Quote:
Originally Posted by David Sklansky
Believing is not a choice only if you have studied all the decent evidence available. I have chosen not to read The Case for Christ and there is always that tiny chance it would change my mind. Conversely most theists have avoided the sciences that might change theirs. So in that sense they we have made a choice.
Interestinly though this forum is populated with an amazing number of people who have studied enough of both sides where they could claim not to have a choice.
So you believe that you have no choice to decide what you believe and that your believing is pre-programmed?
Believing at its fundamental level, is nothing more or nothing less than simply accepting the knowledge or outside stimulation that you have been presented with to be true or false.
The mind easily accepts somethings to be true which is where I think you all have confused things a bit....
You choose not to believe me, correct, or is someone else in your mind making that decision for you?
Come on you of all people here you should be smart enough to realize that everybody decides and makes a conscious decision and choice about what they believe.
Do you believe that a 1$ bill will buy something that costs $1? Sure you do unless you are a real hard head.
Why do you believe this? Because you have done it before correct. Why did you do it before, because somewhere in the past someone told you when you were young that $ buys things. If you did not believe it you would never try and use $ to buy things. So you accepted what you were taught as truth which means you believed what you were taught, you believed.
What if I gave you a check for 1,000,000,000,000.00?
Would you believe it was real? Would you think for a moment that it was not real? Would you wonder? Would you go to the bank and cash or deposit it? Would you throw it away? My point is that you would want to believe it was real but doubt that it was real. You would in your mind be going back and forth, do I believe it is real or is it not real? You would be making choices and you would eventually come to your decision.
If you decided it wasn't real then you would tear it up, that is your believing about that check. If you believed that there was a slight chance it might be real you would at least go to a bank and see, that would also be your decision and believing. You would make a choice based and that choice would be your believing, whether it be unbelief or belief it still would be your believing. Not believing is believing, its just unbelief.
This can be and is applied everyday by everyone with different things on smaller or larger scales. It could be something someone told you, or something you saw ect... on and on, either way you are the one who has the choice to reject or accept what you are presented with as truth, if you reject it, that is unbelief, if you accept it as true, that is believing....
Pletho
Last edited by Pletho; 04-11-2009 at 01:52 AM.