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<\/a><\/div>\nThe post last week on being prayed for<\/a> sparked some interesting questions about free will and belief. \u00a0I thought returning to that topic would be a nice complement to the discussion about choosing to alter your own will that\u2019s developing out of Tristyn\u2019s pharmaceutical thought experiment<\/a>.<\/p>\n Disagreement arose over whether a petitionary prayer to God seeking my conversion was an affront to my free will or agency. \u00a0Posters P. Coyle and Hendy made the great point that belief is not a matter of will. \u00a0(Hendy\u2019s gone into a lot more detail about the nature of belief at his own blog here<\/a>). \u00a0I can\u2019t will myself to believe that God exists, so a change in my belief (whether caused by God or any other reason) is not an imposition on my will. \u00a0This would be the case even if God poked into my head and altered my belief, though I don\u2019t think that\u2019s exactly what Christians pray for when they pray for conversion.<\/p>\n Christians I\u2019ve talked to tend to think that there is evidence for their belief. \u00a0Some Christians think that atheists don\u2019t consider their evidence in good faith, but many others concede that the evidence that sustains their belief is not universally accessible. \u00a0Miracles or a\u00a0subjective\u00a0feeling of closeness to God might be personally\u00a0convincing, but they\u2019re impossible to offer as anything but hearsay evidence to others.<\/p>\n What Christians I\u2019ve talked to hope for is that I would be able to access this kind of evidence or that I would stop applying a needlessly high standard of evidence to some claims. \u00a0Some of my Christian friends think some of my other beliefs are most compatible with\u00a0Christianity, so they\u2019re hoping I get over whatever is preventing me from recognizing that fact, whether it\u2019s pride, fear, or too much optimism that a superior system exists. \u00a0They\u2019re asking God to smooth any of these paths to truth.<\/p>\n Ultimately I don\u2019t find this kind of prayer any more of a threat to my free will than someone offering me reading material that could change my mind. \u00a0Data is compulsion, but it\u2019s good compulsion. \u00a0My will and desire aren\u2019t and shouldn\u2019t be directed to preserving a certain belief, I aspire that all my beliefs are true<\/em>. \u00a0The Christian who prays for me and little old atheist me are in agreement about our goal at that level.<\/p>\n I\u2019m pushy in this way when I try to explain complicated science facts to someone less immersed in the topic than I am. \u00a0I have data that the other person can\u2019t parse, which I believe would be compelling if they could understand it. \u00a0I might try to throw my interlocutor into the path of someone I thought would be better able to explain (kind of what Christians are doing) or I might cheat a little and try to convince using an appeal to authority, playing on their trust and my apparent expertise. \u00a0My preference is that they believe the right thing for the right reasons, but I can\u2019t necessarily get there if their background is too limited.<\/p>\n I think we may all be in agreement here, even though we disagree about what the truth actually is. \u00a0Yudowski\u2019s\u00a0Litany of Tarski<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Litany of Gendlin<\/a>\u00a0may be of interest to everyone here.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a different issue tied up in this question that has less to do with problems of will than the continuity of self. \u00a0If God altered my beliefs suddenly while I was asleep and I woke up a Christian, the real issue is the\u00a0discontinuity\u00a0between my identity when I went to sleep and my identity when I woke up. \u00a0If I became aware of this kind of reversal, I\u2019d be more likely to find my new belief to be evidence of my own insanity than evidence of God.<\/p>\n Identity\u00a0can weather sudden changes and epiphanies without being broken, but all of these are accompanied by at least a subjective sense of cause<\/em>. \u00a0Otherwise they feel like delusion and annihilation. \u00a0That\u2019s not to say that big shifts aren\u2019t always a kind of\u00a0violence\u00a0to the self, but at least you\u2019ve sacrificed your old self on the altar of some greater good. \u00a0Remembering the cause of that shift provides some connection to the dross you burned away.<\/p>\n The post last week on being prayed for sparked some interesting questions about free will and belief. \u00a0I thought returning to that topic would be a nice complement to the discussion about choosing to alter your own will that\u2019s developing out of Tristyn\u2019s pharmaceutical thought experiment. Disagreement arose over whether a petitionary prayer to God […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[135,178],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debatetactics","tag-may-i-kill-it","tag-prayer"],"yoast_head":"\n