Elect-ism

Originally posted by LemonJello
Huh? What definition of 'belief' are you talking about?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/belief

Whether you talk about a religious belief, or belief in the shape of Earth, or belief in the best candidate for a government office, you have chosen what to believe. Facts don't change. The Earth is a certain shape, humans did or didn't walk on the moon, there is or isn't a diety. Some people still choose to believe the earth is flat allegedly. Some choose to believe men walked on the moon and some choose to believe it was a hoax. Some choose to believe in a diety and some choose not to. Everyone bases their beliefs based on their interpretation of the facts. But everyone chooses their beliefs. You cannot accidentally believe something; it's always a choice to believe or disbelieve anything.

Originally posted by pawnhandler
[b]ALL beliefs are, by definition, a matter of choice. They include interpretation of evidence and reality. This includes choosing to believe the tenets of a religion or choosing to believe that all religions are dopey. Every single human chooses to believe or not believe a ton of things every day.[/b]

OK, please demonstrate it for us. Choose right now to believe that there is no God, that the world is flat and that you are dead. Let us know when you are successfully believing those things.

Originally posted by twhitehead
In South Africa smokers are quite severely discriminated against in terms of where they are allowed to smoke. I guess other countries have similar laws.

In South Africa smokers are quite severely discriminated against in terms of where they are allowed to smoke. I guess other countries have similar laws. WHITEY


...and quite rightly so. Everyone has the right not to be discriminated against (including smokers) but then everyone also has the right to breath clean air and not die of passive smoking so it's ridiculous to call this discrimination. You might as well say it's discrimination to stop drivers going 70 mph outside schools.🙄🙄

Originally posted by twhitehead
OK, please demonstrate it for us. Choose right now to believe that there is no God, that the world is flat and that you are dead. Let us know when you are successfully believing those things.

Choose right now to believe that there is no God, that the world is flat and that you are dead. WHITEY

I choose right now to believe there is no God (based on the secondary belief that God is a huge cosmic custard pie revolving around the milky way). I choose to believ the world is flat (based on the secondary belief that flatness actually looks like roundness) I choose to believe that I am dead (based on the belief that being dead means you think you are alive but actually you are not).

What we choose to believe/disbelieve is also based on further beliefs about what we think reality is.

Originally posted by knightmeister
What we choose to believe/disbelieve is also based on further beliefs about what we think reality is.

But are these further beliefs causally sufficient? If so then there is no choice involved. If not then please demonstrate your ability to defy them. And redefining the words to suit your intended outcome simply doesn't count nor make any sense at all.

Originally posted by knightmeister
...and quite rightly so. Everyone has the right not to be discriminated against (including smokers) but then everyone also has the right to breath clean air and not die of passive smoking so it's ridiculous to call this discrimination. You might as well say it's discrimination to stop drivers going 70 mph outside schools.🙄🙄

I agree that discrimination doesn't quite fit. However there is always a balance between what we allow people to do and how much their actions affect other people. For example driving at 5mph past a school is still potentially dangerous but not illegal. A Christian calling me a fool is potentially harmful to me but not to the extent that it is illegal but then the original poster is I think wrong in implying that it is illegal to call someone of a different race inferior.
What I would consider wrong and believe should be illegal is if someone denies me an opportunity based on my race or atheism when neither of those attributes will actually affect my performance.

Originally posted by twhitehead
OK, please demonstrate it for us. Choose right now to believe that there is no God, that the world is flat and that you are dead. Let us know when you are successfully believing those things.

I was basically raised an atheist and became a Catholic as an adult. The world didn't change, but my beliefs did. Many people change religions, including going from no religion to having a religion and going from having a religion to having none. Nothing outside themselves has changed. They have simply chosen to interpret things and events in a different way. People who believe the world is flat or the moon landing was faked or any of the other multitude of paranoid delusions that are floating around the internet among conspiracy theorists are choosing to believe those things while the rest of us -- faced with the exact same information -- choose not to believe those things.

Originally posted by pawnhandler
I was basically raised an atheist and became a Catholic as an adult. The world didn't change, but my beliefs did. Many people change religions, including going from no religion to having a religion and going from having a religion to having none. Nothing outside themselves has changed. They have simply chosen to interpret things and events in a diffe ...[text shortened]... the rest of us -- faced with the exact same information -- choose not to believe those things.

I simply don't believe you. And that is not by choice.

Are you refusing to take up the challenge and demonstrate your ability to make a choice? Or are you admitting that you cannot choose to believe that there is no God?

So when your beliefs changed, did you choose to change them? If so why? What could possibly have made you so stupid as to decide to believe in something that you believe doesn't exist? Can we expect you to believe in pink unicorns next year?

Originally posted by pawnhandler
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/belief

Whether you talk about a religious belief, or belief in the shape of Earth, or belief in the best candidate for a government office, you have chosen what to believe. Facts don't change. The Earth is a certain shape, humans did or didn't walk on the moon, there is or isn't a diety. Some people still choo ...[text shortened]... nnot accidentally believe something; it's always a choice to believe or disbelieve anything.

We can choose (to a degree) what we read, whom we listen to, what environment we live in etc. This will shape our beliefs. That doesn't mean we have chosen them. When I was a teenager, I wanted to believe, and I made choices that were supposed to lead into that direction, and I did become a believer. However, eventually the things I did in order to believe, e.g. reading the bible, destroyed my belief. Believe me (oops, you can't choose that), I tried hard to continue to believe. It was definitely not a choice when I realised I couldn't believe in the Christian God anymore. You just can't believe in something that doesn't make sense to you.

Originally posted by pawnhandler
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/belief

Whether you talk about a religious belief, or belief in the shape of Earth, or belief in the best candidate for a government office, you have chosen what to believe. Facts don't change. The Earth is a certain shape, humans did or didn't walk on the moon, there is or isn't a diety. Some people still choo ...[text shortened]... nnot accidentally believe something; it's always a choice to believe or disbelieve anything.

The idea that belief is choice-based is not entailed by any of the definitions listed on the page you link, so again I'm wondering what definition you are using such that all beliefs are, by definition as you claim, the product of choice.

But, at any rate, the idea that all beliefs are the result of choice just doesn't make any sense. The deliberations that produce our considered choices rely on beliefs we already hold. Holding some belief is necessary for you to be able to act from reason and make any choices. But, now you're saying that choice is necessary to bring about any belief. That doesn't make any sense since if both of those were true (that some belief is necessary for choice; and that choice is necessary to bring about any belief), we would never be able to come to hold any beliefs or make any choices at all.

I'd like to see you choose to believe genuinely that you don't exist; or that you don't have a head; or that what you recall eating for breakfast this morning you didn't eat for breakfast this morning; or that you can construct a square circle. You believe, don't you, that you have been staring at a computer screen for some duration of time. When did you choose that belief? The reality is you hold any number of beliefs, many of them very mundane, that are basically stored mental representations. You didn't deliberate and choose them: you have come to hold them passively based on evidence at your disposal, and some are basic and you hold them with no underlying support.

Yes, there are facts about the world that exist independently of any attitudes we hold. You may hold certain beliefs about them at one point and then come to hold other beliefs about them at another point. That doesn't mean you're choosing what to believe. Probably either the evidence you thought you had was defeasible and overturned or new evidence has been brought to your attention, or whatever. You may say that you "decided" to believe this or that based on the evidence, but such a decision would be an ersatz one. You also may be mistaken in your belief, mistaken about what constitutes evidence, etc., but people don't just choose what to believe in the absence of what they take as evidence for it.* If someone did decide to "believe" some proposition in the absence of considerations that they think bear on the truth of the proposition (for example, maybe they are entertaining only pragmatic reasons), then I just fail to see how that constitutes belief at all, properly speaking.

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*One possible exception could be an indirect choice to believe where one chooses to engage in some sequence of activities that the agent has good reasons to think will eventuate in his coming to believe the proposition. Bbarr offered this up once as a possible means of indirectly "choosing" to believe. It seems plausible to me.

Originally posted by LemonJello
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*One possible exception could be an indirect choice to believe where one chooses to engage in some sequence of activities that the agent has good reasons to think will eventuate in his coming to believe the proposition. Bbarr offered this up once as a possible means of indirectly "choosing" to believe. It seems plausible to me.

That's what I was talking about - making choices that are supposed to lead in the direction of a belief. However, I think in most cases like that there's already some sort of "proto-belief", a partial belief that just needs confirmation. Also, even if you make choices that are likely to lead you to believe (or confirm your belief), it's still possible that you won't get the confirmation you are looking for and thus won't end up believing. If you were absolutely certain that you'd end up believing if you follow that road, I believe (😉) you'd already believe.

Originally posted by whodey
Such as?

Drug use, prostitution, public nudity...

Originally posted by Nordlys
That's what I was talking about - making choices that are supposed to lead in the direction of a belief. However, I think in most cases like that there's already some sort of "proto-belief", a partial belief that just needs confirmation. Also, even if you make choices that are likely to lead you to believe (or confirm your belief), it's still possible that y t you'd end up believing if you follow that road, I believe (😉) you'd already believe.

Right, and I think you are correctly touching on the only way one could go about "choosing" belief (as was bbarr). And, as you point out, this process by no means guarantees that the belief will ever actually be held.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I simply don't believe you. And that is not by choice.

Are you refusing to take up the challenge and demonstrate your ability to make a choice? Or are you admitting that you cannot choose to believe that there is no God?

So when your beliefs changed, did you choose to change them? If so why? What could possibly have made you so stupid as to decide t ...[text shortened]... thing that you believe doesn't exist? Can we expect you to believe in pink unicorns next year?

Actually, yes, you choose not to believe me. Those who have known me through that whole period are very well acquainted with the process I went through. And yes, I'm just as capable of choosing to believe there is no God. My beliefs waver depending on how I choose to interpret my life experiences. However, saying things like "...made you so stupid..." and your last statement don't work as challenges to me. Put-downs like that end the conversation. Adios.

Originally posted by pawnhandler
Actually, yes, you choose not to believe me. Those who have known me through that whole period are very well acquainted with the process I went through. And yes, I'm just as capable of choosing to believe there is no God. My beliefs waver depending on how I choose to interpret my life experiences.

Either we are talking about different things when we say "believe", or our brains work completely differently. If I knew that I could interpret my life experiences in a different way that would make the opposite just as believable, I wouldn't be able to form a belief. I would simply have to conclude that I can't know - which is what I do a lot.