Is belief involuntary?

I believe this question needs to be phrased in a more coherent manner. Punctuation should be altered and more details could be added (eg. “We cannot if we try choose to disbelieve…. [Huh?]) .

@Saturated_Brain You should be able to get the gist of it without needing it reformatted, but I suppose it could be constructive criticism.
I think you believe something based on reasoning. So whatever your reasoning says is right is what you believe.

I have no trouble understanding this question, and I find the part quoted as being obscure by @Saturated_Brain to be rather well written, actually.

It is very difficult to tease out who the actor is when one says “I believe.” There are beliefs fostered upon us by our parents (religion, perhaps, or disgust for people of a different culture or skin color) which may last our entire lives, and which have no element of choice.

There are beliefs that are inexplicable to some, and quite obvious to others (like Astrology, or the existence of UFOs, or the Holy Trinity) which seem to help some of us bear up under the terrifying reality of this life as temporal, contingent, random and meaningless, ending in annihilation and being of no purpose.

My girlfriend, blind from birth, believed that motorcycles had round steering wheels like a car, until I showed her one. She also believed that tiger stripes were vertical, and was much disappointed when she discovered she was wrong.

I believe that in the face of existential angst we are redeemed by love and by work, even though a part of me knows that there is no redemption, in Christ, in love, in work, or anywhere else. It’s a slippery thing, belief.

@pdworkin He edited it. He added the needed commas and now it makes more sense, thus rendering my complaint useless.

I’ll answer this question later

It is the human spirit to believe, It is up to the individual what they believe .

This is where skepticism comes into play best. Keep an open mind. The word skeptic means ‘to seek’ not ‘to discredit’ as some would have you believe. My beliefs are based on evidence. There is no credible evidence for ghosts, aliens that do anal probes on Arkansas hillbillies, gods of any sort, crystal energy, homeopathic or chiropractic medicine.

Show me evidence that can be validated at any time under any condition, and I’ll consider it. Anecdotal evidence is not true evidence, and if it won’t hold up in a court of law, then why should I accept it?

I do believe however that doing good things for people simply for the pleasure of it is by far the greatest thing any one person can do. The nices thing you can do for someone is to share yourself with them.

Quite frankly, belief – and the system it belongs to, whatever that may be – is less so a “switch” that turns on and off and more a fine gradient. At one end is a concept that we come in contact with. Deepening our understanding (or hard wiring, fooling our mind) of the concept moves us further into the gradient.

When I say that I “believe” in evolutionary biology, that did not come from me taking a few classes and toggling that switch on in my mind. My belief in it is in fact an understanding of the concept; the more evidence that was provided for the case, the deeper I’ve traveled in the spectrum. As an aside, I believe it is intellectually dishonest to say that you completely believe in something; philosophically, there is no absolute truth, as nothing is ever certain.

When you say that you cannot choose to disbelieve a deeply held belief, I’m inclined to disagree. The wonders of the human mind has enabled us to suspend common thought – just for a moment – and believe in magic and illusion. More suitably for this conversation, we are able to entertain converse opinion, and that is what allows us to progress as a society. That is what enables doctrine to convert a radical Atheist and vice versa; without it, we’d all have very strict schisms between one another. The edges of a particular society or religion would not be able to blend into one another as the currently do, as everyone would be indoctrinated as children with a hard written ideological system.

I have spent time thinking about this question. My initial thought was that belief was voluntary- determined by logic and reason. However in some cases, such as mental illness the process becomes involuntary and the person looses the ability to use reason to asses the viability of what they see. In turn, without the ability to discern the stimulous around them, they blindly believe hallucinations and other inaccurate information.

@Grisaille I like what you said about the gradient but I definitely believe one can be justified in holding a belief in an absolute truth whether it is right or not. I’m sure you’ve heard this defense but you are making a claim to absolute truth by saying there is no absolute truth. I can be justified in my belief of God and that would be an absolute truth. Intellectually honest beliefs are different from knowledge in that they have a rational basis but no hard evidence. And as to your objection about suspending disbelief, We have the ability to reason from a perspective other than our own. That does not mean we truly for a moment hold that perspective. Our mind still believes what it did originally. We just pretend we are operating on a set of principles that we don’t actually believe are true.

btw to some of you, I’m not really interested in why you believe what you believe, but rather the idea of whether or not you have a choice to do so or otherwise

@Dog Once we understand the principles of logic and reason do we have a choice to disregard them if we so choose? I don’t think we do. We can tell ourselves not to operate on those principles but that is an act of self deception that is ultimately unsuccessful considering we know we committed it.

A very good question. I haven’t decided on an answer yet, myself. You might find it instructive to read Kierkegaard‘s Philosophical Fragments. Kierkegaard is the philosopher everyone brings up when questions of faith arise. Wikipedia has a good intro to why his thoughts about this matter are helpful.

Edit: I found a better link for who Kierkegaard is, philosophically speaking. I switched it. It’s the first one I put in.

@jaketheripper Perhaps I should have worded that one line differently; there is no such thing as absolute belief, as we are inherently subjective creatures. That isn’t to say that I believe my statement that “there is no absolute truth, as nothing is ever certain” is incorrect, but for all intents and purposes of the argument, “belief” is the proper term.

That aside, truth and belief are two commonly-contradictory terms – not always, but enough. When you say that your belief in a god is an absolute truth, that is a matter of opinion. To you – most certainly. I believe that you believe that you believe that god to be true (and respect you for you opinion). However, this is not a factual statement for the entire populace, as you do not speak for the world and all its knowledge. There is a distinction that needs to be made here:

Intellectually honest/absolute belief – inherently subjective, does not have to be bothered by outside scrutiny and opinion, personal, yet connects itself to fact and reason

Intellectually honest/absolute “truth” – as objective as possible, accountable to outside influence and reasoned logic, impossible to completely prove to be true (I.E. we are actually all are living in the matrix), independent from belief

An intellectually honest “truth”, and the only way it could be considered a truth on macro scale, is for it to be tested by as many individuals as possible. If evidence supports the theory, it becomes human fact. However, we can never prove that the “absurd” or unlikely are not true (note: this differs from it being reliant on belief), and that is why I say it is intellectually dishonest to say that any one thing is a perfect truth, which that leads me into my next point.

An intellectually honest belief (and this is moving backwards a bit), would be akin to your belief in a god. For the purpose of this exercise, I will assume that you believe in your own personal god, supported by general science. Let’s say your god is every molecule in the universe, and is sentient yet unassuming and non-interfering. The common saying would be “the absence of evidence does not equate to the evidence of absence” – that is to say, based on physical evidence and reasoned logic, I cannot find proof for your god… but I cannot prove it to be false. However, because there is no evidence for such a thing, it remains in theory – and is, therefore, a belief. If you told me, however, that you believe in the God of the Bible, then there is enough reason and evidence to contradict your opinion, as it is enveloped in anecdotals. That is an intellectually dishonest belief.

I progress; what I mean about suspending disbelief and belief, I am referring not to the empathetic response, but to our naturally inquisitive nature and am certainly not speaking of an instantaneous reaction. Just as I spoke of the gradient when coming into belief, the same route needs to be taken to come out of belief. Even if there was one strong instance that occurs to a person – for example, God showing himself to an Atheist – it is with careful deliberation afterword that he is able to successfully rewrite his entire belief system… and even then, I’m sure he’d run into some interesting dilemmas (“but, if God is real, why does evolution make so much sense?”).

Some people are easily impressed, gullible, others can’t be convinced by speeches no matter how eloquent. But even if you’re pathologically pigheaded, no matter how hard you think you believe in something, there might be a detail of two that don’t feel right and it bothers you. When issues like pride or hatred play a part in your beliefs it’s easy to dismiss the small but troubling details and it can take years, decades even, humbling life lessons, a sudden revelation to direct your attention on the inconvenient parts.

Keep in mind there’s tons of “data” in your implicit memory. Only a small stream of external input reaches your conscious mind. So when confronted with hard evidence and convincing arguments, reaching a decision of what to believe might not always be a straightforward process.

No man is an island. We work better as a team, a group, an army, a country and a world.

Exponential empathy and thought.

To think we are alone in the universe is contradictive to the foundation of thought and desire to not be alone.

In my own experience, beliefs are often maintained not because they are the most rational way of looking at things based on the available evidence, but because the belief underpins something of value to the believer. To let go of a belief often leads to a cascade of consequences that may ultimately threaten that cherished thing. Belief then becomes a choice, an act of will.

When I was growing up, my entire social network was based on my family’s religious affiliation. Their beliefs were so intolerant of dissent that to not believe, in even minor matters, would have triggered a cascade of consequences that would have ultimately led to the loss of what I truly valued, which was all of my social and family connections. I chose to believe many frankly incredible things, not because they made sense, but because the thought of cutting myself of from all the people I knew was unbearable.

I eventually matured to the point of having the fortitude to be able to face that. A new value had arisen in me that meant more to me than those social ties. When I was finally ready to assume those consequences, then letting go of all that mountain of beliefs was truly as easy and definitive as flipping a switch. They were gone from one day to the next.

@Grisaille I still disagree. Ideas that would be considered absolute may present themselves in such a way that the believer would be justified in believing so. now i am only talking about belief and the justification for it, which does not necessitate truth. For instance, say I grew up in a family that taught me to believe in God. I went to a school and church where everyone believed in God. I believe I would be justified in believing in the concept of a God. Why shouldn’t I? It would be the same as my belief in George Washington. It is not a solid justification for a intelligent person, but think how many beliefs we hold on the same premises.
There would come a point when an argument would be raised against my belief in God. If I chose to dismiss it instead of addressing it that would be intellectually dishonest
So while it does not have to be connected to the truth in any way, a belief (even one that would be considered absolute) can be justifiably held.

@jaketheripper I concur, and will go further and state that “truth” is merely belief with a large consensus. Sometimes, within a smaller community, just a majority consensus.

After all, we apprehend everything through the sensorium, which is, as we know, inexact and subject to anomaly.

Even simple self-evident “truths” are actually artifacts of belief.

@pdworkin I actually do believe in absolute truths. I was just arguing that people have a capacity to justifiably hold an inaccurate Belief even one that would be considered absolute.

I would be grateful for an example of an absolute truth.

@pdworkin I would too, as the term sounds like an oxymoron, sort of like Congressional fact-finding mission.

An individual’s belief is so subjective that I can’t imagine it being anything but involuntary. Ex: I was a member of a church for a number of years and desperately wanted to believe in the Bible and God and Christ… but deep down, I knew it didn’t make sense to me. I always had questions that couldn’t be answered to my satisfaction. I was looked upon as a nuisance as a truth seeker and this only solidified what I consider my true belief as a non-Christian and an agnostic.

My point is that I truly wanted to believe, but I couldn’t help not believing. I could fool my fellow church members, my family and friends, but I couldn’t fool myself.

Another question to consider in this matter is whether it’s nature or nurture that has helped determine your beliefs. My disbelief could’ve been partially due to my upbringing.

@ubersiren As for the nature or nuture question, that is easily tested. In theory, if a Christian mother gives up her infant for adoption, and the family that adopts it is Muslim, they will raise the child in the Islamic belief, and it will in fact, be a Muslim. We are not hard-wired for any particular religion, as it is a learned behavior.

I was raised Baptist Christian, but I discovered as an adult that it doesn’t hold true, and am now an agnostic atheist with Evelynist leanings.

@evelyns_pet_zebra : True, but I suppose I just meant tendency toward a certain belief, and also, not necessarily familial nature or genetics, but individual nature. Personality.

Seems like a lot of religious belief boils down to not wanting to believe in our ultimate annihilation. The only verifiable evidence we have ever had is that the person ends with the destruction of the body, so the widespread belief in an afterlife is not a matter of people misinterpreting evidence or trying to explain certain phenomena. The observable phemomena regarding death invariably point to the end of the person.

Most people have a hard time saying goodbye to existence, either for themselves or the people they love. Beliefs that appear to offer an escape clause to annihilation are, therefore, awfully seductive. If a few anecdotes can be rustled up to validate those beliefs and appear to give them substance, those are latched onto and given a pass from our usual standards of verification.

The belief is a reaction to the very compelling, but unpalatable, evidence of mortality. Since that existential anxiety is virtually universal, beliefs that offer workarounds are also virtually universal. But I don’t think that makes those beliefs involuntary, strictly speaking. They still represent a preference, not a necessity.

@jaketheripper =( I’m the same exact way. I think our crime is being naive.
I’ve pretty much come to realize that I’ve been lied to most of my life.

Whatever I believe, or was led to believe, turns out to be only partly true.
Ex. Whatever food I was told is good for you, turns out that there is some group that believes is bad for you. WTF

no. the only thing you can ever really change is your mind.

Oh, @jaketheripper ? An Absolute Truth?

Oh yes forgive me, I didn’t intend to dodge your question well I’m a Christian so I do believe in a God along with a host of other things that are absolutes but i know you don’t agree with them so I’ll think of some others. People die. Matter exists…umm aren’t most things in math absolute truths
1 + 1 = 2 for example

@jaketheripper please don’t compare the existence of a god to mathematics, or anything else that is provable in any way shape or form…

an absolute truth claim doesn’t have to be provable. An absolute truth claim doesn’t have to be true. I recognize that it isn’t provable but If it is true it is an absolute truth. That is, If God exists, it is true for all people at all times whether they believe it or not.
Some might contend that 1+1 does not equal two. That doesn’t however change the truth of the statement.

The concept of “absolute truth” is also called universality. From Wikipedia: In philosophy, universalism is a doctrine or school claiming universal facts can be discovered and is therefore understood as being in opposition to relativism. In certain religions, universality is the quality ascribed to an entity whose existence is consistent throughout the universe. When used in the context of ethics, the meaning of universal refers to that which is true for “all similarly situated individuals.” Rights, for example in natural rights, or in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, for those heavily influenced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment and its conception of a human nature, could be considered as universal. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights is inspired by such principles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_truth

So can we agree that it’s absolutely true that every human being on Earth has the same basic human rights?

Well, 1+1 seem to have always equaled 2 so far, in what may have been a long series of coincidences, and I’m not dead yet, so I do not know whether I will die or not. Remember the Assumption of the Holy Virgin, after all.

Is 1+1=2 basically a tautology?

@pdworkin 1+1=2 is a coincidence? I think that’s just silly talk. And the fact that people die isn’t really disputable either. I didn’t say all people die. But pretty much everyone knows someone who was alive and now is not. the fact that my grandma is currently, physically dead is an absolute truth. I ‘m assuming that your case with the Assumption of Mary is a joke, because if it’s not then you just opened a big can of worms

In a sense, 1+1=2 begs the question. So does the universality of death, even though some portions of that issue may be sacred to you. Just because your grandma died, doesn’t mean that I will, and kindly prove, in the absence of petitio principii that 1 + 1 will always equal 2.

@pdworkin do you dispute the fact that people die? not necessarily all people but more than one person has died? and to your second point 1+1=2 is self evident and has been proven true billions of times in billions of places by billions of people. It’s to abstract to argue the point further. And I know that you believe it to be true.

You know Jake Shit about what I believe. You are shouting down a well, locked inside your own untrustworthy brain, dependent upon your rusty, incompletely-evolved sensorium.

lol nice pun so im curious what did you put on your elementary school math tests when 1+1 came up?

I sprang forth fully formed from the brow of Arthur Schopenhauer, and needed no education.

@pdworkin back to the point, Would you say that it is not an absolute truth that some people die?

1+1=1 in boolean algebra.

1+1=10 in the binary system. What the heck does the symbol 2 mean?

Or try fuzzy logic when 1+1=2 might only be a little true.

Or go to another universe and see what happens to 1+1.

So is 1+1=2 really self evident? Or did we force it to be that way because it’s useful in most cases?

@jaketheripper No matter how many times I answer your question, the answer will not change. If you are unable to understand my answer (which I suspect is the case) repetition will not assist you.

Make an attempt at thinking outside the narrow confines of your comfortable belief-system. Faith and belief do not equal knowledge and/or truth.

@mattbrowne Yay to the assumptions behind mathematical constructs and axioms!

@pdworkin – Yay to that too! I wish the atheist Richard Dawkins would leave his narrow confines of his comfortable belief-system. Maybe he would realize then that we live in a universe bursting with evolutionary possibilities instead of a universe which is blind, pitiless and indifferent.

i think that you have to voluntarily beieve in something even things like racism that are so ingrained in your beleif system, i think that its up to the individual to decide what they do or do not belive no throwing things on the shoulders of their parents

it seems clear to me that belief is not a choice. I’ll provide the same proof I’ve supplied elsewhere:

RED

now, if you are able, go ahead and choose to believe that I typed “blue” instead of “red” in capital letters above. And I don’t mean lie about it. I mean really believe it if you can.

This thread was fun. I miss Zebra.