None of us choose our beliefs

It’s always weird to me when people seem to believe that what they believe is a matter of personal choice. I suppose it shouldn’t be, because them believing that isn’t a matter of personal choice. But then, it being weird to me isn’t a matter of personal choice anyway, so…

OK, let’s stop there. I’m not looking to go full deterministic-universe on you. I’m just saying that it surprises me that we so often treat those who believe differently to us as if they deliberately, out of spite or hatred or pigheadedness, just decided to hold those terrible beliefs. It surprises me because it’s so self-evidently false, but clearly it’s not as self-evident as I’d like it to be, which is why I’m taking this though for a Stephen Fry-esque walk right now.

Back when I frequented certain atheism-themed online fora, it was quite common for a religious believer to venture bravely into our threads and declare that we atheists were being deliberately sinful: that we could, if we wanted, believe in whatever god they recommended; it was just that we didn’t want to.

We intrepid heathens would always reply similarly, by pointing out that it is impossible to consciously choose one’s beliefs, and that this could be easily demonstrated by a quick experiment: you, the theist, simply stop believing in your god for ten minutes. What’s that? You can’t, in fact, simply decide to become an atheist for a bit? Well, whaddya know!

Of course, it’s not always easy to know exactly what a person’s meaning is, behind the surface of their words. Often, when someone accuses you of “choosing” to believe the wrong things, what they really mean is that you don’t believe those things at all - that you know full well what is right and proper, but you’re lying about it. In the religious divide, this generally takes the form of claiming that the atheist actually DOES believe in God, because after all all how could he not? But because the atheist wants to be a sinful little sod, it makes it psychologically easier to justify his foul behaviour to himself if he pretends not to.

This is not a phenomenon restricted to religious debates, of course. People on every point of the political compass enjoy claiming the power of mind-reading, to know that their opponents do not really believe what they say they believe, but rather are feigning it so they can get away with their greed and hatred. It’s easy to accuse conservatives, for example, of not truly believing in free markets but simply wanting to promote policies which help them get richer. And the ease of the accusation is abetted by the fact that quite clearly, there are a lot of conservatives whose greatest priority IS to help themselves get richer.

From a personal standpoint, I’ve found that people who share a view on free speech similar to my own tend to be called out as not truly having any commitment to free speech principles, but claiming one in order to provide a smokescreen for their desire to yell racial slurs. And again, this is complicated by the existence of plenty of people who really do like yelling racial slurs, and who would indeed like to have a smokescreen to assist in that.

But the thing is, it’s easy to do that for any belief, and for any side of any argument. You can always posit a theoretical ulterior motive for anyone espousing a principle, and dismiss their argument on the grounds that they’re not arguing in good faith. It is super easy and that is why it is super popular - it’s one of the most common rhetorical moves going round. And it’s a really shitty one.

It’s a shitty one because it’s one conducted in denial of reality. The fact is, however much you might hate it, some people really do disagree with you. Some people really do believe in free markets. Some people really do believe in free speech. Some people really do believe Marx had a point. Some people really do believe in acting urgently to curb climate change. You might loathe the people who oppose you on any one point, but they’re not all grifters.

Now, maybe, when you engage in an argument or embark on an opinion piece, the specific person you’re targeting really isn’t arguing in good faith. Maybe their commitment to the opposite position is indeed inspired by their own secret personal motives and not by principled belief.

But so what? The fact someone who is arguing the other side without believing it doesn’t mean that other side doesn’t exist. That a person can use an argument insincerely does not absolve those who dislike that argument from actually making a case against it, rather than just sneering “oh but you don’t really think that”.

Maybe you reckon that when a politician claims to be sticking up for (insert segment of population here), he’s bullshitting. But even if he is, that doesn’t mean tthat segment isn’t there, or that they shouldn’t be stuck up for. And if you say that you don’t care about some people because one guy who claimed to care about them didn’t really care about them, you are unlikely to sway those people to your way of thinking. Even worse, you might struggle to sway others not in that group, who are just clearer thinkers than you.

And this comes back to whether or not we can choose our beliefs, because what it’s all about is how you approach those who think differently to you, both in terms of trying to convince them to change their minds and in terms of whether you treat them with respect and humanity or demonise them.

Because, just as we tend to think that our beliefs are so obviously right that anyone claiming to differ must just be pretending for their own purposes, we also, if we do begrudgingly accept that people believe differently to ourselves, that they would agree with us if they really wanted to. Maybe a distinction without a difference? I dunno. But anyway.

What I wanted to say is: we don’t choose our beliefs. And when you think about it, I think you’ll realise this is obviously true.

Now, I’m not saying we have no control over our beliefs. What we believe is influenced by myriad factors. Our upbringing, our environment, our education. The experiences we are exposed to shape what we believe, and we do have some control over what experiences we have. If you decide you don’t want to read and research a certain subject, your beliefs about that subject will most likely end up very different to someone who decided they did want to. It’s possible to deliberately cultivate ignorance in yourself. Maybe some people might do that because they do fear challenges to their beliefs. If you suspect that reading a certain book might shake your worldview, it’s not unnatural to shrink from reading that book - although the fact that you have that fear might suggest your beliefs are starting to bend a little already.

But directing your body of knowledge in certain directions and avoiding others is very different from actually choosing what to believe. When you learn things, when you’re told things, when things happen to you, it will shape your beliefs. You can choose what influences you consciously invite, but you can’t choose the final shape. If you are reading this post, and you vehemently disagree with what I say, you can’t make a conscious decision to switch to my side. If I were to request that, I’d be a fool. All I can do is put my case, and hope that I might be persuasive enough that you find yourself unable to prevent yourself switching.

Go back to our old atheism challenge: think of any belief you hold, and stop holding it for a little while. You can’t. It’s nonsensical to even suggest it. And we know this. Yet we still so often behave as if we don’t.

You see it often in the dreaded discourse. “Person X knows that Belief Y is bad - yet they do not abandon it”. But that doesn’t make sense: if they believe it, they can’t abandon it.

You see it often when famous people are publicly denounced because of something they’ve said that’s upset a certain political strand. Sometimes this takes the form of bafflement that the celebrity would be so wilfully self-destructive: “Why would this person decide to ruin their career by being racist/sexist/transphobic/communist/pro-Israel/pro-Palestine/going on Joe Rogan?” I mean, maybe there’s a point there: if you believe something that you know will make you unpopular if voiced publicly, not voicing it publicly can be the savvy move. But you’ve got to admit it doesn’t feel particularly righteous to take the position that celebrities are more admirable if they’re dishonest. And I don’t think that’s what the denouncers are saying, anyway: they’re not saying the celebrity made a mistake by saying what they believe; they’re saying they made a mistake by believing it. That’s a very different thing. And it’s a claim that disintegrates into incoherence when examined - it requires that a person knows that a certain belief is both immoral and harmful in a material sense, but they made a conscious choice to adopt that belief because…why?

It’s the Skeletor Theory of Socio-Politics: people don’t adopt bad beliefs because they are misguided or have sincere disagreements with others about the best way to live life or organise society; they adopt bad beliefs because they are cartoon villains who enjoy being evil.

Now, one of the things wrong with this way of thinking is that it’s just wrong. But it could be argued that it doesn’t matter practically: in terms of public policy or public debate, it doesn’t matter whether someone chose to be wrong, is pretending to be wrong, or has become wrong through no fault of their own. What matters is that you work to make what’s right prevail, and stop the people who are wrong from putting their wrong into practice. Which is a fair point. But I do think it matters.

It matters first of all because when we argue our point, we are trying to convince. Sometimes we are trying to convince the person opposite, the person who disagrees with us. In that case, we are far far less likely to succeed if we accuse them of dishonesty or immorality, of knowing the truth but deliberately rejecting it.

Often we’re not trying to convince that person, but rather trying to convince the people watching from the sidelines. Think of a political debate. The politicians are not trying to bring each other over to the opposite side, they’re trying to illustrate to an audience - the voters - that the other person is wrong. Most public debates, of one kind or another, take this form: we write or speak in opposition to the ideas of someone else, not to persuade them to join us, but to persuade others reading or listening, who may have yet to make their minds up, to take our side.

In this case, we should want to let those spectators see us putting forward a good argument for our beliefs, and against the other’s beliefs, rather than simply smearing our opponent as a miscreant who has chosen the bad side for whatever reason. Not that such smears don’t work: we know they do. But if we actually care about promoting our ideas for the sake of improving society rather than just winning points against an enemy, we should want whoever we convince to be convinced of the rightness of our ideas, not just of the evilness of our enemies.

But the other reason it matters is simply that it is not a good way to view our fellow humans. If we know that we don’t choose our beliefs, we should not treat each other as if we do, because it makes us meaner, less charitable, more prone to dividing humanity into adversarial factions rather than embracing it as a species with common cause and equal value among individuals.

Because when we accept the fact that we don’t choose our beliefs, we can accept that the beliefs people hold, even those that are utterly abhorrent to us, are not entirely their fault. We can accept that even the most loathsome bigot did not become a loathsome bigot because they enjoy bigotry, or because they are somehow lesser than us, but because circumstance and experience took them down the wrong path. I would argue that this is actually a good way to approach the world in a utilitarian sense, in that fighting bigotry from a standpoint of “let’s see how we can work with our fellow humans to direct them away from those influences that lead to hatred” is more useful than a standpoint of “let us work to drive the wicked ones out of our community”. But I think it’s a good way to approach the world also simply because it makes us kinder and better people.

It also makes us humbler. It can be difficult to admit that the people you hate didn’t choose their beliefs, because it means admitting that you didn’t choose your beliefs either, and that the fact that you believe good things isn’t a sign of your shining personal virtue, but simply that you were lucky enough to encounter the world in such a way that you were led to the right conclusions. It also means admitting, of course, that you might be wrong, which is scary. We all think we’re right about everything, of course - it doesn’t really make sense to say that you believe yourself to be wrong about something. But to think that you’re right, while leaving open the possibility that you might not be, to allow yourself the mental space to change your mind if given reason to…that’s not easy. It invites uncertainty into your life, and uncertainty means occasional discomfort. But I reckon you’ll be a better person if you let that uncertainty in, and not only will you be a better person, you’ll be more effective at promoting whatever values you want to promote.

But then, of course, I would say that - after all, I didn’t choose to believe any of this.