Dhamma Wheel Buddhist Forum

binocular wrote:How can anyone choose to believe in God, or think that believing in God is a matter of choice??

Spiny Norman wrote:We can choose to believe or disbelieve.

Spiny Norman wrote:

binocular wrote:How can anyone choose to believe in God, or think that believing in God is a matter of choice??

We can choose to believe or disbelieve.

• "The assumption that a God is the cause (of the world, etc.) is based on the false belief in the eternal self (atman, i.e. permanent spiritual substance, essence or personality); but that belief has to be abandoned, if one has clearly understood that everything is impermanent and subject to suffering." Abhidharmakosha 5, 8 vol IV, p 19

/.../
Let us give the name of hypothesis to anything that may be proposed to our belief; and just as the electricians speak of live and dead wires, let us speak of any hypothesis as either live or dead A live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed. If I ask you to believe in the Mahdi, the notion makes no electric connection with your nature,--it refuses to scintillate with any credibility at all. As an hypothesis it is completely dead. To an Arab, however (even if he be not one of the Madhi's followers), the hypothesis is among the mind's possibilities: it is alive. This shows that deadness and liveness in an hypothesis are not intrinsic properties, but relations to the individual thinker. They are measured by his willingness to act. The maximum of liveness in hypothesis means willingness to act irrevocably. Practically, that means belief; but there is some believing tendency wherever there is willingness to act at all.

Next, let us call the decision between two hypotheses an option. Options may be of several kinds. They may be:

1, living or dead;
2, forced or avoidable;
3, momentous or trivial;

and for our purpose we may call an option a genuine option when it of the forced, living, and momentous kind.

1. A living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones. If I say to you: "Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan," it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But if I say: " Be an agnostic or be Christian," it is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to your belief.

2. Next, if I say to you: " Choose between going out with your umbrella or without it," I do not offer you a genuine option, for it is not forced. You can easily avoid it by not going out at all. Similarly, if I say, " Either love me or hate me," " Either call my theory true or call it false," your option is avoidable. You may remain indifferent to me, neither loving nor hating, and you may decline to offer any judgment as to my theory. But if I say, " Either accept this truth or go without it," I put on you a forced option, for there is no standing place outside of the alternative. Every dilemma based on a complete logical disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing, is an option of this forced kind.

3. Finally, if I were Dr. Nansen and proposed to you to join my North Pole expedition, your option would be momentous; for this would probably be your only similar opportunity, and your choice now would either exclude you from the North Pole sort of immortality altogether or put at least the chance of it into your hands. He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he tried and failed. Per contra, the option is trivial when the opportunity is not unique, when the stake is insignificant, or when the decision is reversible if it later prove unwise. Such trivial options abound in the scientific life. A chemist finds an hypothesis live enongh to spend a year in its verification: he believes in it to that extent. But if his experiments prove inconclusive either way, he is quit for his loss of time, no vital harm being done.
/.../
http://educ.jmu.edu//~omearawm/ph101willtobelieve.html

tiltbillings wrote:

Spiny Norman wrote:

binocular wrote:How can anyone choose to believe in God, or think that believing in God is a matter of choice??

We can choose to believe or disbelieve.

It is not quite so simple as choosing, as in choosing between a red shirt or blue shirt, given the roots of such a beief:

• "The assumption that a God is the cause (of the world, etc.) is based on the false belief in the eternal self (atman, i.e. permanent spiritual substance, essence or personality); but that belief has to be abandoned, if one has clearly understood that everything is impermanent and subject to suffering." Abhidharmakosha 5, 8 vol IV, p 19

tiltbillings wrote:

We can choose to believe or disbelieve.

It is not quite so simple as choosing, as in choosing between a red shirt or blue shirt, given the roots of such a beief:

• "The assumption that a God is the cause (of the world, etc.) is based on the false belief in the eternal self (atman, i.e. permanent spiritual substance, essence or personality); but that belief has to be abandoned, if one has clearly understood that everything is impermanent and subject to suffering." Abhidharmakosha 5, 8 vol IV, p 19

binocular wrote:

tiltbillings wrote:

We can choose to believe or disbelieve.

It is not quite so simple as choosing, as in choosing between a red shirt or blue shirt, given the roots of such a beief:

• "The assumption that a God is the cause (of the world, etc.) is based on the false belief in the eternal self (atman, i.e. permanent spiritual substance, essence or personality); but that belief has to be abandoned, if one has clearly understood that everything is impermanent and subject to suffering." Abhidharmakosha 5, 8 vol IV, p 19

Given that there are people who believe in God, but not in a permanent self, the above doesn't always apply.

An example of such people are some modern Christians who believe in Darwinian evolution, believe in God, call themselves Christians, but don't believe they are eternal.

Sam Vara wrote:But would they not be believing in an eternal self/permanent spiritual substance/essence by believing in God?
He would be the eternal one, not them.

• "The assumption that a God is the cause (of the world, etc.) is based on the false belief in the eternal self (atman, i.e. permanent spiritual substance, essence or personality); but that belief has to be abandoned, if one has clearly understood that everything is impermanent and subject to suffering." Abhidharmakosha 5, 8 vol IV, p 19

Sam Vara wrote:
I think one can choose to believe, however, at least in a limited sense. One might not know the roots of one's belief, or one might wilfully ignore them. One goes to sources where the belief is confirmed, and one thinks about it in a positive light, etc. If we can choose to cultivate a belief and make it stronger, then to that extent we are choosing it.

Point taken, and there are indeed such Christians. But would they not be believing in an eternal self/permanent spiritual substance/essence by believing in God? He would be the eternal one, not them.

• Samyutta Nikaya III 144; CDB 954: "Bhikkhus [monks, the Buddha said, holding a small lump of dung on his palm], there is not even this much of individual existence [attabhava] that is permanent, stable, eternal, not subject to change, and that will remain the same just like eternity itself. If there was this much individual existence that was permanent , stable, eternal, not subject to change, this living the of the holy for the complete destruction of suffering could not be discerned."

tiltbillings wrote:The assumption of a god, self writ large, is a way of protecting oneself against the reality that constantly encroaches the assumed reality of our ignorance driven self.