Belief in God; Did You Choose, or Did it just Happen?

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ouinon put forth some good arguments in this thread...

Does anyone believe the Crucifixion and Resurrection is possibly the Christian equivalent of the end of belief in freewill? When one confesses Jesus as their Lord and Savior, when they are willing to submit their lives to His direction.. They are then attempting to abide continually by the will of God.....a life absolutely determined [by God or whatever...]..in which belief in freewill is relinquished; it is no longer necessary??

I agree with ouinon that there is no freewill....but I couldn't go along with her idea about Jesus representing our belief in freewill. Now I'm not so sure. I think she may have a point.

Easter is in about 10 days....the thread is relevant..

There just seems something so fake about someone choosing to believe in God. It is like deciding to deceive oneself thinking it will result in greater personal happiness. I don't believe in God so it is academic anyway, but if I did, it would be due to some strong innate sense that God existed and not a question of choosing. Choosing almost makes it sound like a lifestyle choice "Should I get a sofa in a colour to match my wallpaper?"

It is on the same level as the insane fundamentalist drive to forcefully compel individuals to declare their belief in some god or other. With sufficient torture you can get anybody to admit to anything but within each of us is a totally secure belief in something or other that is unassailable unless there is a basic shift in a complete viewpoint of the universe.

I haven't reread the thread so far to remind myself of what I said previously, so please forgive me if I repeat something I already said ...

Tallyman, your remark is very significant. Until I went on a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy-based Personal Development Course I didn't think that you could choose what you believed either, at least not about anything except films, politics, etc . I thought that most of my important beliefs were constructed by conditioning etc, ( which I once again believe, but even more so, and with a completely different perspective on it ).

But the course taught me otherwise. It showed me that I could hear my thoughts and beliefs chattering away, ( something that I had previously believed was inaccessible, because "in my unconscious" ), and it also "taught" me to believe in free will, ( by "showing" me how I had "chosen" all my beliefs in the past, and how to change them ), a free will as different from day-to-day choices/decisions, as Jesus supposedly was from John the Baptist.

I agree with you that, unless you believe in that kind of free will, "choosing" to believe in God probably does seem artificial.

The strangest thing is how having chosen to believe in God, ( as a result of having tried and tried to make free will work for me, achieve things with it, etc, and failed, and finally ready to admit my failure ), the "belief in free will" died, ( not only the humdrum kind, but also the "supernaturally" powerful kind of free will, almost like magic, which the course had taught me to believe in ), because its "purpose" had been achieved.
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Last edited by ouinon on 03 Apr 2009, 1:09 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Heres another site I just found that might be of some help.

http://www.ccci.org/wij/

A similar awareness opens up through meditation. I do Shikantaza meditation and this allows deep penetration into areas which are normally thought of as in the unconscious mind. It is even possible to watch some aspects of mental functioning associated with hard-wired instincts. An interesting thing that comes out of this is seeing how certain thought patterns and beliefs arise. Sometimes a thought or reaction arises which is "seen" to be based on a false premise or on conditioning picked up from experiences as far back as childhood. When a false belief is seen, the very act of seeing it tends to kill the belief and associated behaviour pattern. The process is entirely passive though. It is a bit like shining a light into a dark attic and long forgotten things are discovered. However, unlike the attic, the mind tends to clear out its own garbage, when it is truly seen as such.

Unlike religions which tell you what to believe, Zen Buddhism is the opposite and more about allowing beliefs and conditioning to evaporate. As more "rubbish" is discarded one gets closer to the "truth"; without imposing any pre-conditions on what such a thing as "truth" actually is - or even if such a thing exists. The perception happens at a much deeper level than the linguistic level of thoughts, so is difficult to put into words.

Whenever anyone claims to freely choose any decision I wonder how they think they made that "free" choice. Was it totally random? That's not free choice. Was it based on some inherent prejudice? That's not free choice. Was it based on a clear understanding of the situation and previous experience as to how the consequences might arrive? That's not free choice. So what's free choice?

I don't believe anymore that it exists. But I did when I chose to believe in god/the "oneness of the "universe". And it was belief in god/universe etc that enabled me to understand/accept that free will doesn't exist. I don't know if I could have borne/acknowledged the absence of free will without that belief.
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Last edited by ouinon on 03 Apr 2009, 2:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Except that sitting down to meditate itself takes a "decision". How is that arrived at, if not by other processes in your brain based on chemical state, beliefs conditioned by ... etc etc etc.

PS.
There are no "false" beliefs. Unless all of them are, which is what I believe, theoretically at least. To believe otherwise, as Zen buddhists say, is like always turning right, ( following the supposedly true/correct/"right" beliefs ); you go round in circles. So in fact what meditation does is gradually erode all beliefs! ( "allows beliefs and conditioning to evaporate" as you say ).

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Yes, I phrased it badly. I will re-phrase it as seeing where there are beliefs. Beliefs don't like being shown the light of day - a bit like vampires.

:lol:

I like the buddhist idea that truths are like ladders; once you've used one, ( to climb to somewhere ), it should be thrown away, ( it will no longer be true ). That is what my belief in free will was like.

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Yes. I'd always assumed free will was real, until I actually looked at it. The very concept of free will is actually somewhat nebulous. We seemingly choose actions, but in practice there are circumstances and there is a response. Being aware of the alternate courses of action that were available makes us think we had free will but in reality the brain has evaluated and weighed each course of action and picked one based on a multitude of criteria. For it to be any other would imply an extra layer such as a soul or other mysterious entity making the decisions. I see no reason to subscribe to such a belief.

I like the disposable truths idea you mention. When I started my spiritual search many years ago I was looking for God. Initially it was the God of Christianity - a belief system imparted to me by my culture, church and teachers. However it had so many holes in it that I realised it was just smoke and mirrors; big on belief and short on facts and truth; a decent scientific education laid waste to much of the fiction of the bible.

It has taken many years to throw away the search for some sort of "God" concept. It was a rung on the ladder. Now I simply look at "what is". I'm working on the principle that I don't know if there is an ultimate reality or not or even if the question itself means anything. In other words I start by saying I don't know! So instead of heaping on yet more beliefs I'm stripping them off to see what is left, peeling off the layers of assumptions. It is quite an exciting journey - especially as the very concept of "I" unravels and the focus moves more onto the nature of consciousness itself.

"Something just happened and I don't believe in free will."

No one has ever chose to believe in god.
When we are young, we are totally dependent on our parents or athority figure, we are programed to learn or believe what is told to us, when you are that young, you are not going to question it. when we get older the belief gets serious, and the fact that other adults also believe it too will help it along.
We then pass on that belief to our own children... and that is how religion has lasted this long.
Rationalists know that the bible is nonsense, but believers will deny that too becuase the belief is so deeply programmed into thier minds as a child that they 'really do believe' in that stuff.

Believers can deny it until they are blue in the face, but I KNOW for a fact that believeing in god wasn't simply chosen. If you grew isolated from the rest of the world and your parents had no knowledge or gods and religion, how are you going to know about god?

I've always opposed everything (I think I must have been ODD as a child, and very much so) and my parents were religious and conservative, so go figure. I sometimes wonder if I'd have ended up a religious conservative had my parents been lefties or liberals, but I doubt it- my dependency on reason and logic is and always have been far bigger than my dependency on any person who tried to teach me something.

In this thread, ouinon brings up the idea that Jesus [prior to crucifixion] represents our belief in the illusion of freewill.

I believe in Jesus....but I could never believe in Christianity. There were 3 problems: 1]I didn't like Christians. It was worse than feeling indifference. 2]I can't believe Jesus said he was the "only Son of God". Jesus often referred to himself as the Son of Man. 3]I could never understand the doctrine of atonement, of Jesus dying for mankind's sins, to save us. Humans are really messed up. If Jesus fixed that, then why are we still such a mess? Looking carefully at the word atonement, it actually says... at....One.....ment.

Off and on for decades, I tried to fit in. I always hated going to church. This is like a "eureka moment". Finally some light is being shed on these issues.

I don't believe in freewill because I don't believe in a separate self....freewill requires individual volition and if there is no separate self, there is only predestination. But this thread got me thinking....maybe Christianity is saying the same thing as the Eastern religions, but it got mucked up along the historical way...Maybe ouinon's theory is mending the rift between East and West---in their spiritual traditions.

To my way of thinking....belief in freewill [and the separate self] is the father/mother of all suffering and illusion, or sin. If Jesus died for our sins, that could mean he died for our belief in freewill, or the unascended Christ represents our belief in freewill. When he is crucified, we no longer need our belief in freewill...but our belief in freewill was instrumental in delivering us to that point [saving us]. The resurrected Jesus represents spiritual illumination or enlightenment....rooted in the knowledge that everything is interconnected and there is only the oneness of all things [at-one-ment, the atonement of the Christ]. Having accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we supposedly surrender our will to the will of God...and willingly let go all that separation nonsense.

Christians believe they are giving their life and will to Jesus, in order to have God's will take control in their life. This is another way of saying they have given up belief in freewill.

The problem is that they haven't.