may well end up believing in your god or some other but what it won't be is a choice! If you want to let your brains to fall out then be my guest!

LOL well I dismiss bullshit too Kyu. As well as your bullshit that science will somehow answer all questions it does not, by definition, address.

Of course the absurdity you're claiming is that God will be scientifically proven. How illogical does this serious evaluation of facts let you be? Incredibly & extremely illogical it would seem. I don't think I'll be adopting that farcical POV any time soon thanks.

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In order to believe something you have to be convinced it's true. Regardless of what your standards of evidence are, you have to be convinced.

Indeed. I agree.

I could not possibly chose to believe in God, I'd need to be convinced. I did believe in God when I was younger, I didn't chose atheism. The simple fact is that the more I looked into God and religion, the less I was convinced until I realized I no longer believed. It wasn't a choice, but a process I went through.

You believed without reasoning, this is counter to the requirement of Christianity/ Catholicism. The god you believed in could have been any god. Imagining some white bearded old guy sat on a cloud is not belief in God. Having a certainty beyond logic is not belief in God. That is not Christianity.

For other people who believe in God, they have been convinced in their own way. Maybe they believe what they were taught as a child unquestioningly, or maybe they had an experience that convinced them or reaffirmed their faith. Either way, they don't chose to believe either. They honestly are convinced there is a God, for whatever reason that may be.

It sounds here like belief in God does not require faith. Would you agree with that? In EvF's point, faith is ruled out, I suspect because EvF innocently cannot entertain the idea because it is outside of his understanding.
To gain or lose faith is different to a physical interpretation of belief. Having faith in the unknowable is different to belief in the truck about to run you down.
Here we lose connection with belief as an absolute knowledge. In religious terms belief is similar to faith in that it is not certain in the same way. Beliefin God does in no way imply absolute knowledge.