Stephen T-B

I’m trying to work something out, and may be, if you’re passing by and can be bothered to, you can tell me where my ideas are wrong.
It’s a Free Will issue, and how the choices we make in terms of actions we carry out are based on processes which are fundamentally different from those which lead us to adopt, hold or reject religious beliefs.

Exercising Free Will, I assume, means being allowed to act as we choose to; furthermore, how we choose to act is determined by a process which is governed by our temperament, experiences, cultural background and perceptivity. It consists of ascribing values to the costs and benefits which we think a particular course of action will give rise to, and then weighing those values.
I’m buying a tie: I’m looking through the shop’s tie rack and a really wild number catches my eye. By temperament I’m quietly flamboyant, but my wife is extremely conservative: If I buy this tie it will satisfy my desire to be noticed, but it will get me into trouble with her. Which is more important? I make a judgment and buy the tie...I have exercised my free will. Or I think I have.
At its simplest, this judgment between anticipated difficulties and inconveniences against anticipated rewards may be made in seconds, or fractions of seconds. In the case of buying the tie, it took me a week.

So moving on: do we exercise our free will when we adopt, hold on to or let go a religious belief?
I think not. What we do in this case is not “determined by a process which is governed by our temperament, experiences, cultural background and perceptivity.” It does not consist “of ascribing values to the costs and benefits which we think a particular course of action will give rise to, and then weighing those values.”
It is a personal response driven by psychological need, or sometimes lack of psychological need. (I’m thinking of “religious” people who remain religious all their lives because of inertia, nothing about the religion which they’ve been brought up in arousing their antipathy.)
Radoth (I think) has said elsewhere that being a Christian is a “state of mind.” I think that’s right, and that it is a state of mind which we do not choose: it is one into which we are cast. Believers who attribute some kind of obtuse wilfulness to un-believers and teach that they must fry in hell for it, are therefore in error.

Stephen T-B

well, a few passers-by have dropped in on this post, and they either fell asleep before they got to the end of the OP, decided it wasn’t worth trying to unravel and understand, or thought: “OK, seems to make sense to me.”
That last is what I’m going to believe is the case...
(And if it is the case, perhaps I am more of a philosopher than I thought.)

seebs

I think it's substantially more complicated than that. I think you get a fair amount of control over your beliefs.

Shadowy Man

It seems to me that beliefs are like tastes. There's something basic in why you have specific ones, but they can also be shaped through experience, exposure, and thought.

Stephen T-B

Tell me, Seebs: how do you control your beliefs?

Stephen T-B

Shadowy man: “It seems to me that beliefs are like tastes. There's something basic in why you have specific ones, but they can also be shaped through experience, exposure, and thought.”
I’d agree, and think the operative word here is “shaped.”
Our beliefs may well be shaped, but not, I think, by anything we consciously do.

The thing about Christians is that they assume that atheists have decided not to believe in god.
Which means it is possible for someone to decide TO believe in god.
And if, by the exercise of sheer will power, it is possible to do that, then presumably a very determined person can believe anything. Which reminds me of the White Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass who practised every morning, and boasted to Alice that she could believe ten unbelievable things before breakfast.

Shadowy Man

That's why I used the word "shaped". However, I do think that they are shaped by things we consciously do, though not necessarily so directly.

You can come to believe or disbelieve something by consciously thinking about. By actively educating yourself on a subject, and running the rigors of the reason through your head you can shape your beliefs.

I used the comparison to 'taste' because of the way people say things like "acquired taste".

I think what you are saying, and I would agree with you, is that you just can't say "I choose to believe X now" and all of a sudden you believe X.

People tell me that if I work at it I could acquire a taste for beer, though at the moment I don't like the taste at all. I can't wake up one morning and say "I like the taste of beer" and expect to like it when I drink it next. I don't fully agree that I could acquire the taste for it, but some people claim that they have.

Stephen T-B

Thinking things through more carefully since beginning this thread, I’ve reached the conclusion that "belief" is not really the correct word to use in relation to the Faithful..

I think people either accept there is a god, because that is what they’ve been told, or they conclude there must be one, or why else are they here? Why else is there a universe? Why else is there sin and suffering? Why else do we have souls? How else can there be life after death? How else do we know right from wrong? Why else the Bible and the miracles?
Christians decide Jesus is the son of god and still lives, or why else does the thought of his name bring them a sense of joy, or peace, or inner satisfaction, or purpose, or love, or healing? Why else is worshipping him such a high point of their lives?
They say they believe in god, but that is not strictly true: they know for a fact there is a god. Well, most of the time. Sometimes they have doubts, but other people’s certainty helps to drive those doubts away. And it is their own certainty which - from time to time - helps other worshippers through their momentary doubts.
The point of religious ritual is not to re-enforce belief, but to reinforce certainty.
This certainty convinces them that atheists must be in denial, and the only reason they are in denial is because they choose to be.
As an atheist, I cannot, therefore, talk to a worshipper in terms of belief and un-belief because to a worshipper, neither is relevant to the case.
I’m a wrong-un, and dangerous because I might infect worshippers with my deliberate refusal to accept the fact of god’s existence.
As they see it, I have exercised my free will - as given to me by god - and I have chosen to close my eyes to the reality of god. And if I liken a belief in god to a belief in Santa Clause or fairies on the Invisible Pink Unicorn, I am merely laying a smokescreen to obscure my wilfulness.

I don’t know how HelenM fits into this picture. But I do know how Radoth does. I also realise that I never believed in god: I accepted there was one because that’s what I was told, and the fact that the concept eventually proved hollow suggests I had no investment in the neccessity of there being one.

beth

I did...once, but I never truly felt His love. Now I have decided that He isn't there. I have decided that I fell for a myth.

Radorth

I did not use the phrase "state of mind." I consider the mind and the heart to be strangers in most people. Thus it is that people make all sorts of declarations about how they will not do this or that (like fall in love with such and such a person) and do it anyway.

In a way I suppose Stephan is correct, that one could deny they will ever believe in Jesus, and one day their heart decides otherwise. Nevertheless I have learned that God does not want anything but a willful and careful decision. I strenuously objected to firemen being made to go to church.

How ironic that atheists complain about God not showing himself, but if he did so many would say people had even less free will. And if God physically prevented criminals from doing things in advance, they would scream "NO FREE WILL!" from every rooftop. True they would not be atheists, but it would not really matter to the argument here.

You would simly have rebellious belivers demanding the right to do as they please without interference from God. Of that I have no doubt.

In my own case, I made a deal with God, in which he had to do most of the work of having a relationship. Actually, that is the way he wants it. (Gasping noises heard in background) Which he has done. So when people say I just "wanted to believe" they don't really know what they are talking about. I wanted not to believe because I had all kinds of goofy ideas about what God would make me do and not do. Personally I think lots of people could hear God speaking if they did not hear all kinds of other voices screaming in their heads. I also think it is OK to put God to the test, but only if one's heart is right.

Rad