I always found that pretty interesting, how the religious condemn sexual acts here on Earth but sexual gratification is one of the main motivations for belief. Hypocrites much? :/
Asserting that this is a trait of "the religious" is no different than claiming atheists deny the existence of a god. In fact, this goes beyond that and is akin to claiming everyone who isn't
Christian denies the existence of a god. You are talking about a radical, minor subset of
one out of
thousands of world religions.
The last several pages of this thread which fell into nothing more than insult slinging though have slightly returned can be attributed to a characteristic of the English language - its mutability. Beyond any doubt, the classical definition of Atheist is one who denies the existence of a god, and this definition still exists in the Oxford English Dictionary. The definition has expanded to include the definitions that Pad, H, and MP are using, but that does
not render the old or the new definition invalid. Before any constructive discussion can take place, definitions of terms must be agreed upon. When the discussion falls to the point of debating the meaning of terms, I'm not exactly sure where to turn, other than:
Back on Topic...
I don't feel that anyone can truly "choose" a belief, regardless of what that belief may be.
When I first set out to make this post, I was thinking that the only thing we
can choose is what it is that we constitute as meaningful evidence toward a claim - i.e. I can "choose" whether or not to accept an image of Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich as being evidence that Jesus is the only path to the one true god. In fact, I can choose whether or not to accept this as a spiritually significant event, or dismiss it as pareidolia.
If I saw this sandwich with Jesus imprinted on it and could clearly make out the image, but was unaware of the existence or the prevalence of pareidolia, I might be inclined to consider this a truly spiritually significant occurrence. If I was then presented with some information on pareidolia, It's logical that I might then make a determination that this is more likely pareidolia than our supposed Lord and Savior appearing in an exceptionally insignificant manner, and subjecting his own image to possibly being consumed by a toddler. There is also the possibility that I remained convinced that this was indeed Jesus appearing before me in a specific time of need.
In examining this train of thought, however, I came to the realization that even identifying what constitutes evidence would not be the result of a "choice" that I made. If I saw a picture of bigfoot and concluded that it was a man in a suit, or concluded that it was indeed bigfoot, neither of these would be choices. While some skeptics might argue that concluding the picture to be bigfoot would be due to a lack of critical thinking, when presented with a picture, the truth is that there may not be any evidence toward either direction and the only possible position to take is to not make any conclusion at all.
Let's assume that, within this picture, we cannot amass any evidence towards any of these conclusions. Whether I made no conclusion at all, concluded that the picture was of bigfoot, of a man in a suit, or photoshopped, if I had no evidence toward any of these, each one of these is a blief and I would not be "choosing" one over another. I could choose to
say that it's bigfoot, but if I truly didn't feel there was enough evidence to make this conclusion, I wouldnt be choosing a belief, as I don't actually believe it.
One person may feel that crop circles are evidence of aliens. they may be 100% convinced. It wasn't their choice to believe that, they just do. They might then find out that there are people who routinely make crop circles with boards and ropes, and they might change their position to say that 100% of crop circles are man made. There is not enough evidence for either of these conclusions to be made. Changing their belief was not a choice that they made, it just happened when they were presented with new evidence.
I'm not aware of the mechanism within our minds that is responsible for what we believe to be true and what we believe to be false. I'm sure someone else is. What I
am aware of is that this is not something we can consciously control.(aside from certain methods that are used for special forces, etc to convince themselves of false information in the event of capture, but this is really a method of changing our subconscious, not a means of consciously choosing a belief)
