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PRmerger
Guest
Beliefs are indeed a choice.
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PRmerger
Guest
Careful, PA. I want you to remain here. You need to be here.
But I’m sure the mods won’t be so indulgent if they know you have also tricked them into circumventing a prior banning.
So my advice is that you walk on eggshells and dial it back a bit.
It’s also smart to learn from past mistakes, and if one’s posting patterns in the past got him into trouble, it would seem that an intelligent poster who so greatly wants to be here (so much so that he’s manipulated the system!) would not repeat those things which got him banned in the first place.
It’s like a serial adulterer, repentant and chastened, coming back to his wife but still not being able to keep it in his pants. What the heck? Didn’t you learn from your prior ejection from the house?
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Pallas_Athene
Guest
It was an obvious typo, don’t worry about it.
It should have read “professed a belief in God” rather than “stated that they were atheists”.
But the question is still interesting. What do you think is the reason that there is a very strong negative correlation between (any type of) religious conviction and one’s level of education? (Disclaimer: Obviously there is no causative relationship there… but a very strong stochastic relationship.)
The higher the person’s level of education, the less likely that they believe in any kind of supernatural. That is a fact. The question is “why”?
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PRmerger
Guest
This is also true: it’s usually those in the higher echelons of academia that will swallow that which the unwashed masses know, through basic reason, to be ludicrous."It was an obvious typo, don’t worry about it.
But the question is still interesting. What do you think is the reason that there is a very strong negative correlation between (any type of) religious conviction and one’s level of education? (Disclaimer: Obviously there is no causative relationship there… but a very strong stochastic relationship.)
The higher the person’s level of education, the less likely that they believe in any kind of supernatural. That is a fact. The question is “why”?
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Pallas_Athene
Guest
I don’t know what you are talking about. But I cannot believe that I am “unique” in my approach. Not that it matters. Thank you for your contribution, but from now on I will not respond to your posts.
Best of luck.
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PRmerger
Guest
Buh-bye. :bighanky:
But I will continue to respond to yours, firstly, because they are so easily refutable.
Secondly, because it’s fun to.
Thirdly, for the lurkers.
Incidentally, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, it makes it quite peculiar that this post of mine would prompt the response of “I’m not going to talk to you anymore!”
Rather, it speaks to the fact that you were caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and don’t like that it’s been pointed out.
But, no matter.
I want you to remain here. As long as you do it in charity.
(And I know you saw this, too
)
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tonyrey
Guest
You won’t be the only one who is conveniently ignored… :flowers:!Buh-bye. :bighanky:
But I will continue to respond to yours, firstly, because they are so easily refutable.
Secondly, because it’s fun to.
Thirdly, for the lurkers.
Incidentally, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, it makes it quite peculiar that this post of mine would prompt the response of “I’m not going to talk to you anymore!”
Rather, it speaks to the fact that you were caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and don’t like that it’s been pointed out.
But, no matter.
I want you to remain here. As long as you do it in charity.
(And I know you saw this, too
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SonOfMan
Guest
Not really. “The existence of gravity” is not something one can un-believe and make go away by choice, for example. Of course one is always free to delude themselves and choose against the belief in gravity, but then reality has a different story to tell. And choosing not to believe in gravity isnt the choice, the decision to delude ones’ self is the choice, but deep down the person knows gravity exists. You can’t choose to truly un-believe, even through self delusion.
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PRmerger
Guest
Again with the absolutes! What is it with folks here who typically eschew absolutes applying absolutes where there is no need?
Yes, some beliefs are not open to choice.
But that does not mean that all beliefs are not open to choice.
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SonOfMan
Guest
Can you provide some examples of beliefs that are open to choice?Again with the absolutes! What is it with folks here who typically eschew absolutes applying absolutes where there is no need?
Yes, some beliefs are not open to choice.
But that does not mean that all beliefs are not open to choice.
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PRmerger
Guest
Belief in Santa Claus
Belief in leprechauns
Belief in love between husband and wife
Belief in God
Belief in souls
Belief in the mind
Belief in free will
Belief that being left handed is superior to being right handed
Belief that women should be pregnant and barefoot and in the kitchen
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Peter_Plato
Guest
The existence of gravity is not a belief in any sense of the word, it is a reality. How individuals respond to the existence of gravity may be subject to choices. Only those bordering on insanity or poorly educated university students begin to question reality as if it is subject to assent by belief.
(Of course, we can all pretend the basic biological facts about our bodies or gender are subject to ‘belief’ or ‘disbelief,’ but the viability of that pretense hinges upon the sanity of the surrounding modern western culture which becomes more tenuous day by day.)
No, choice, with regard to beliefs, applies to the uncertainties with which we are all faced, and, I would suggest, those uncertainties are there for a purpose. They are built into the system in order to allow us, as human beings and moral agents to create ourselves in such a way as we become responsible for our own agency. We freely and unencumbered turn ourselves into the beings we fully decide to be BECAUSE we are permitted to choose with regard to crucial uncertainties in reality. It is being accountable for that self-moulding that determines our destiny.
We are free to be enslaved or free to become free. We are also free to determine the kind of freedom we choose to be enamored or enchanted by. Through it all we bear responsibility for what we become and for what comes about as a result of our choosing. Perfectly just, as far as I can tell. We have nothing to complain about except to ourselves for our own failures and disappointments.
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SonOfMan
Guest
None of these are beliefs by choice. They are beliefs based on trust and upbringing.
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PRmerger
Guest
How does trust and upbringing exclude choice?
Do you think that slaveowners had no choice to believe that slaves were inhuman because that’s how they were brought up? If so, you’ll have to explain how some slaveowners came to the belief that slavery was wrong, despite their upbringing.
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SonOfMan
Guest
God is claimed to be a reality, too.
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PRmerger
Guest
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SonOfMan
Guest
Oh, you didnt have this included in your initial list of examples.
But perhaps it could be said that these particular slaveowners never believed, despite their upbringing, because they could not accept what they were being taught, not as a matter of choice but as a matter of reality that they could plainly see was not true.
For the slaveowners who carried on owning slaves, perhaps they could not plainly see what the reality was, so they went with what they were taught.
Not much of a decision in either case. Their beliefs were based on how they perceived reality, not as a matter of choice.
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SonOfMan
Guest
And how is that reality tested definitively, like how gravity can be tested?
Is belief in God the choice of self delusion rather than choice to believe, much like how a person chooses to delude themselves to believe against gravity?
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Peter_Plato
Guest
My wife was sublimely beautiful standing barefoot and pregnant in our kitchen.
Does that mean I think women should always be pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen? Not unless I have a very static and miserly view of the capacity reality has for producing beauty.
This, of course, points out the narrowness so prevalent in the modern western mindset - that it can’t seem to get beyond the monomaniacal fetish which currently preoccupies its limited attention capacity, all the while sanctimoniously preening the delusion of moral superiority and intellectual enlightenment.
We’re like toads in a dank hole working very hard to convince ourselves what a lovely time and place we are creating for ourselves, shrieking horribly when daylight enters and shows up what a dingy existence we really have become accustomed to.
Plato’s cave allegory gets our reality essentially correct and Christ completes the picture by showing us the door out of the cave into daylight. We can choose not to believe and to revel in the darkness - that is a choice we can make.
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SonOfMan
Guest
One thing to add, though:
If existence of gravity is simply a reality, that means there really is no choice to be made., its just reality.
If God is simply a reality, that means there really is no choice to be made. Its just reality.
So, there is no choice to believe.
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