We're talking about two separate concepts here, prince. "Belief" in a terrestrial phenomena that you can detect easily using your five senses (experience), and belief in the Unseen.
No I wasn't. The tree being felled by the explosion was something you did not witness. It was something you did not believe in because the evidence/argument wasn't strong enough. But had he made a better job of explaining to you how and why he was right, you may well have believed. Had you been brought up your whole life thinking every explosion causes a tree to fall down, you would have believed. Experience is all that can cause belief.
Had you been brought up in a place where everyone, from a young age, told you there was an invisible flying spaghetti monster, you would have believed that, though you didn't witness it. That belief is also due to experience, in this case the experience of being told it was true. Now suppose you travel to a land where they do not believe this, where you are exposed to logical arguments and reasoning that make you lose belief in the flying spaghetti monster, would that have been a choice? The strength of the arguments have no bearing on whether the FSM actually exists, just on whether you BELIEVE it does. So Allah may exist, but with everything that has happened to me, with everything I've witnessed, with everything I've read, with everything I've ever though, I do not believe he does. I cannot over-rule that out of 'free will', something must happen, some experience, some argument, some form of reasoning, must make me believe that he does.
The latter is the 'blind faith' belief of Faith that requires you to trust your Maker and SUBMIT to Him and accept the Game on His terms.
No, submitting to his will has nothing to do with the problem at hand. I can do that out of 'choice', but I still wouldn't believe in him. I can act as if the chair I'm sitting on doesn't exist. I can act as if there is a big juju in the sky. But I still won't believe either of those things. And without belief I am, apparently, doomed.
When I was 19 and at the Crossroads of Legend, I had the choice to be a Muslim in name only and live a worldly life of guilt-free sin, or accept that God was who He said He was and live my life by that Truth.
No. I felt I had nothing to lose by submitting to the One who made me and living how He wished me to. I felt it couldn't hurt me in this life, and in the next life I would prosper. So why not?
You are still not getting it. Submitting to his will is irrelevant. I do not care when you chose to be a good Muslim, I want to know when you decided to believe that Allah exists.
When you decided to take on the title of "exMuslim."
If it's about a title I will lose it. So does this save me from hell?
Then do so.
Okay. Wait, I can't. Because nobody can choose what they believe. They can choose how they act, what they do, to go in search of the truth, but no one can choose to believe something. This is the nature of belief. You either do or you don't. It is beyond choice.
Nothing is holding you back but you, my prince. It is hard but that is why you must SUBMIT and believe in Him. That's why it is called faith. "Okay... this is CRAZY! But I'm going to trust you, Lord!"
Again, all this, trusting, submitting, it's all irrelevant. It comes AFTER belief. I can't make it any simpler. Nobody can choose to believe Allah exists, they can act with the assumption that he does, but whether they actually BELIEVE he does, they cannot choose.
Topic: Peace, All