Free will

@fmf said
Yes, I am sure there all manner of beliefs about all kinds of things that many people cannot change their mind about even if they want to.

But the OP is about the psychologically bogus idea that people can somehow decide to believe in supernatural beings if they don't. Just as it is a psychologically bogus idea that people can somehow decide to not believe in supernatural bei ...[text shortened]... ll" to decide to not believe in Jesus.

It simply doesn't work like that. I explain it in the OP.

(1) There are multiple epistemologies that people can embrace to reach the conclusions they wish to come to.

People who don't want to believe in God choose to believe in epistemologies that are purely empirical.

They choose to shut themselves off to God.

But just like a drunk who can't control their desire to binge drink, they believe they have no choice in the matter when they actually have an infinite amount of choices.

(2) Ironically, I'm currently reading a book about an atheist who converted to Hinduism who then converted to Orthodoxy.

It was all a series of choices.

Choices can lead to changes in belief, obviously.

But I don't think people can simply choose to believe in something supernatural when they don't in the same way as they can't just choose to not believe in it when they do.

If you were to lose your Othodox faith, it would be something that you'd at some point realize [perhaps after a process of weakening faith that included all manner of decisions about what to read and who to talk to and how much time to devote to contemplation etc.] and not the result of a choice made to not believe.

If I were - as a non-believer - to make the decision to immerse myself in the Orthodox tradition, and make decisions to study and attend events and meet people, I might or might not, one day, realize that my atheism has been replaced by belief in the Christian God, but I can't simply decide to believe in that God.

@philokalia said
But just like a drunk who can't control their desire to binge drink, they believe they have no choice in the matter when they actually have an infinite amount of choices.

Alcoholism doesn't work as an analogy for belief or lack of belief in supernatural causality

@fmf said
Choices can lead to changes in belief, obviously.

But I don't think people can simply choose to believe in something supernatural when they don't in the same way as they can't just choose to not believe in it when they do.

If you were to lose your Othodox faith, it would be something that you'd at some point realize [perhaps after a process of weakening faith that include ...[text shortened]... has been replaced by belief in the Christian God, but I can't simply decide to believe in that God.

So you believe that no one can be fluid in their epistemology, basically.

I think this is because you have a very shallow understanding of how truth can possibly be measured.

Just because you close yourself off to logic and always look at the world through a hard materialist lens doesn't mean that all people need to share your sadly narrow view of truth.

You convinced yourself you have no free will because you think so narrowly in the first place.

But maybe there is some merit in what you are saying.

Surely, years and years of narrow thought narrows the scope of thinking further until it is almost impossible to break the chain of ignorance.

@philokalia said
So you believe that no one can be fluid in their epistemology, basically.

I think this is because you have a very shallow understanding of how truth can possibly be measured.

Just because you close yourself off to logic and always look at the world through a hard materialist lens doesn't mean that all people need to share your sadly narrow view of truth.

You con ...[text shortened]... narrows the scope of thinking further until it is almost impossible to break the chain of ignorance.

I don't think my understanding of human nature is "very shallow".

@philokalia said
You convinced yourself you have no free will because you think so narrowly in the first place.

I do not think I have no "free will". Where did I say that?

And I don't believe I think "narrowly".

@philokalia said
Just because you close yourself off to logic and always look at the world through a hard materialist lens doesn't mean that all people need to share your sadly narrow view of truth.

I don't think I "close [myself] off to logic".

I don't think that believing in or not believing in the resurrection of Christ, or believing or not believing in Hindu deities, is a matter of "logic".

I don't think my view of the truth is "sadly narrow".

@philokalia said
Surely, years and years of narrow thought narrows the scope of thinking further until it is almost impossible to break the chain of ignorance.

I don't think I exhibit "ignorance".

Which bit do you think exhibited "ignorance"?

@philokalia said
So you believe that no one can be fluid in their epistemology, basically.

I don't think people can decide to believe in supernatural causality. I think people can realize that they do. I don't think people can decide not to believe in supernatural causality [if they do believe in it]. Instead, I think people can realize that they don't believe it.

Was I forced to be a Christian for 25+ years?

Yes, I suppose I was, in a sense, "forced" to be a Christian for those 25+ years. The word "forced" is maybe not the first word I'd have thought of using, but it will suffice.

Yes, I was, for all intents and purposes, "forced" to be a Christian. I didn't really have any choice in the matter. My faith was sincere, ever present, empowering. It had a momentum all of its own. It was like a force. Like a kind of force of nature. It carried me with it.

I had a set of notions and explanations that I subscribed to. They made sense. They interlocked. They were mirrored in people around me. They fed off all kinds of sources of confirmation bias, continuously so. They felt completely irresistible. What choice did I have?

It was a frame of reference that was comfortable, familiar, constant, normal, natural, intuitive, reassuring. It felt utterly necessary. And obligatory. Not overbearing but not optional either. It was psychologically inescapable. It was like second nature. Intuitive. It was the rightful order of things, a reality imposed on me from outside, not something I had created from within by selecting its components.

It was not something I chose to do. It was not something, where I woke up each day, and decided, freely, to continue with those beliefs, or decided deliberately and consciously to not stop. For all intents and purposes, I was "forced" to be a Christian.

It was something similar to my love for my partner and children; it isn't a choice; I can't just wake up one day and use "free will" to decide to stop loving them. The imperative to love them, care for them, worry about them, is like a force within me. It is a reality about which I have little or no volition.

My Christian life consisted of a complex superstructure of instincts and assumptions and imperatives and carefully cultivated perspectives that created, just as it's supposed to, a spiritual cocoon inside of which I lived for decades and which was all bound up with my identity, my life choices, and my interactions with my human environment.

I did not choose to create that cocoon. It was just there. It existed. It was real to me. It wasn't a conscious choice.

It felt to me like it was my innate response to supernatural stimuli ~ realities ~ beyond my control. I couldn't simply choose not to believe them. It was a matter of heart and soul. It felt mandatory and invincible.

Was I literally "forced" to exist in that mental and spiritual space? Is it the right word? I suppose so, yes. As mindscapes go, it was compelling. It was persuasive. It was required. It seemed like the only alternative.

So, all this had the effect of "forcing" me to be a Christian. Yes, the word "forced" will suffice. I don't think any exercise of "free will" could have done anything about the fact that I saw myself and the world through a Christian prism. I couldn't have somehow chosen at any given moment to not be a Christian.

And I don't think any exercise of "free will" or "choice" could have done anything to prevent what happened thereafter.

I don't think "free will" could have had any effect as I moved gradually through the process of losing that faith. I don't think "free will" could have had any inhibiting or accelerating effect on the long drawn out process that eventually led to me realizing that all those instincts and superstitions and life-defining assumptions had faded away and disappeared.

In the end, I was "forced" to admit that I was no longer a Christian.

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@fmf said
I don't think I exhibit "ignorance".

Which bit do you think exhibited "ignorance"?

A good example of your ignorance is your unwillingness to broadly apply the very things that you stated here.

For instance, you say that it is not a choice whether or not someone believes in supernatural causality, but you refuse to apply this to someone's belief in sexism or racism.

Clearly, you are politically motivated in this reasoning, or else you would have theoretically supplied us with a good reason as to why this is the case. But no such reason is forthcoming. You just say it isn't.

I think that is an example of ignorance. You are "uneducated, unaware, or uninformed" of how to think about these things objectively.

@fmf said
I don't think people can decide to believe in supernatural causality. I think people can realize that they do. I don't think people can decide not to believe in supernatural causality [if they do believe in it]. Instead, I think people can realize that they don't believe it.

What makes it so that you cannot believe in supernatural causality..?

It'd be a limited epistemology.

You would be the sort of person who woudl refuse to believe in something without proof of it, right?

Because there are very limited models for theism which envision God as a clockmaker that does not intervene in His Creation much after the Creation, and they rely heavily on the natural world. They view the creation much like how we would view an engine. They believe in things like theistic evolution.

They largely tick the box of a conservative in the realm of epistemology.

What separates them from you is their concepts about cosmology, and perhaps they believe in things like the fine tuned universe theory.

Why don't you believe in those things?

Why can't you believe in those things?

@fmf said
Was I forced to be a Christian for 25+ years?

Yes, I suppose I was, in a sense, "forced" to be a Christian for those 25+ years. The word "forced" is maybe not the first word I'd have thought of using, but it will suffice.

Yes, I was, for all intents and purposes, "forced" to be a Christian. I didn't really have any choice in the matter. My faith was sincere, ever present ...[text shortened]... In the end, I was "forced" to admit that I was no longer a Christian.

Thread 173991

So for like the first 25 years of your life (correct me if it was something like the middle 25 years of your life), you just went through the motions...

Yet, you could have at any point decided to do something that would theoretically accelerate your disbelief, right?

Or, you could have decided to invest yourself in a different path of logic that would reinforce your beliefs, right?

Are you suggesting that belief in God is so untenable that anyone who remains in it is actively maintaining some kind of self-brainwashing? I am curious about that.

Because it is clearly a choice -- and if it is not a choice, then surely there is some ultimate reality about how people believe things, and clearly there's going to be certain realities that are more conducitve to understanding the truth, and others tht aren't.

You surely believe in absolutes on this... and that isn't wrong. But do give us some insight into this.

@philokalia said
you say that it is not a choice whether or not someone believes in supernatural causality, but you refuse to apply this to someone's belief in sexism or racism.

I didn't "refuse to apply it to someone's belief in sexism or racism". Indeed, what I said, very explicitly, was this: "Yes, I am sure there all manner of beliefs about all kinds of things that many people cannot change their mind about even if they want to". You are mistaken.

@philokalia said
So for like the first 25 years of your life (correct me if it was something like the middle 25 years of your life), you just went through the motions...

Not at all. Have you not read what I wrote?