AtheistNexus.org aritcle and some comments on atheism not being a choice reposted in bold and italicized print

Nobody Chooses To Be Atheist! Disbelief just happens, regardless of intent.
Posted by Dyslexic's DOG on October 4, 2015 at 6:58pm in Introductions
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Disbelief cannot be intentional.
Either a person believes in something or they don't.
An equivalent scenario is like a person who grew up believing the Earth is flat.
Then he decides to study science and learns that the Earth is a globe and it explains night and day as well as the seasons, far better than the Flat Earth Theory.
Now he is reasonably certain that the Earth is a globe.

The Flat Earth school mates call him a heretic and no longer accept him into their friendship.
He becomes lonely and wishes he could believe in a Flat Earth again, so he pretends to, hoping to regain his once held belief.

But, this is impossible, because he has serious doubts concerning the Flat Earth Theory, which he finds cannot explain days, and seasons adequately.
So he feels out of place in his old companionship.
So he finds a group in a university which considers the Earth as global, and moves into their fold.
He now has friends, and finally resigns himself to forever being taunted and called a heretic by his previous friends.

This is like my own experience when studying the Bible, led me to disbelief in it and the god within.
I never chose to disbelieve, as I was trying to be a better believer.
Disbelief just happened, and it was almost overnight, while re-reading Leviticus, but doubts arose from the start of Genesis and they were well confirmed by the time I reached Leviticus, I awoke the next morning a disbeliever and no matter how hard I tried, I could never get it back.
In spite of the attempts of those around me to tell and convince me that god is indeed real.

I'm certain many being helped by 'The Clergy Project' have had a similar experience and the discomfort of preaching what they no longer believe, must alarm them greatly.
I'm certain many of them wish they could get their belief and confidence in their position/job back.
But, such is life.

No atheist ever chose their disbelief.

They either never believed from birth like my brother, or lost belief due to rational thought as I did.

Nobody should ever be condemned for something that was never in their control.
No atheist made a choice to not believe, they simply were never given enough evidence for god to create a genuine reason to believe.

Amen!


Tags: atheism, atheists, be, choice, chose, heathen, heretic, infidel, never, to



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 Permalink Reply by k.h. ky 20 hours ago
I'm a heathen too and have finally became proud of it. You're right in that there is no going back. My life would be much simpler and collections would be taken up to help pay large medical bills. I would be fed and petted. Kinda like a favorite dog if I could just say "yes lord l believe". And turn my back on reality!
 But I can't so I'll muddle on through. Pay my own bills and feed myself.
 I may even get another dog to pet ;)
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 Permalink Reply by Daniel W 18 hours ago

In general, I agree that most of us do not choose our belief or disbelief.

To be the devil's advocate, however, I think we do make decisions that place us on certain intellectual, social, psychological, and philosophical trajectories.  If, for those who start out theist, we could predict that decision X would lead to decision Y would lead to decision Z, with Z being the decision to acknowledge and fly with secularism, maybe we would not make decision X in the first place.  But we might.

For myself, I made decisions that in retrospect could be taken as a sure path to secularism.  If I could put on a Way-Back-Hat and go back to the first decision, and tell the young me that those decisions would lead to atheism, would young me make those decisions?  Probably not.  Maybe.  Although young me did considerably admire and feel awe regarding that high school Science teacher who all of the students rumored was Atheist, and when asked he not only did not deny it, but proudly proclaimed it.  Way back then, in a backward midwestern small town, in the era of John Bircherism, latent McCarthyism, and anti-civil rights and antisemitism, it was probably easier to be openly atheist there than it is today.  Maybe.

Back to that Way-Back-Hat.  I made a decision to read the bible, every page.  At the time, I was an overtly, tear-jerkingly, sweaty, adolescent, hormonal 15 year old true believer.  I carried that bible everywhere - to school, to the farm, fishing, and even to church.  I read every page, even the begats and even the erotic Song of Solomom.   Having read every page, what happened?  I learned that my highly right-backward-fundamentalist-every-word-of-the-bible-is-literal-and-true Baptist church was woefully either hell-bound, or the whole christian Jehovah and Jesus house of cards was built on feet of sand.  That conclusion resulted directly from my decisions.  I chose that path.

I then chose not to think of it for a while.  One thing led to another, and I enlisted in the US GI-Joe olive drab fatigues and VietNam or the Commies will take over US Army.  I knew, that enlistment was likely to lead me to all sorts of nonChristian exposures, and various mind-altering and body-sensation-discovering experimentation that Jesus would not approve.  I also knew there was a significant probability I would break my mother and father's hearts and come back thoroughly dead.  None of those issues stopped me.  I did it knowing that my unsteady hold on Jesus and Jehovah might well be further frayed and unraveled, and that's exactly what happened.  That was a path that I chose.  It was not chosen for me.

So my body having survived that, and my everlasting soul having been morphed and massaged and silly-puttied into not-caring-enough-to-be-atheist and still who knows?  Maybe Jesus loves us all and just doesn't have the social skills to express it in the post-Roman-occupation-of-Jerusalem era, but time to get on with life.  So I chose to study the sciences.  Those very sciences of Mr. Stiegler way back then in the arm-pit if not ass-hole of the world on the frequently flooded shores and levees of the Mississippi river.  I COULD have chosen theology, or headed to a Christian college to learn again, the one true way.  But instead, I found the best State University my veteran's benefit would cover, applied there, and went.  Holy mother of Jesus, there was heathenism.  Drinking, marijuana smoking, toking and getting naked with people and doing all sorts of stuff that Jesus would not, in good conscience, express approval towards, and  none of which I did, I was too studious and earnest.  That is until discovering that gay bookstore, and gay bar, and an Apostolic ministers and then an African Episcopalian Methodist minister - neither of which  inter-personal interaction involving the Bible or Jesus of Jehovah, and who were not of my pigmentation or accent, despite of what had been taught in my Christian upbringing.  But it was too late.  After  biology, and chemistry, and biochemistry, and molecular biology, and microbiology, I finally knew:  Not only is there no Jesus, and no Jehovah, and no Mary or Joseph, no David or Solomon or Moses or Jonah or Judas.  And that expressing belief for them is not only deluded, but is a bad thing to do.  Did I chose those conclusions?  I think yes.  With eyes wide open and mind fully engaged.

So did I chose to be Atheist?  I certainly chose the path to secularism, each step along the way getting closer and closer to the destruction of my immortal soul.

I think I really did chose my non-belief.  My overlong tale may not convince you, but if you think about it and ponder and ruminate, maybe a seed will be planted in your mind that counters the belief that no one chooses non-belief.    Or not.  It's up to you.

(not in any way related, but your Tags made me want to add another thing you can choose.  That is to put phrases in quotes for tags.  I really doubt that people will search on "to" or "be", or even "never" but one never knows.  Someone might search on "never to be" if that is your intent.  Then again, does anyone ever choose to search on any tag?)
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 Permalink Reply by Dyslexic's DOG 16 hours ago

Thanks Daniel.
My investigation into neuroscience and psychology has led me to believe in some form of personal predestination.
If you made choice X successfully as a child, chances are you will make the same X choice again when presented it later.
So, some of our choices and the way we choose are predestined by choices in our early childhood.
So you have belief y, which making a choice X could be detrimental to, but you chose choice X, because of childhood experience, then belief y will be threatened, and if lost, it will be gone.
But if as a child, your parents made the experience of choice X laborious or a failure, then later when faced with belief y and the opportunity/need to make choice X, you will avoid making that choice.  Thus saving belief y.
This is a product of childhood indoctrination, to make as many possible choices that will lead to threatening belief y, as difficult or distasteful as possible (using aversion therapy) to the child, thus making it less likely you will make such choices in the future.
So, we may not choose to become atheists consciously, it so often just happens.
If it appears that the choices we do make led to this, then likely those choices were predestined in our childhood experiences.
If we subconsciously avoid making choices that could lead to disbelief, then there is a possibility of indoctrination by aversion or no experience with making such choices as a child.

This is the way I see it at the moment.
Though my views may change at any moment.
:-D~
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 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne 7 hours ago

Deciding what to believe is like trying to decide whether we like chalk or cheese. Chalk or cheese? gets  decided by our taste buds and what we believe gets decided by our intuition, we've no say in the matter thankfully.   
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 Permalink Reply by Loren Miller 2 hours ago

Atheism isn't a choice in the sense that I can choose to believe just ANYTHING.  This is another reason why Pascal's Wager falls flat, because I prefer that what I believe align with reality, and there are many things proposed by the bible which simply don't qualify under that heading.
Rational atheism - atheism that is arrived at by disciplined and thoughtful study - is a CONCLUSION, made by the individual, who has looked at the fact and integrated them for him- or herself and arrived at the endpoint that Belief In God Makes NO SENSE.  From that position, believing in supernatural beings and occurrences would be up there with denying gravity.
That is, unless you think there is no gravity - the earth sucks!  [grin!]
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 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne 27 minutes ago

We call it atheism Loren when it's nothing of the sort. We don't disbelieve anything. We intuitively understand what we believe and by meat what we don't believe, but that doesn't mean to say that we disbelieve a proposition on the basis of believing something else, it just means the proposition is not worthy of our belief. It's a subtle trick theologians have been using to equalise the argument in the public domain. The sad thing is it works.
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 Permalink Reply by Loren Miller 15 minutes ago

Actually, it is EVERYTHING of the sort, Gerald.  We are a-theos - "without god."  Granted there's no god to be without in the first place, and it all goes to the whole "a-fairy-ist" or "a-mermaid-ist" trip, but that doesn't bother me.
I am an atheist, and I stand counter to those who would promulgate irrational beliefs and behaviors based in those beliefs, because their beliefs do not satisfy any burden of proof and because they bring harm in too many instances.  "Atheist" is a convenient label, an in-your-face label, which I like, because the issues surrounding belief and non-belief have either been ignored or treated with kid gloves for entirely too long.  That is changing, and I want to be a part of that change.  Indeed, that is a healthy part of the reason why I'm going to Madison, Wisconsin this Friday to participate in the Freedom From Religion Foundation's 38th Annual Convention, and it's why I work with the local Cleveland chapter, the Northeast Ohio Freethought Society, to do my bit at home.
I could argue semantics, but that gets away from the focus.  Boil it down, I'm still an atheist ... and I mean to kick ass and take tickets.
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 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne 2 minutes ago

Well, have a good time if that's the right phrase.
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http://atheistnexus.org/forum/topics/nobody-chooses-to-be-atheist-disbelief-just-happens-regardless-of?commentId=2182797%3AComment%3A2648814&xg_source=activity









 







Nobody Chooses To Be Atheist! Disbelief just happens, regardless of intent.
Posted by Dyslexic's DOG on October 4, 2015 at 6:58pm in Introductions
View Discussions
.



Disbelief cannot be intentional.
Either a person believes in something or they don't.
An equivalent scenario is like a person who grew up believing the Earth is flat.
Then he decides to study science and learns that the Earth is a globe and it explains night and day as well as the seasons, far better than the Flat Earth Theory.
Now he is reasonably certain that the Earth is a globe.

The Flat Earth school mates call him a heretic and no longer accept him into their friendship.
He becomes lonely and wishes he could believe in a Flat Earth again, so he pretends to, hoping to regain his once held belief.

But, this is impossible, because he has serious doubts concerning the Flat Earth Theory, which he finds cannot explain days, and seasons adequately.
So he feels out of place in his old companionship.
So he finds a group in a university which considers the Earth as global, and moves into their fold.
He now has friends, and finally resigns himself to forever being taunted and called a heretic by his previous friends.

This is like my own experience when studying the Bible, led me to disbelief in it and the god within.
I never chose to disbelieve, as I was trying to be a better believer.
Disbelief just happened, and it was almost overnight, while re-reading Leviticus, but doubts arose from the start of Genesis and they were well confirmed by the time I reached Leviticus, I awoke the next morning a disbeliever and no matter how hard I tried, I could never get it back.
In spite of the attempts of those around me to tell and convince me that god is indeed real.

I'm certain many being helped by 'The Clergy Project' have had a similar experience and the discomfort of preaching what they no longer believe, must alarm them greatly.
I'm certain many of them wish they could get their belief and confidence in their position/job back.
But, such is life.

No atheist ever chose their disbelief.

They either never believed from birth like my brother, or lost belief due to rational thought as I did.

Nobody should ever be condemned for something that was never in their control.
No atheist made a choice to not believe, they simply were never given enough evidence for god to create a genuine reason to believe.

Amen!


Tags: atheism, atheists, be, choice, chose, heathen, heretic, infidel, never, to



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Views: 43
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Replies to This Discussion
 Permalink Reply by k.h. ky 20 hours ago
I'm a heathen too and have finally became proud of it. You're right in that there is no going back. My life would be much simpler and collections would be taken up to help pay large medical bills. I would be fed and petted. Kinda like a favorite dog if I could just say "yes lord l believe". And turn my back on reality!
 But I can't so I'll muddle on through. Pay my own bills and feed myself.
 I may even get another dog to pet ;)
▶ Reply

 Permalink Reply by Daniel W 18 hours ago

In general, I agree that most of us do not choose our belief or disbelief.

To be the devil's advocate, however, I think we do make decisions that place us on certain intellectual, social, psychological, and philosophical trajectories.  If, for those who start out theist, we could predict that decision X would lead to decision Y would lead to decision Z, with Z being the decision to acknowledge and fly with secularism, maybe we would not make decision X in the first place.  But we might.

For myself, I made decisions that in retrospect could be taken as a sure path to secularism.  If I could put on a Way-Back-Hat and go back to the first decision, and tell the young me that those decisions would lead to atheism, would young me make those decisions?  Probably not.  Maybe.  Although young me did considerably admire and feel awe regarding that high school Science teacher who all of the students rumored was Atheist, and when asked he not only did not deny it, but proudly proclaimed it.  Way back then, in a backward midwestern small town, in the era of John Bircherism, latent McCarthyism, and anti-civil rights and antisemitism, it was probably easier to be openly atheist there than it is today.  Maybe.

Back to that Way-Back-Hat.  I made a decision to read the bible, every page.  At the time, I was an overtly, tear-jerkingly, sweaty, adolescent, hormonal 15 year old true believer.  I carried that bible everywhere - to school, to the farm, fishing, and even to church.  I read every page, even the begats and even the erotic Song of Solomom.   Having read every page, what happened?  I learned that my highly right-backward-fundamentalist-every-word-of-the-bible-is-literal-and-true Baptist church was woefully either hell-bound, or the whole christian Jehovah and Jesus house of cards was built on feet of sand.  That conclusion resulted directly from my decisions.  I chose that path.

I then chose not to think of it for a while.  One thing led to another, and I enlisted in the US GI-Joe olive drab fatigues and VietNam or the Commies will take over US Army.  I knew, that enlistment was likely to lead me to all sorts of nonChristian exposures, and various mind-altering and body-sensation-discovering experimentation that Jesus would not approve.  I also knew there was a significant probability I would break my mother and father's hearts and come back thoroughly dead.  None of those issues stopped me.  I did it knowing that my unsteady hold on Jesus and Jehovah might well be further frayed and unraveled, and that's exactly what happened.  That was a path that I chose.  It was not chosen for me.

So my body having survived that, and my everlasting soul having been morphed and massaged and silly-puttied into not-caring-enough-to-be-atheist and still who knows?  Maybe Jesus loves us all and just doesn't have the social skills to express it in the post-Roman-occupation-of-Jerusalem era, but time to get on with life.  So I chose to study the sciences.  Those very sciences of Mr. Stiegler way back then in the arm-pit if not ass-hole of the world on the frequently flooded shores and levees of the Mississippi river.  I COULD have chosen theology, or headed to a Christian college to learn again, the one true way.  But instead, I found the best State University my veteran's benefit would cover, applied there, and went.  Holy mother of Jesus, there was heathenism.  Drinking, marijuana smoking, toking and getting naked with people and doing all sorts of stuff that Jesus would not, in good conscience, express approval towards, and  none of which I did, I was too studious and earnest.  That is until discovering that gay bookstore, and gay bar, and an Apostolic ministers and then an African Episcopalian Methodist minister - neither of which  inter-personal interaction involving the Bible or Jesus of Jehovah, and who were not of my pigmentation or accent, despite of what had been taught in my Christian upbringing.  But it was too late.  After  biology, and chemistry, and biochemistry, and molecular biology, and microbiology, I finally knew:  Not only is there no Jesus, and no Jehovah, and no Mary or Joseph, no David or Solomon or Moses or Jonah or Judas.  And that expressing belief for them is not only deluded, but is a bad thing to do.  Did I chose those conclusions?  I think yes.  With eyes wide open and mind fully engaged.

So did I chose to be Atheist?  I certainly chose the path to secularism, each step along the way getting closer and closer to the destruction of my immortal soul.

I think I really did chose my non-belief.  My overlong tale may not convince you, but if you think about it and ponder and ruminate, maybe a seed will be planted in your mind that counters the belief that no one chooses non-belief.    Or not.  It's up to you.

(not in any way related, but your Tags made me want to add another thing you can choose.  That is to put phrases in quotes for tags.  I really doubt that people will search on "to" or "be", or even "never" but one never knows.  Someone might search on "never to be" if that is your intent.  Then again, does anyone ever choose to search on any tag?)
▶ Reply

 Permalink Reply by Dyslexic's DOG 16 hours ago

Thanks Daniel.
My investigation into neuroscience and psychology has led me to believe in some form of personal predestination.
If you made choice X successfully as a child, chances are you will make the same X choice again when presented it later.
So, some of our choices and the way we choose are predestined by choices in our early childhood.
So you have belief y, which making a choice X could be detrimental to, but you chose choice X, because of childhood experience, then belief y will be threatened, and if lost, it will be gone.
But if as a child, your parents made the experience of choice X laborious or a failure, then later when faced with belief y and the opportunity/need to make choice X, you will avoid making that choice.  Thus saving belief y.
This is a product of childhood indoctrination, to make as many possible choices that will lead to threatening belief y, as difficult or distasteful as possible (using aversion therapy) to the child, thus making it less likely you will make such choices in the future.
So, we may not choose to become atheists consciously, it so often just happens.
If it appears that the choices we do make led to this, then likely those choices were predestined in our childhood experiences.
If we subconsciously avoid making choices that could lead to disbelief, then there is a possibility of indoctrination by aversion or no experience with making such choices as a child.

This is the way I see it at the moment.
Though my views may change at any moment.
:-D~
▶ Reply

 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne 7 hours ago

Deciding what to believe is like trying to decide whether we like chalk or cheese. Chalk or cheese? gets  decided by our taste buds and what we believe gets decided by our intuition, we've no say in the matter thankfully.   
▶ Reply

 Permalink Reply by Loren Miller 2 hours ago

Atheism isn't a choice in the sense that I can choose to believe just ANYTHING.  This is another reason why Pascal's Wager falls flat, because I prefer that what I believe align with reality, and there are many things proposed by the bible which simply don't qualify under that heading.
Rational atheism - atheism that is arrived at by disciplined and thoughtful study - is a CONCLUSION, made by the individual, who has looked at the fact and integrated them for him- or herself and arrived at the endpoint that Belief In God Makes NO SENSE.  From that position, believing in supernatural beings and occurrences would be up there with denying gravity.
That is, unless you think there is no gravity - the earth sucks!  [grin!]
▶ Reply

 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne 27 minutes ago

We call it atheism Loren when it's nothing of the sort. We don't disbelieve anything. We intuitively understand what we believe and by meat what we don't believe, but that doesn't mean to say that we disbelieve a proposition on the basis of believing something else, it just means the proposition is not worthy of our belief. It's a subtle trick theologians have been using to equalise the argument in the public domain. The sad thing is it works.
▶ Reply

 Permalink Reply by Loren Miller 15 minutes ago

Actually, it is EVERYTHING of the sort, Gerald.  We are a-theos - "without god."  Granted there's no god to be without in the first place, and it all goes to the whole "a-fairy-ist" or "a-mermaid-ist" trip, but that doesn't bother me.
I am an atheist, and I stand counter to those who would promulgate irrational beliefs and behaviors based in those beliefs, because their beliefs do not satisfy any burden of proof and because they bring harm in too many instances.  "Atheist" is a convenient label, an in-your-face label, which I like, because the issues surrounding belief and non-belief have either been ignored or treated with kid gloves for entirely too long.  That is changing, and I want to be a part of that change.  Indeed, that is a healthy part of the reason why I'm going to Madison, Wisconsin this Friday to participate in the Freedom From Religion Foundation's 38th Annual Convention, and it's why I work with the local Cleveland chapter, the Northeast Ohio Freethought Society, to do my bit at home.
I could argue semantics, but that gets away from the focus.  Boil it down, I'm still an atheist ... and I mean to kick ass and take tickets.
▶ Reply

 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne 2 minutes ago

Well, have a good time if that's the right phrase.
▶ Reply

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