Do you choose to believe?

[6EQUJ5]

Is your belief a choice? Or are you compelled to believe what you believe because the facts/evidence/experience point conclusively to your belief?

I think I'm somewhere in the middle but lean towards my belief being compelled.  The spiritual experiences I have had and the research I have done all point to the same thing. So my belief is inevitable result of the facts.

But I will say that in interpreting facts, I make little choices all the time.  

Curious what others think.

[Hamba Tuhan]

It's a choice.

No matter what I've experienced, I could always construct alternate explanations. They don't satisfy or 'ring true', which certainly influences my choice, but it's still a choice.

15 minutes ago, 6EQUJ5 said:

But I will say that in interpreting facts, I make little choices all the time.  

It's bigger than that. As I've repeatedly pointed out when I've taught both undergraduate and postgraduate history students, facts don't come with a required interpretive framework. That's entirely a choice.

Edited May 26, 2018 by Hamba Tuhan

[Jane_Doe]

In my observation, believing in anything is always a choice.   People can have a mountain of facts standing in front of them, but still choose to refuse to believe.  The reverse is true as well.  

[6EQUJ5]

10 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

No matter what I've experienced, I could always construct alternate explanations. They don't satisfy or 'ring true', which certainly influences my choice, but it's still a choice.

Ok sure.  But to distinguish between competing interpretations you rely on the spirit, or some sort of spiritual confirmation (at least when considering this type of belief). So doesn't that spiritual confirmation compel you to accept one belief over another?

[JAHS]

 

23 minutes ago, 6EQUJ5 said:

Is your belief a choice? Or are you compelled to believe what you believe because the facts/evidence/experience point conclusively to your belief?

I think I'm somewhere in the middle but lean towards my belief being compelled.  The spiritual experiences I have had and the research I have done all point to the same thing. So my belief is inevitable result of the facts.

But I will say that in interpreting facts, I make little choices all the time.  

Curious what others think.

I feel the same and have similar experiences,  however In some way I feel I have to believe; otherwise what is the alternative? I am sure no other way is the right way so I stick with what I have and believe and hope and try to have a positive attitude about it.

[Bernard Gui]

33 minutes ago, 6EQUJ5 said:

Is your belief a choice? Or are you compelled to believe what you believe because the facts/evidence/experience point conclusively to your belief?

I think I'm somewhere in the middle but lean towards my belief being compelled.  The spiritual experiences I have had and the research I have done all point to the same thing. So my belief is inevitable result of the facts.

But I will say that in interpreting facts, I make little choices all the time.  

Curious what others think.

Since my belief is founded on the miraculous rewards of persistent inquiries, I would be foolish to throw it away for a mess of porridge. I cannot deny the witnesses of the Spirit. Nevertheless, I choose to stay on board the Good Ship. I haven’t found anything else that would even come close to replacing it.

Edited May 26, 2018 by Bernard Gui

[6EQUJ5]

5 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Since my belief is founded on the miraculous rewards of persistent inquiries, I would be foolish to throw it away for a mess of porridge. I cannot deny the witnesses of the Spirit. Nevertheless, I choose to stay on board the Good Ship. I haven’t found anything else that would even come close to replacing it.

Ah.... so in your case would you say you choose to act on your beliefs even if the belief itself is something you can't choose to deny?

[Kenngo1969]

We're all our own triers of fact when it comes to faith claims: We determine what evidence we will admit when it comes to considering faith claims, what evidence we will exclude, how much weight we will give to any piece of evidence we choose to admit, how we will evaluate the evidence we choose to admit, and so on.

Is there evidence which, accorded a certain amount of weight and considered from one or more particular perspectives, militates against belief?  Of course.  I have such evidence in my own life.  I have seriously considered seeing how much gently-used law degrees from third-tier law schools are going for on e-Bay these days, this, after receiving what I thought was a clear impression to pursue the degree (and persisting in doing so despite considerable difficulty).  

I don't know if I'll ever secure law-related employment, let alone ever practice law.  The only thing I knew for certain when I  finally bit the bullet and decided to apply to law school is that I didn't want to answer phones for the rest of my life.  I still don't.  Still, I wasn't sure about the gargantuan commitment which law school and attempting to embark upon the practice of law entailed, so I got cold feet, withdrew before receiving any credit, and got a job.  Doing what, you ask?  Why, answering phones, of course!  So, I swallowed my fear and my pride, went back, and eventually (after more than a few more fits, starts, and missteps) graduated against all odds.  I was denied admission on character and fitness grounds, based largely (if not entirely, at the risk of oversimplifying) based on a complicated behavioral health history.

So, what am I doing now?  Why, answering phones, of course!  C'est la vie! The only thing I'm sure of?  "No, Ken, you didn't have to stick it out in law school ... as long as you didn't mind answering phones all day, every day, for the rest of your working life."  To my dying breath, I'll continue to aver that I'm actually good for something else.    Whether I'll ever be able to convince anyone else of that strongly enough that they'll actually hire me to do anything else, still, is an open question.

Yes, I've heard people argue that the evidence against belief is so strong that they had no choice in the matter, but I'm skeptical of that contention. Despite the fact that I'm a believer, I'm equally skeptical that God compels belief.  To do either would be to abridge agency.  In order for belief to be most meaningful, it has to be freely chosen.  Do I have questions?  I don't know how one could have a halfway functional brain and not have questions: "Lord, why has Thou thus dealt with me?"  But as Peter told Christ when the latter asked the former (rather plaintively, perhaps), "Will ye also go away?", "Lord, to whom shall we go?  Thou hast the words of eternal life" (see John 6).  

Sure, I could say, "You know what?  This isn't what I signed up for."  No, I don't want to spend the next 5, or 10, or 20, or 30 years answering phones. Candidly, there's a certain appeal to me to using my current station in life as a splendid excuse to chuck it all.  Whatever the next life might leave to be desired for me, a part of me is tempted to say, "So what?  It's gotta be better than this!"  But to borrow and slightly alter something once said by M*A*S*H's inimitable Major Frank Burns, "I believe in the sanctity of human life, no matter how ugly or disgusting it gets."  (He was talking about marriage.)  As Elder Banks, the African-American missionary in the film God's Army put it, "It's like God gives you a hundred reasons to believe ... and one or two not to, just so you can choose."

Notwithstanding any of the reasons I have for saying, "Forget it.  Just chuck it all.  This isn't what I signed up for" (the evidence I have that militates against belief), I choose, nonetheless, to believe.  If nothing else, the next life, even at its worst, still is going to be orders of magnitude better than this one.  But if I give that hope up, what else do I have?  Questions are inevitable; struggle is inevitable.  But doubt and faith are choices.

https://greatgourdini.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/of-doubt-faith-questions-and-choices/

Edited May 26, 2018 by Kenngo1969

[Bernard Gui]

7 hours ago, 6EQUJ5 said:

Ah.... so in your case would you say you choose to act on your beliefs even if the belief itself is something you can't choose to deny?

Well, when I received the few profound encounters I have had with the Spirit (some sought for and some not), I have felt such deep love and gratitude that the only appropriate course seemed to be to follow the Savior. Even with the trials of faith and patience I have had, that serves as a solid anchor for me. I suppose I could choose to reject it if I were so inclined. After all, no one is forcing me to stick around.

Edited May 27, 2018 by Bernard Gui

[JLHPROF]

Belief is absolutely a choice, especially long term.

[Atheist Mormon]

1 hour ago, 6EQUJ5 said:

Is your belief a choice? Or are you compelled to believe what you believe because the facts/evidence/experience point conclusively to your belief?

I think I'm somewhere in the middle but lean towards my belief being compelled.  The spiritual experiences I have had and the research I have done all point to the same thing. So my belief is inevitable result of the facts.

But I will say that in interpreting facts, I make little choices all the time.  

Curious what others think.

I personally don't think so. either you have it or not. I think scientists discovery of so called "faith gene" is a viable explanation of leaning one way or the other.

[Thinking]

I think if we focus too much on which word (choose, decide, determine...) most accurately describes the process of arriving at a conclusion (or a level of belief), we might lose sight of how different the process is for so many people. We (I include myself) often can't understand why others arrive at a different conclusion because we forget that their path might be different than ours.

[CV75]

1 hour ago, 6EQUJ5 said:

Is your belief a choice? Or are you compelled to believe what you believe because the facts/evidence/experience point conclusively to your belief?

I think I'm somewhere in the middle but lean towards my belief being compelled.  The spiritual experiences I have had and the research I have done all point to the same thing. So my belief is inevitable result of the facts.

But I will say that in interpreting facts, I make little choices all the time.  

Curious what others think.

If Alma 32 is an authoritative declaration of how things work, and it says, "experiment [a choice] upon my words, and exercise [a choice] a particle of faith, yea, even if [a choice] ye can no more than desire [a choice] to believe, let [a choice] this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place [a choice] for a portion of my words," then I am compelled to conclude that belief is a choice!

Knowledge is not a choice, but an outgrowth of belief (which begins with a choice), and then one can know and not act with it, and by so doing not choose, or "un-choose" faith. The only way one can "un-know" spiritual things is to choose to betray and deny the faith which brought it. Knowledge is also not a choice in that until we become aware of how we can shut down our senses (including the spiritual senses that pick up the light of Christ from infancy), we keep receiving it as stimuli and perceptions.

[rpn]

I think it always ultimately has to be a choice, because compulsion is not what God or we need.   

If you mean that the more you know about HIm, and the more dealings with Him that you've had, the easier it becomes to want to follow Him, then I'm with you.

[strappinglad]

Occasionally I think about the interaction between Legion and Christ. Apparently Legion knew about Christ and His mission and didn't want anything to do with Him. Seems (they) made a choice.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Atheist Mormon said:

I personally don't think so. either you have it or not. I think scientists discovery of so called "faith gene" is a viable explanation of leaning one way or the other.

You are certainly on the right track.  For, even though we all do have theoretical freedom of choice, the evidence is that most of us do not actually exercise it, and that includes atheists.  Most people pretty much accept the beliefs they were raised with, and likely for two reasons:

1.  There is indeed a "faith gene," and that has been proven scientifically.  It constitutes about a 40% - 50% component in religious belief.  Tim Spector, “What Twins Reveal About The Science Of Faith,” Popular Science, Aug 8, 2013, online at   https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/what-twins-reveal-about-god-gene .

2.  Faith is transmitted over the generations from patents and grandparents to children at a very high rate.  William McKenzie, "The God Gene: The family that prays together .  .  . well, you know the rest," The Weekly Standard, 19/44 (August 4, 2014), online at https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/what-twins-reveal-about-god-gene .

Much of what humans do and believe is both inherited and learned in subliminal fashion, and like most animals our behavior is largely instinctive -- even though we are oblivious to that fact.

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, CV75 said:

If Alma 32 is an authoritative declaration of how things work, and it says, "experiment [a choice] upon my words, and exercise [a choice] a particle of faith, yea, even if [a choice] ye can no more than desire [a choice] to believe, let [a choice] this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place [a choice] for a portion of my words," then I am compelled to conclude that belief is a choice! ......................................

What percentage of Mormons do you imagine actually even know about Alma 32, much less practice those experimental principles?

[Glenn101]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You are certainly on the right track.  For, even though we all do have theoretical freedom of choice, the evidence is that most of us do not actually exercise it, and that includes atheists.  Most people pretty much accept the beliefs they were raised with, and likely for two reasons:

1.  There is indeed a "faith gene," and that has been proven scientifically.  It constitutes about a 40% - 50% component in religious belief.  Tim Spector, “What Twins Reveal About The Science Of Faith,” Popular Science, Aug 8, 2013, online at   https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/what-twins-reveal-about-god-gene .

2.  Faith is transmitted over the generations from patents and grandparents to children at a very high rate.  William McKenzie, "The God Gene: The family that prays together .  .  . well, you know the rest," The Weekly Standard, 19/44 (August 4, 2014), online at https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/what-twins-reveal-about-god-gene .

Much of what humans do and believe is both inherited and learned in subliminal fashion, and like most animals our behavior is largely instinctive -- even though we are oblivious to that fact.

If this is true why have one half of my children rejected the Gospel when both parents are/were pretty much TBM types and all but one of my current wife's children rejected the gospel even though she is more naturally TBM than I am? Is the gene hit or miss in the same family? It would seem that the faith gene is being depleted rapidly also as the level of faith/belief numerically in the U.S. seems to be in a rapid decline. Yet the twin study really is intriguing. (There is another explanation that is unverifiable. Birds of a feather in the spirit world who came to earth as twins.)

Edited to add: It is also interesting that the mother of one set of twins who had been an agnostic only began to believe when she had an epiphany.

 

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

What percentage of Mormons do you imagine actually even know about Alma 32, much less practice those experimental principles?

I think that this passage is directed more towards people who are investigating the gospel rather than those already LDS. I hope that most LDS already not only want to believe, but do believe.

Glenn

Edited May 27, 2018 by Glenn101
Added a thought.

[Hamba Tuhan]

14 hours ago, 6EQUJ5 said:

But to distinguish between competing interpretations you rely on the spirit, or some sort of spiritual confirmation (at least when considering this type of belief).

Entertaining and then accepting that there’s a Spirit to rely upon for such things is also a choice. If I really wanted to, I could convince myself that the Holy Ghost isn’t real or isn’t reliable. And then, over time, my experiences with the Spirit would stop, and past experiences would fade into the fog of memory and then disappear. 

I could then claim I was ‘compelled’ to disbelieve owing to lack of evidence, forgetting that it all stemmed from my earlier choice. 

Edited May 27, 2018 by Hamba Tuhan

[Glenn101]

3 hours ago, Thinking said:

I think if we focus too much on which word (choose, decide, determine...) most accurately describes the process of arriving at a conclusion (or a level of belief), we might lose sight of how different the process is for so many people. We (I include myself) often can't understand why others arrive at a different conclusion because we forget that their path might be different than ours.

I can understand how people left on their own come to different conclusions. One such person is one of my daughters. She is a wonderful daughter and person, but developed her own paradigms of the way things should be, and the way a God should be. Those paradigms do not square with what she sees in the Gospel and the world around her, so she has rejected the gospel and God. She told me that she has never had any type of spiritual experience, even when on her mission.

I have a bit more difficulty understanding how one can reject the conclusions afforded by an epiphany after having such an one myself. I have had conversations with some in the past. One such person told me that he had had a powerful confirmation of the Book of Mormon, a voice yelling in his head "Yes, yes!" but as he read the negative evidence against it he concluded that what he had felt was not what he thought it was. he evidently allowed what he considered reason to override his spirit. After what I experienced, I have to go the other way.

Glenn

[Kenngo1969]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

What percentage of Mormons do you imagine actually even know about Alma 32, much less practice those experimental principles?

As many as could, or as many as should?  Perhaps not.  Is scriptural illiteracy or lack of awareness something of a problem in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?  Yes.  That said, while, perhaps you may think me naive (it wouldn't be the first time, and probably won't be the last ), I have much more confidence in my fellow Latter-day Saints than you do.

[longview]

5 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

Nevertheless, I choose to stay on board the Good Ship.

The glorious old ship Zion:   https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/10/god-is-at-the-helm?lang=eng

[Eek!]

8 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

So, what am I doing now?  Why, answering phones, of course!  C'est la vie! The only thing I'm sure of?  "No, Ken, you didn't have to stick it out in law school ... as long as you didn't mind answering phones all day, every day, for the rest of your working life."  

I tried unsuccessfully to get a job answering phones.  I flunked the personality test.  Ha! 

Just a few days ago I was on the phone with some guy whose job was answering the phone (internet troubleshooting).   I don't know how he did it, but somehow the way he treated me really made my day better.   There was light in him, and he found a way to let it shine.   I had a better day because of our interaction, even though the topic wasn't something I would have chosen (poor internet connectivity). 

Imo you are an excellent writer, and I could see you giving a TED talk one day.

8 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

As Elder Banks, the African-American missionary in the film God's Army put it, "It's like God gives you a hundred reasons to believe ... and one or two not to, just so you can choose."

I think things are intentionally set up so that, at least in these sorts of areas, we can each find sufficient evidence to support what we want to believe.  For example, as you can see I just found, in your post, evidence to support that particular belief of mine.

8 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Sure, I could say, "You know what?  This isn't what I signed up for."  No, I don't want to spend the next 5, or 10, or 20, or 30 years answering phones. Candidly, there's a certain appeal to me to using my current station in life as a splendid excuse to chuck it all.  

I think we are all inter-connected to a far greater extent than is apparent at first glance.  I understand the feeling (or at least my version thereof), and admire you for not choosing that path of least resistance.  "Seek that which, within, lies waiting to begin.  The fight of your life is everyday."   - Jethro Tull

8 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

But as Peter told Christ when the latter asked the former (rather plaintively, perhaps), "Will ye also go away?", "Lord, to whom shall we go?  Thou hast the words of eternal life"

Excellent choice.   It is the ideas Jesus taught that offer us eternal life.  Eternal life is not to believe something about Jesus, but it is to believe and to do the things he taught.   He told us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, and imo that is a far more joyful prospect than gritting our teeth and "enduring to the end" (not that that doesn't have its place!). 

In my experience, the "words of eternal life" are not limited to books that are called "scripture".   From 2nd Nephi chapter 29:   "And because that I have spoken one word ye need not suppose that I cannot speak another; for my work is not yet finished; neither shall it be until the end of man, neither from that time henceforth and forever.  Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written." 

Imo "more" has indeed been written, and it is worth seeking out.  God's work is not yet finished!  "Seek, and ye shall find" is still in effect even for lifelong Latter-day Saints.  Imo there are more "words of eternal life" out there.

Edited May 27, 2018 by Eek!

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

If this is true why have one half of my children rejected the Gospel when both parents are/were pretty much TBM types and all but one of my current wife's children rejected the gospel even though she is more naturally TBM than I am? Is the gene hit or miss in the same family? It would seem that the faith gene is being depleted rapidly also as the level of faith/belief numerically in the U.S. seems to be in a rapid decline. Yet the twin study really is intriguing. (There is another explanation that is unverifiable. Birds of a feather in the spirit world who came to earth as twins.)

Edited to add: It is also interesting that the mother of one set of twins who had been an agnostic only began to believe when she had an epiphany.

Bear in mind that the statistics do not tell us the outcome in any given family, but only the likelihood over all.  Plenty of other factors are to be considered.  The genetic effect is only 40-50 % anyhow.  What is truly extraordinary is the very high rate of retention within Mormonism, which we do not see in other groups.

4 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

I think that this passage is directed more towards people who are investigating the gospel rather than those already LDS. I hope that most LDS already not only want to believe, but do believe.......

I'll wager that Alma 32 is not familiar to most and that those who actually apply it are far more intellectually oriented to the sciences.

[Physics Guy]

Isaac Asimov once wrote an explanation of why he had started calling himself an atheist rather than an agnostic. To him, "atheist" meant someone who definitely believes that there is no God, whereas an agnostic was someone who didn't have a definite belief about God's existence either way. Asimov conceded that in fact he couldn't really be sure that God didn't exist. That was why he had stuck with the "agnostic" label for a long time. His turning point was to recognize that, whatever possibilities he might recognize in principle, in practice he behaved—and even thought—as if he were sure that God didn't exist.

As he put it, the possibility that God might exist had come to seem to him not only remote, but uninteresting. Thoughts of God never held his attention. He never thought about God. So even though he would still admit, if pressed, that he couldn't really know for sure that there was no God, he felt that the "atheist" label fit his state of belief better than "agnostic" did.

I think that Asimov made a good point there. The oft-mentioned dichotomy between belief and practice is not the whole story. Within belief there's an important distinction between belief-in-principle and belief-in-practice. Belief-in-practice is about what rules your thoughts and commands your attention. You have belief-in-practice in something if you just never take the alternative seriously, even though you may recognize in principle that it could be true. Asimov's atheism was belief-in-practice. 

It can work the other way. I would say myself that I am a theist by belief-in-practice. I wouldn't say that I am sure God exists, but I never really take the alternative seriously. And I think that in general, to whatever extent religious faith is about belief as opposed to physical practice, religious faith is more about belief-in-practice than it is about belief-in-principle. 

I don't think that we can just choose our beliefs-in-principle. Evidence is evidence; logic is logic; the matter is either clear, or it's not. Even the judgement that the evidence is insufficient to warrant a verdict on a question is itself a belief-in-principle, about the state of the evidence. I don't think we can just choose to believe, in the sense of belief-in-principle.

I think we do have a lot of freedom to choose our beliefs-in-practice. We can't just change them right away in an instant. That's like deciding not to think of a white elephant—ever again. Choosing your belief-in-practice is a matter of mental habit formation, and of how the correlations grow between your life and your thought. Over time, our minds change, anyway. To a great extent we can choose how they will change, over time.

This is not exactly good news. It's a rational justification for faith, and I invoke it as such for my own faith, but it's also an explanation of how an intelligent person can become committed to a delusion. The human mind has ways of avoiding cognitive dissonance. We can forget about things even though they're not really ruled out—and that fact itself is something we can forget. I try not to forget it. I guess I believe in having doubt like a mustard seed.