Is America the greatest country

[Edwardo Piet]

Actual belief in the face of what one genuinely believe is evidence, is for most people still a choice, it is a choice not to amend the perception of constitutes genuine evidence, or not be quibble about whether the genuine evidence is actually there, in the face of the implication of what previously would have been seen as genuine evidence.

I'm confused by this long sentence. Are you saying that you think that even when faced with what one constitutes and evident and true one still has a choice whether to believe it or not? Because if you're saying that we are really going to have to agree to disagree there.

As far as I am concerned once one perceives something to be evident and true, one cannot choose to disbelieve it.

[...]Do We Have Freedom of Belief?

While belief might prove difficult to pinpoint in the brain, many of its mental
properties are plain to see. For instance, people do not knowingly believe propositions for
bad reasons. If you doubt this, imagine hearing the following account of a failed New
Year’s resolution:

["]This year, I vowed to be more rational, but by the end of January, I found that I
had fallen back into my old ways, believing things for bad reasons. Currently, I believe
that robbing others is a harmless activity, that my dead brother will return to life, and that
I am destined to marry Angelina Jolie, just because these beliefs make me feel good.["]

This is not how our minds work. A belief—to be actually believed—entails the
corollary belief that we have accepted it because it seems to be true. To really believe a
proposition—whether about facts or values—we must also believe that we are in touch
with reality in such a way that if it were not true, one would not believe it. We must
believe, therefore, that we are not flagrantly in error, deluded, insane, self-deceived, etc.
While the preceding sentences do not suffice as a full account of epistemology, they go a
long way toward uniting science and common sense, as well as reconciling their frequent
disagreements. There can be no doubt that there is an important difference between a
belief that is motivated by an unconscious emotional bias (or other nonepistemic
commitments) and a belief that is comparatively free of such bias.

And yet many secularists and academics imagine that people of faith knowingly
believe things for reasons that have nothing to do with their perception of the truth. A
written debate I had with Philip Ball—who is a scientist, a science journalist, and an
editor at Nature—brought this issue into focus. Ball thought it reasonable for a person to
believe a proposition just because it makes him “feel better,” and he seemed to think that
people are perfectly free to acquire beliefs in this way. People often do this
unconsciously, of course, and such motivated reasoning has been discussed above. But
Ball seemed to think that beliefs can be consciously adopted simply because a person
feels better while under their spell. Let’s see how this might work. Imagine someone
making the following statement of religious conviction:

["]I believe Jesus was born of a virgin, was resurrected, and now answers prayers
because believing these things makes me feel better. By adopting this faith, I am merely
exercising my freedom to believe in propositions that make me feel good.["]

How would such a person respond to information that contradicted his cherished
belief? Given that his belief is based purely on how it makes him feel, and not on
evidence or argument, he shouldn’t care about any new evidence or argument that might
come his way. In fact, the only thing that should change his view of Jesus is a change in
how the above propositions make him feel. Imagine our believer undergoing the
following epiphany:

["]For the last few months, I’ve found that my belief in the divinity of Jesus no
longer makes me feel good. The truth is, I just met a Muslim woman who I greatly
admire, and I want to ask her out on a date. As Muslims believe Jesus was not divine, I
am worried that my belief in the divinity of Jesus could hinder my chances with her. As I
do not like feeling this way, and very much want to go out with this woman, I now
believe that Jesus was not divine.["]

Has a person like this ever existed? I highly doubt it. Why do these thoughts not
make any sense? Because beliefs are intrinsically epistemic: they purport to represent the
world as it is. In this case, our man is making specific claims about the historical Jesus,
about the manner of his birth and death, and about his special connection to the Creator
of the Universe. And yet while claiming to represent the world in this way, it is perfectly
clear that he is making no effort to stay in touch with the features of the world that should
inform his belief. He is only concerned about how he feels. Given this disparity, it should
be clear that his beliefs are not based on any foundation that would (or should) justify
them to others, or even to himself.

Of course, people do often believe things in part because these beliefs make them
feel better. But they do not do this in the full light of consciousness. Self-deception,
emotional bias, and muddled thinking are facts of human cognition. And it is a common
practice to act as if a proposition were true, in the spirit of: “I’m going to act on X
because I like what it does for me and, who knows, X might be true.” But these
phenomena are not at all the same as knowingly believing a proposition simply because
one wants it to be true.[...]