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Is belief really a choice?
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This is ridiculous. Of course it's not a choice. Stop it.
If you were to choose to believe you were actually Abraham Lincoln and started acting like you believe you're Abraham Lincoln, you'd be locked up! 
You do realize that you just contradicted yourself.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
In what way? I think you missed my point. A person who believes they are Abraham Lincoln obviously didn't choose to believe they are Abraham Lincoln. They would have to be mentally ill to believe it.
Then perhaps you should choose a different word in your sentence:
(April 5, 2013 at 4:56 am)NoraBrimstone Wrote: If you were to choose to believe you were actually Abraham Lincoln
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter 
NoraBrimstone, you are again making two fallacies:
1) Either all beliefs should be chosen or none are chosen. 2) That decisions to believe something can be made in vacuum with no factors influencing it or else no decisions to believe can be made. I was thinking, I made a decision with regards to music. I said "Do I believe I should try listening to Music or not" and I decided, "I believe I should". This is a simple decision. Also, if we can chose to be rational or irrational, or our will power has some influence on our sincerity to the truth or what we prefer to believe, then we necessarily have choice in our beliefs. 
Agreed. I can chose to "believe" in Dragons.
Thing is ..... I am aware of the fact that I chose to "believe" and know full well that my belief is a lie I tell myself. Religious people have not come this far. "The Universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest." G'Kar-B5
 (April 5, 2013 at 8:52 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: ...Agreed. I can chose to "believe" in Dragons....Thing is ..... I am aware of the fact that I chose to "believe" and know full well that my belief is a lie I tell myself.Of course they are dragons. I saw one in "The Hobbit". It looked pretty real to me. (April 5, 2013 at 8:58 am)ChadWooters Wrote:(April 5, 2013 at 8:52 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: ...Agreed. I can chose to "believe" in Dragons....Thing is ..... I am aware of the fact that I chose to "believe" and know full well that my belief is a lie I tell myself.Of course they are dragons. I saw one in "The Hobbit". It looked pretty real to me. You don't read do you Chad. 
"The Universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest." G'Kar-B5
RE: Is belief really a choice?
April 5, 2013 at 9:22 am
(This post was last modified: April 5, 2013 at 9:26 am by Mystic.)
(April 5, 2013 at 8:52 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: Agreed. I can chose to "believe" in Dragons. But if you decided all of sudden to abandon skeptic type thinking and became open to all sorts of ideas out there, there are people who do believe "dragons" in a different dimension, exist, and are more or less "spiritual dragons" you can communicate with and they can guide you, and they write books about it, and book stores sell those books...so while you trust yourself not to, it's not rationally impossible for you to chose to believe in dragons. I said earlier there was agnostic atheist on shiachat, that I could've sworn, would never come to Islam, but he did. I was at one point pretty certain I would never leave Islam, it was unthinkable. The point is people leave irrational thoughts to rational thoughts and rational thoughts to irrational all the time. In that process, there can very well be with will power influencing what direction you take. If we has some choice in that that direction, we do then have some choice in our beliefs, even though it would not be in a vacuum, but with factors influencing us. And even though it's not a instant decision but a developed struggled type one. In the case of dragons, a step would be, "Am I interested enough to see what these dragon believers have to say?" but then on the other hand, you can say "I'm not wasting my time on such nonsense". And I do believe the latter is the more rational decision. No one can prove dragons exist on a different dimension and can guide us, so I wouldn't bother myself now, although, there was a point in my life where I was interested in what they had to say.  (April 5, 2013 at 1:03 am)OneOfAKind Wrote: It is NOT a choice. It's called thinking for yourself and opening your eyes. Once you realize the truth, and take your blinding goggles off, there's no way to turn back to theistic religions. Trust me, I've tried. It just didn't work, and I wasn't being true to myself.Nevertheless can you not see how some people give weight to that which they would like to be true even when evaluating evidence which points in a contrary direction? |
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