Choices

In regards to religion, being a theist or an atheist needs to be choice driven. Justification of the afterlife system depends on choosing religion. People who choose god go to heaven, people who don't choose god go to hell. Thats the basic premise of it. You can justify punishing someone for making a bad decision. You decided to steal a cookie, i'm justified in smacking your hand. This is the same argument against homosexuality, is that its a choice, which is currently under debate in the boxing ring of reason.

But do people actually choose to be heterosexual? Do people weigh the options given to them and then choose to be religious or nonreligious?

I'm not so sure that people work like that. We're talking about something thats ingrained into a society, that turning your back on the norm is despised and disgraced. Nobody wants to be weird, nobody wants to be an outcast. Who would choose that?

I'm not sure that we can reason our way out of this one, I am under the impression that there is need for more research into the brain mechanisms, concerning outlier groups. How do these things differ from person to person? Which system or combination of systems function in certain ways to produce outlier behavior? Are these things even relevant to each other? How are homosexuality, atheism, and other outlier patterns similar and different from a neuropsychological standpoint? How about from a statistical standpoint?

There are problems in studying this kind of behavior. I think in studying this relationship, you would have to use humans, primates or other creatures that exhibit tribe-like behavior, and you would have to use fairly large sample sizes, which is difficult because we're trying to capture something that is statistically rare.

Still the main questions we're trying to find the answer to differentiation of conscious choice and nonchoices, there are probably different scales inbetween the two; examples: unconscious decision (what cereal to eat for breakfast), mechanical choices (putting one foot in front of the other), Semi controllable decisions (lowering heart rate, breathing), Nonchoices (digestion), heredity (genetic expression).

Which process makes these decisions for us when we're determining -- assuming that there is such a process -- things like sexuality, love, religion, and artistic expression?

I'm not sure that there is a simple answer to any of this, but before we spout out that we 'know the answer' to anything, i think more research must be done.