Belief is not a choice, but only a result

Con, I find it troublesome to include in your definition of belief the inclusion of "emotions". This cannot be true universally as there are many things we both believe in that do not require emotion to shape. We might believe that steaming water is hot, because of the scientific evidence we have. I can rest assured now that both you and I do not believe we are eggs in a frying pan. Emotion has nothing to do with any of this. Only factual evidence. You get my point. What you are really trying to say is that emotion perhaps CAN be used to shape beliefs " namely religious views. I reject this because emotion is not concerned with fact, it's concerned with desire or hope. You say you cannot believe in God when you think about the genocide of Jews? Since when was ignoring evidence the way to truth? You have to accept the evidence and find the truth in light of it. Perhaps you can still believe both in God and that such atrocities happened by rationing that God doesn"t intervene and it"s up to mankind to figure things out. However you rationalize it, you must consider all evidence in favor of and against a proposed truth. Your example about the man and his late wife proves my point and perhaps can make it clearer. When the man feels his wife doesn"t love him, it"s because he is only focusing on the negative evidence (similar to you focusing on the holocaust). CBT, as you claim, aids him in focusing on the "positive evidence" hence "reframing" how he views the situation (like you focusing on a loving God, wonders of the universe). What we have here is a man who was evaluating the situation irresponsibly " and emotionally I might add " by focusing on one side of the evidence. So CBT is merely bringing to light further evidence, not disregarding unsupportive evidence. I can further prove this by pointing out that once the man thinks about all the evidence that supports the notion that his wife loves him (back rubs, disorganization, etc.) he realizes this is stronger evidence for her love vs. against (her being late). You see, it"s not about reframing evidence; it"s about including better evidence. You have to take all evidence into account at least. If there wasn"t as much better evidence for the man to draw upon, he might not be able to alleviate his fear of her not loving him. Furthermore, now that he is considering such evidence that supports his wife loving him, not only would he likely realize she loves him, but he would have NO CHOICE but to believe it because the evidence strongly outweighs the null. CBT can certainly be useful in helping people think more accurately about the evidence, but you still can"t just decide what to believe, it is still the result of compared evidence. If you really can change your belief based on what evidence you"re focused on, this is a sign of terribly irresponsible thinking and even deceptive manipulation. Let me provide a neutral example that a reader can identify with. Let"s say we are looking at a sweet pair of headphones on Amazon and we are looking at evidence to either support them being worth the buy or not. We know we can"t solely rely on a company description so we focus on the customer reviews. If we were like the man in your example, he might look at one bad review and make a quick assumption based off limited and inconclusive evidence, right? The same case can be made by looking at one positive review. But once you thoroughly analyze a sizable amount of reviews and look for trends can you start to formalize a belief. But let"s say we read all the reviews and there are 10 good and 10 bad. Now we have evidence to support either that they are or aren"t worth the buy. Whatever decision we make, we still don"t forget about the contrary evidence. No one in their right mind would look at a good review and decide the headphones are good and then look at a bad review and decide their bad and keep going back and forth. This is comparable to you thinking about the holocaust and deciding God isn't real and then thinking about the wonders of the universe and decided he is real, then going back and forth based on your "reframing". This is ridiculous and foolishly nonsensical. 2. Christianity requires everyone to be able to believe in it to be valid I realize many denominations are more "liberal" about how they view Jesus, but as I understand, the historical first editions of the Bible are very clear that Jesus is the one and only way to God. I think it's wrong to say that "the one belief all of these people share is that they believe the story of Jesus will help them better understand, and thus will help them have a closer relationship with the Divine (a.k.a. God)." This statement implies that there are other routes to God, but many denominations do not hold this belief. Denominations that have manipulated the original texts have no basis for doing so. I"ll appeal to a more well versed historian on this premise, but I think the majority of the Christian world holds this belief. This is one of those things that makes a lot of sense, logically and realistically to us, but isn"t backed up historically. It"s just "convenient" for religious factions to manufacture. I wish it were so, but I cannot will truth. In Summary (TLDR) You agree with me that its possible for people to not have the ability to believe in God, but you still think that belief can be an action as opposed to a result. You demonstrate this with your personal holocaust story as well as the CBT example with the man and wife. I contend that these examples are not "reframing" or "changing how you view the evidence", but it"s really merely including better evidence into the pot. I then demonstrated that such evidence, based on whatever it is, doesn"t necessarily guarantee the desired result. Thus, belief is still a result. I also touched briefly on the discrepancy between Christianity"s denominations and still contend that the earliest works of the Bible are unequivocal about Jesus being the only way to God. However, I would appeal to a qualified historian to confirm or rebuff this. Last but not least, I would certainly entertain a debate about Santa Claus. I"ll take either side! :)