(June 27, 2015 at 2:40 pm)Napoléon Wrote:(June 27, 2015 at 2:35 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: I don't think that is quite right. People believe a lot of stupid nonsense because they were indoctrinated into it. It is not that they all "willingly" believe anything; it is that people tend to believe what they are indoctrinated to believe.
When I was growing up, I was not given the option to be raised in a non-Christian home. And, of course, when one is an infant, one cannot decide such things anyway, even if we made some pretense and let children point to pictures of people and have them raised by whoever they pointed to.
Belief is not decided by pure act of will. You could probably not believe in god no matter how hard you tried. Likewise, many people believe in god, without it being a choice or act of will.
I disagree.
Obviously not everyone has the chance to realise their brand of indoctrination is false. But that's not what I said.
I stand by what I stated. However you presumably made a conscious decision to assess your own belief, at some point as you got older. A lot of people don't want to do this and are willfully ignorant.
Besides. Your argument is flawed merely for the fact that not everyone was or is indoctrinated.
Some people are smarter than others. That is not a matter of their choice. That I was smart enough to figure out the fact that Christianity is bullshit does not mean that everyone is. Nor can I say that my level of indoctrination was the same as others, though I am sure that it was more thorough than many receive, judging from what they say about it at places like this site. But if I had been in a more primitive society, it could have been even worse, as there would not have been some of the other influences that were helpful to me.
As for the desire to assess belief, questioning things is considered wrong in most religions, and one is risking hellfire and damnation in doing so, according to many. Some people have a great deal of difficulty in overcoming indoctrination of that risk, and so they try to think about other things because of this indoctrination. It is not as if they had a free choice made in the absence of any indoctrination; their choices are after the indoctrination, and are therefore not independent of their indoctrination.
As for those who were not indoctrinated, how many religious people are there who were not indoctrinated into religion in their youth? There are some religious people who I have heard claim to have been raised as atheists, but with every case that I have examined, the truth is that they were raised to believe religious nonsense, just not the exact brand of it they currently espouse. Many religious people are liars who have no scruples about lying for a holy cause. Of course, not all feel that way; when I was religious, I found that attitude abhorrent. But, I was raised to abhor such lies, so I cannot take any great credit for having been an honest Christian in my youth.
Can you give even one example where you are sure that the person was not indoctrinated, but believes religious nonsense? Is there even one person you can name who was properly taught to think critically who believes religious twaddle? If you come up with an example, the first question will be, how do you know that that person was not indoctrinated?
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
