Is Faith, Or The Lack Thereof, A Choice?, Ctd

A reader writes:

Your reader writes:

"So unlike your reader I did make a choice based on research and a (hopefully) rational weighing of the lack of evidence. Ehrman started out not particularly religious, became a hard line evangelical, and then became at least an agnostic if not an atheist. So I do believe that one’s religious beliefs are a choice, it maybe a choice that many people are born into and never leave their comfort zone to question, but it is a choice."

This reader confuses and confounds two separate choices – the choice to believe, and the choice to seek truth.  If we search any subject with intellectual honesty, belief is manifest by what we find, not by what we choose to find.

That which appears reasonable or probable in some sense becomes what we believe, and we cannot choose to change this back to what we believed before we acquired this new knowledge and experience.  I believe many things.  In other words, I believe that which appears true.

I have witnessed the peace, satisfaction, and comfort that seems to come from religious faith.  I have desperately tried to believe things that will provide such comfort for me.  Unfortunately, the physical, objective truth of most religion and its hypothetical metaphysics continue to appear extremely unlikely to have any basis in reality.  Based upon the information gleaned from my senses, including the thousands of years writings and accounts of other people with similar sensory facilities, most religious doctrine doesn't fall, no matter how I try, into the "probably true" bin of my my perception of reality.  I can only choose where and how to search.  I cannot choose what I will find there, and it frustrates me.  I would rather believe in a loving god, and be able to share this faith with a like-minded community, but my mind can't do it. 

No matter how hard I try, I cannot believe that there was a man physically like ourselves, but who was somehow part deity, performed acts generally contrary to what is known of physics, and whose body physically disappeared from this plane of existence within three days of his death.

I fail to understand how believing or disbelieving such things can be a choice.  I wish it were.  Others have told me "just believe it".  Such a statement is the equivalent of a foreign language.  Believe it?  How?  It is apparently a language that is foreign to me, but fluent to others.

If you know how to flip this switch in my brain, please let me know.

Another reader makes the same point from the other side of the divide:

The reader who defends faith as being a matter of choice seems to be confusing the fact that we can choose things that will lead to a change in faith with faith itself being a choice.  I was an atheist for a long time; my family never went to church or participated in any religious events.  I chose to go to Church, to research religion.  My faith itself, however, is not a choice.  After going to church, after doing research, I was not presented with a choice between two beliefs, "God exists" and "God doesn't exist".  Instead, I simply came to believe that God exists.  While choice certainly plays a role in faith — in what knowledge we seek — it's hard to imagine that it could have been a choice to make.  For me, it was an unavoidable conclusion based on my experiences.

Perhaps this is the most civil and honest explanation of the real difference between believers and non-believers.

“Family Guy In Blackface,” Ctd

A reader writes:

You posted a critique from John McWhorter of the new Seth McFarland show as being no different from Family Guy except for the race of the characters.  McWhorter thinks it's racism.  I think it's just evidence of McFarland's utter lack of new ideas.

Witness American Dad.  It's all retreads of Family Guy.  Oh, they switched things around a little: They have a talking alien instead of a talking dog.  They gave the fish the evil accent instead of the baby.  The father hates the daughter…. wait, that's exactly the same.  They didn't change anybody's race; they just made the main character a Republican.

McFarland isn't racist; he's creatively bankrupt.  He needs some new manatees.

Yep, the problem with McFarland is not that he's a bigot, for goodness' sake. It's that he's a hack.

GOP Still Dead; Weather At 11

The only news in Chris Cilizza's post on the latest WaPo poll is that he honestly seems to believe that the first nine months of Obama's presidency have been good for Republicans. Anyone not suckered by the usual Beltway hooey – i.e. someone not paid by the WaPo to convey conventional "non-biased" wisdom – could see that the Republicans were drowning, not waving.

Their success in airing the most bizarre claims about the president, their extremist town halls, their disavowal from the get-go of any attempt to work with the new president on anything may have helped gin up enthusiasm in their base – but at the expense of making that base even smaller and alienating by large margins the independent voters they desperately need.

Once again, the GOP is all tactics and no strategy. And the Dish pointed out a while back that the party i.d. was cratering and that the generic ballot question showed the Democrats gaining again. Add the Palin circus to the mix and the Beck train wreck and most sane independents are more convinced than ever that the GOP is a lost cause for a while. They're not impressed by the Democrats, of course, and the post-election honeymoon is over for POTUS. But Obama's ratings remain firm for a newbie and his big strategic moves are gaining momentum.

Meep. meep.

Underestimating Our Officers

A reader writes:

I have been following the DADT discussions with interest as a retired Navy Captain and a SLDN supporter.  A point that I rarely see being made is that although DADT is patently unfair to our gay servicemen and women, it is also unfair and insulting to those who are straight.

The argument put forth by civilian and military leaders is usually some variation about degradation of "good order and disciple."  It is 2009, and almost every one of them knows gay men or women.  If you asked those leaders if they, personally, would do their job less effectively if one of their subordinates or coworkers was gay, how many of them would say yes? 

I would wager the answer is very few.  If that is the case, they would also be implicitly asserting that the soldiers and sailors that serve in our armed forces are either too ignorant or prejudiced to show the same degree of tolerance their leaders are ostensibly capable of.

There will of course be a few in any unit who, for whatever combination of nature or nurture, hate gays (or Blacks, or Jews, or women, etc.).  If this becomes such a problem that the unit is no longer able to function at peak efficiency, it is a leadership issue and the responsibility of the commanding officer.  If he or she cannot effectively lead a unit with gays (or Blacks, or Jews, or women, etc), then step aside because there are dozens of officers one rank below who would love the opportunity.

The Afghan Runoff

Radio Free Europe does some reporting:

[Is] Afghanistan ready to hold a second vote on such short notice? Wadir Safi, a political analyst in Kabul, doesn't think so, and that considering the "logistical and security" issues the runoff entails, ensuring turnout high enough to give the election legitimacy will be difficult. "The turnout was quite low in the first round of the election, too. I don't think even 5 percent of the voters would take part in the second round," Safi says.

However, Safi predicts that, even in the event of low turnout and additional fraud, "the outcome of the runoff would be accepted by everyone" both in Afghanistan and the West. He says that this is despite the fact there "is no guarantee" that the runoff will be free of fraud. "The second round is going to be a symbolic act, not a real, free and fair election," Safi adds.

A Conservative Of Doubt

Money Magazine interviews Bruce Bartlett:

So are Republicans fighting the last war? What good are tax cuts when people have no income to tax? In this crisis we've run into the same problem we had in the Great Depression: a liquidity trap. Money isn't circulating. The stimulus package may have been over-sold by Obama, but the principle was correct. We need government spending to get out of the trap.

Do you support the idea of another stimulus package? No. The lags in implementation are so great that it would have no effect until long after the recovery is under way. And I think the makings of a fairly rapid recovery are here.

Nice to hear some optimism. My Republican friends, to a person, think that Obama's policies are going to be disastrous and that they'll be able to waltz into the White House in 2012. I keep asking, "What if you're wrong? What's your backup plan in case the economy does recover and Obama gets credit for bringing us out of the biggest crisis since the Depression?"