I asked this intriguing question, but no one dared to answer (or was unable to)? Have a look!?

Question

Who here thinks "believing" is a matter of "choice", and who thinks it's "subconcious"?

Can you choose to believe that dogs can fly and honestly believe so? Can you choose to believe that your mother hates you and honestly believe so? Can you choose to believe you are a girl when your a boy and honestly believe so?

For example, if your friend told you that your girlfriend is cheating on you, and you believed him. Why is that? Did you choose to believe or was it subconcious? Here's why you believed your friend. 1)Your girlfriend has cheated on you before and you caught her, 2)You have never caught your friend lying to you before, 3)There were other witnesses who confirmed your girlfriend was indeed cheating on you. These three factors led you to believe in your friend, and that is what we call "subconcious", not "choice".

You can choose to read your bible, you can choose to listen to your parents and you can choose to listen to your pastor. But whether or not you'll believe what they say is "not" by choice.
If you think differently, plz give an example of how you chose to believe. And think long and hard before answering about the factors that made you believe? If there were factors that made you believe, it's called "subconcious".

Answer 1

Hi, although believes are passed and learned, they are not necessarily subconscious. The proof I would say lays upon a clear fact: many people voluntarily change their religions and religious beliefs because the have externalized the lessons learned and internalized previously, evaluated them, reflected upon them and did not find the convincing and hence either found a new faith ot the became atheist and not religious. However with that as with many other things in life, e.g. being an American, it takes some though to realize that because You are American does not mean that America is always right and never wrong.

Best
Santiago

Best
Santiago

Answer 2

I think it's a matter of choice, but your examples are mixing some logical things with faith based things. I don't believe dogs can fly because I can understand the laws of gravity. Religion though, as most religions, are almost entirely faith based and you are required to believe in something insubstantial or difficult, or impossible, to prove. Those are two separate things.

As far as friends and believing them and your statement about "subconcious", what you detailed are facts in people's lives, you can still choose to believe or not believe in something, you still have freedom of choice. For example, every relationship that I start out in I choose to believe that the other person is going to be faithful and feels the same way about me the way I feel about them. I may have things that happened to me in the past but I still have a choice on how I can and will deal with certain situations. Your 3 factors isn't about subconcious but more like Occam's razor, the more things you can eliminate than the obvious is true, it's not your subconsious but facts...otherwise all detectives are masters of subconcious.

Answer 3

You can "choose" anything you want. I encounter people all the time who "choose" to believe something and the facts around it that may be screaming otherwise are simply ignored.

I do believe it is a matter of choice. I also think we don't know what belief is.

Often times, the way we use the word "belief" is to denote that we have intellectually grasped something. So I "believe" my girlfriend cheated on me because of the three reasons. That means that I have intellectually grasped that there is LIKELY a reality where in my girlfriend cheated on me (thankfully that was never in my reality). I don't get why that would be seen as a "subconcious" anything since the person was actively looking at the 'facts" rationally (in their concious) that lead to their conclusion that she was, in fact, cheating.

To BELIEVE that means that one would ACT on it. In the greek, the word "Believe" is an ACTION VERB that specifically denotes action and response based on the knowledge.

SO, if the person "Knew" that their girlfriend had cheated and the typical ACTION associated with being cheated up on was to confront, or break up (disassociate) then that person would demonstrate belief by taking an action. Now, if that action was to "choose" to ignore it, one could say they actually DID take a definitive action, however disfunctional it was.

I don't believe there can belief without conviction (recognition of the belief) and action (response to the belief that is rationale).

Cheers.

Answer 4

I think you have asked an intriguing question, no matter if CRAIG R bashes your question.

The whole question of "beliefs" is a complicated and puzzling one. Here is how science explains it:

Beliefs are held because :

(1) Obedience from authority (your parents, pastor or teacher.

(2) Emperical clues: Observation and experiement. You believe something because you have seen it with your own eyes or you have experimented with something and see that it happened.

(3) Deduction : a process of reasoning and coming to a conclusion because of your reasoning powers.

The sad thing is that our reasoning powers are often influenced by the media or by strong words from people who have the skill to manipulate words and make ideas promising or fulfilling. In fact individuals like you and I and even whole populations can be "brain-washed" into believing things that are just NOT true. The name for this is propaganda. The best example is Hiler and the German people.

In your own case it is best to "examine your beliefs", bring them out into the open and then, using your powers of common sense and visualizing the final outcome of the situation decide which "belief" would bring about the wisest solution, one that :

Is fair to all concerned
that is the truth
that will build good will and freindship
that will be beneficial to all concerned

That is the sort of belief that will make you a leader, that will gain you respect from your peers and make you a happier and more useful citizen of your country and the world.

Answer 5

I was trying to figure out how to explain what I wanted to say in regards to disagreeing with your thought. I don't believe it is a subconscious decision that is being made for the following reason on how the subconscious actually works - Read this and you will understand:
*SUBCONSCIOUS:
The subconscious consists of cognitive information that both the unconscious and conscious have access to, but of which we are intermittently aware. The conscious operates selectively in monitoring the environment, only registering as much information as it can manage directly; therefore many perceptions that go unnoticed by the conscious are retained in the subconscious. Learned responses are also stored in the subconscious, making it unnecessary for the conscious mind to deliberate on such automatic action as walking, avoiding sudden danger, or riding a bicycle. Unconscious mental processes and contents are blocked from direct conscious access. Rather than experiencing them directly through introspection, we can learn about them only through inference or indirect methods.

The decisions that would actually be made based on your analogy is purely "choice" and "free will." You would choose to either believe in the information presented to you or choose not to believe...There are instances where actual "FACTS" can be provided and an individual can choose to "not believe" even when presented with clear facts. I don't believe that the subconscious would be tapped into at this point.

Answer 6

First, it's spelled subconscious, not subconcious. This discredits the academic merit of your idea. Second, perhaps you're right, perhaps it is predetermined whether or not you will believe something, but it will have to occur to you that you have a choice of whether or not to believe. Anybody with any sense will not act without evidence. If you believe your friend, or not, you will look for evidence that your girlfriend is cheating on you before making a final decision. If it seems consistent with evidence and inconsistencies, you will consciously decide to end the relationship. So whether or not your decision to believe, or not believe is conscious or subconscious is irrelevant when the decision to act is undoubtedly conscious. Hope this answers your question.

Answer 7

The reason nobody answered is that it's a dumb question.

You define two types of belief: The first is where you choose to believe without any reason to believe so. The second is where there are factors or reasons to believe. Then you ask if belief is all of the first type or all of the second type.

Since you describe certain situations in which either can take place, the answer to your question, by your own definition, is both.

The question is not "intriguing", however, because it is cobbled up with your weird definitions and doesn't map to any reality that the rest of us feel. It doesn't address any kind of internal quandary that we face, hence it's just a random filling of time and not intriguing at all.

Answer 8

Maybe it is not either way exclusively.
Many things we have come to believe are counter intuitive with intuitive meaning never thought out.
Things like the motion of the Earth and the celestial bodies. You don't feel like you are moving. It seems like the stars move instead. We naturally think of the Sun as travelling across the sky and then racing under the Earth to come up again in the east.
We are also genetically programed to believe in some things.
We naturally ascribe motives and purpose to anything that moves. A primitive but a natural tendency of our mental processes.

Some of the ways we are hardwired can be demonstrated through optical delusions.
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/

Now if you want to know something about how the hardwired programs in our minds can be manipulated here is another site.
http://www.the7thfire.com/new_world_order/mind_control/battle_for_your_mind.htm

Answer 9

It's simple. The word of God.
It's the only truth. I always check what a pastor/preacher says against the Bible and If It doesn't line up.
Then I don't believe It.
Can you choose to believe that gravity doesn't exist and It be so ?
No.
You can't see gravity,but you know It's real. If I suspected that my spouse was cheating I would need Proof.
I wouldn't base my choice about my relationship on the word of a trusted friend.
I would need real proof.
But I would make my choice by the hard core proof of this affair.

Answer 10

I think that we at first choose to believe and then it becomes subconcioius...this is what I mean.....

When you first learn about a religion, any religion, you choose to either believe in or not, and to believe is to believe everything that comes with the religion (hence later it's unconcious)

For instance, if you don't originally choose not to believe, you will find yourself subconciously doubting any new piece of information is presented to you about the religion....

The same for those who chose to believe, they later subconciously agree with new beliefs as they are learned...

Do you get what I mean?