If Theism isn't a Delusion, Then What Is It?

Chris OConnor

If Theism isn't a Delusion, Then What Is It?
From Austin Cline's About.com Guide to Agnosticism / Atheism

Religious theists, including Christians, commonly react negatively and defensively if their theism is described as a "delusion." This is understandable because a delusion can be type of, or a symptom of, a mental illness. No one wants to think that of themselves, especially with respect to something so fundamental to their lives. We cannot dismiss the "delusion" label simply because people don't like it, however. Instead, we must look at whether belief in a god fits the standard definition.

Read More...

Read the comments to the article too. One reader said:

Quote:
I suspect that this issue wouldn’t be coming up if the “deluded” would just keep their “faith” to themselves. By keeping it front and center, and in our “faces” so much of the time, they’ve made us examine and identify it–to their detriment.

I don’t see it necessarily interfering with their lives, specifically their jobs, although they do steal from the boss when they insist on jabbering about their “savior” while on the clock. Otherwise, a little (or a lot!) discretion could ease the pressure on them.

OTOH, they get very prickly about having to “pipe down”, don’t they? And they conveniently play the martyr, thus fulfilling all our suspicions that they are delusional.

I rest my case…

Frank 013

So the common argument against religion being a delusion is that it’s a popular belief, and that it does not always negatively affect people’s lives?

I don’t think either of those were part of the delusion definition.

Later

Niall001

Frank, that\'s because there isn\'t really a definition for delusion. It means whatever the speaker wants it to mean most of the time.

Generally, something is thought of as being a delusion if it is an uncommon perception, which brings into focus the fact that when people speak of reality, they generally speak of a bunch of things the vast majority of people agree about.

Full of Porn*

http://plainofpillars.blogspot.com

Frank 013

Quote:
Niall
Frank, that\'s because there isn\'t really a definition for delusion. It means whatever the speaker wants it to mean most of the time.

Generally, something is thought of as being a delusion if it is an uncommon perception, which brings into focus the fact that when people speak of reality, they generally speak of a bunch of things the vast majority of people agree about.

I thought it meant…

A persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of psychiatric disorder.

Mr. Pessimistic

So by that, to say that Copernicus/Galileo's heliocentric model of the universe was delusional in their respective times was a valid stance? So is delusion then measured by a groups ability to marshal evidence in support of an idea? And lack of evidence to support an otherwise correct idea is a delusion?

Mr. P.

I'm not saying it's usual for people to do those things but I(with the permission of God) have raised a dog from the dead and healed many people from all sorts of ailments. - Asana Boditharta (former booktalk troll)

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

What is all this shit about Angels? Have you heard this? 3 out of 4 people believe in Angels. Are you F****** STUPID? Has everybody lost their mind? - George Carlin

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Edited by: misterpessimistic at: 3/28/07 6:09 pm

Frank 013

Quote:
Mr. P
So by that, to say that Copernicus/Galileo's helicentric model of the universe was delusional in their respective times was a valid stance? So is delusion then measured by a groups ability to marshal evidence in support of an idea? And lack of evidence to support an otherwise correct idea is a delusion?

Absolutely especially if the believers are nuts!

Later

Niall001

Quote:
So by that, to say that Copernicus/Galileo's helicentric model of the universe was delusional in their respective times was a valid stance? So is delusion then measured by a groups ability to marshal evidence in support of an idea? And lack of evidence to support an otherwise correct idea is a delusion?

Well, it all depends on who is talking and when. A delusion is usually what we consider a false perception. Of course, in order to decide what is a false perception, we have to know what a true perception is. That is pretty difficult, given that we don't have direct access to reality. We have only perceptions.

The notion that delusion can somehow be measured by one's ability to find evidence that supports the belief is crude. First, you have to agree upon the criteria of what constitutes evidence. And there in lies the problem. It is about agreement.

Now that is not to say that we should not say that Crazy Sally who claims to be a Martian clone of Barbara Bush can not be regarded as delusional in the every day sense. Generally, we tend to agree on the criteria for when it is prudent to regard somebody as delusional. However, we, and by we, I mean humanity, generally do not think that it the criteria we use in a situation the one I just mentioned can be used in every situation. Otherwise, we would be lumping you two fine gents in the same boat as Crazy Sally because you are unable to prove that an objective reality exists or that your perceptions correspond to it.

Delusion is just a word. It's not something out there. It's an opinion. Now we can agree upon a practical framework for treating people as though they were delusional, but when it comes down to it, it is an agreement, even when unspoken. It applies where there is agreement. Now you can take the term delusional, and apply the criteria used for judging an individual delusional in one setting in an area where it is not normally used, but don't expect people to accept your findings. That is what you are doing if you use the Crazy Sally criteria when assessing Theism. It amounts to little more than a word game, because few people accept the foundations upon which your judgements are based.

I'm leaving it at that, because my time is short and I think that there are threads that interest me more.

Full of Porn*

http://plainofpillars.blogspot.com

Mr. Pessimistic

Quote:
given that we don't have direct access to reality

What is 'direct access' then? I would say our senses are pretty direct. I am a little tired of the totally made up assumption that somehow, we are so isolated from reality and that our senses are just not good enough!!

That is just a way to obfuscate any real inquiry into the world around us. It slaps doubt upon anything we can possibly present as evidence and keeps the door wide open for superstitious and religious ways.

I'm not saying it's usual for people to do those things but I(with the permission of God) have raised a dog from the dead and healed many people from all sorts of ailments. - Asana Boditharta (former booktalk troll)

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

What is all this shit about Angels? Have you heard this? 3 out of 4 people believe in Angels. Are you F****** STUPID? Has everybody lost their mind? - George Carlin

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Frank 013

Quote:
Niall
It applies where there is agreement. Now you can take the term delusional, and apply the criteria used for judging an individual delusional in one setting in an area where it is not normally used, but don't expect people to accept your findings. That is what you are doing if you use the Crazy Sally criteria when assessing Theism.

So we are back to the “it’s a common belief so it’s not delusional” defense, even though the criteria is the same as crazy sally’s.

It seems like the only ones playing slippery word games around here are the theists.

Later

MadArchitect

misterpessimistic: What is 'direct access' then?

In terms of the 4000 year old debate over epistemology, direct access is a requirement for knowing a thing as it is, not as it appears. All of our senses are indirect. Sight doesn't encompass the thing itself, but rather interprets the light reflected from an object. That involves several levels of removal from the object itself. For instance, if light is reflected from an object in an unaccustomed way (unaccustomed, that is, to us), then it may result in a distorted perception of the thing -- as with the foreshortening of an image viewed through water.

Another level of removal rests with the actual mechanism of our sensory organs. The eye receives images by use of a photo-sensitive chemical that reacts by producing a chemical signal to the brain. That signal can go wrong in a number of ways, and even when it's functioning properly, there are limitations to what it can receive and translate. Moreover, biologically speaking, it's a very specific tool -- not only is it only geared for one form of perception (you can't hear with your eye), but it's only geared for particular applications of that perception (eg. we can't see infrared, even though it's a visual phenomenon).

And at a third remove, all of our visual perceptions are conditioned at the cognitive level. We only see a chair because we've been culturally conditioned to recognize a thing as a chair. It's easy to see that at work with a cultural artifact like a chair, but it's debatable whether or not we'd intuitively arrive at a category like, say, red. In fact, other cultures categorize color in different ways, such that they'd find our distinction between green and blue difficult to understand without a great deal of practice.

Those are three levels of remove operative in every visual observation we make. That doesn't mean that sight is useless, but keeping these things in mind does check our hubris to some degree.

I am a little tired of the totally made up assumption that somehow, we are so isolated from reality and that our senses are just not good enough!!

They're patently not good enough for some tasks, and I think you'd recognize as much if you thought about it. If they were good enough, we wouldn't have had to extend our senses with the objects of scientific technology, like the microscope or the x-ray. And while those tools have been incredibly useful, we'd do well to remember that they put our senses at a further remove. If the naked eye is indirect to a power of three (because of the three removes I listed above) then an observation made through a microscope is indirect to a power of four. That's four levels at which things could go wrong.

The question implicit in this whole thread -- and to some degree, in this forum as a whole -- is whether or not there are some things that our senses, even extended by our tools, are insufficient to perceive with any confidence.

It slaps doubt upon anything we can possibly present as evidence and keeps the door wide open for superstitious and religious ways.

I'd say it's healthy to maintain some doubt. Without that doubt, the thing you consider knowledge moves closer and closer to being religion in its own right. I'm perfectly content in supposing that modern science is right about the evolutionary origin of humanity, but I don't hold it as certain beyond a doubt. And on a more personal level, I feel pretty safe in assuming that the floor of my second story apartment is as solid as it looks, but I still leave room for doubt on the matter.

Mr. Pessimistic

Mad:

Quote:
The question implicit in this whole thread -- and to some degree, in this forum as a whole -- is whether or not there are some things that our senses, even extended by our tools, are insufficient to perceive with any confidence.

But that does not leave room for us to just invent gods and the supernatural.

I do not buy the rest of your argument, but I may decide to respond in the near future. But it is plain that the rest is just speculative blah blah. Whether or not someone CALLS blue and green by those specific names, the colors still have a different quality on the eye.

Mr. P.

I'm not saying it's usual for people to do those things but I(with the permission of God) have raised a dog from the dead and healed many people from all sorts of ailments. - Asana Boditharta (former booktalk troll)

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

What is all this shit about Angels? Have you heard this? 3 out of 4 people believe in Angels. Are you F****** STUPID? Has everybody lost their mind? - George Carlin

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

MadArchitect

me: I'm not saying that our sense are flawed.
Frank: It sure sounds that way.

To contend that our senses are flawed, I'd first have to establish that they're supposed to be doing something that they're not. My vision is, in that sense, "flawed", because it requires some kind of corrective to bring it to the standard that most humans were evolved to see.

What I'm saying is that the kinds of questions that our senses are being employed to answer are not the sort of problems that they were evolved to deal with. That's only a flaw if you take it as given that humans were evolved to know things like how matter works, what's the origin of life, etc.

AKA, there is no rational belief no matter what information its based off of, or how logically arrived at.

Again, this is a difference in how we conceive of the topic. I don't see reason as some sort of objective knowledge of things. Rather, I see reason as a procedure for elaborating on premises by interrelated, continuous cognitive steps. So a rational belief would be one that derives a conclusion from a stated premise by steps that any rational person could follow. That doesn't mean that the argument is objectively true, only that z follows from a. The truth value of a may still be in question, and that calls z into question by association.

...but that does not automatically mean that our process is fundamentally faulty or untrustworthy.

And I'm not saying that it is. I'm trying to counter a swing in the opposite direction, ie. one that takes that process to be fundamentally trustworthy and essentially infallible as a guide to truth.

Science is a process and the things science offers as theory have been tested literally millions, billions, even trillions of times with the same results. These results have been shown to be universal 100% of the time.

I think you may have an inflated sense of the operation of science. I'd be interested to see some evidence to the effect that any assertion has been scientifically tested even a quarter as many times as you say they've been tested (unless you're counting high school science lab), or that any tests have been made to confirm the "universality" of the results of any scientific theory.

Frank 013

Quote:
Mad
That doesn't mean that the argument is objectively true, only that z follows from a. The truth value of a may still be in question, and that calls z into question by association.

You seem to be assuming that “a” is faulty without any evidence to support that claim.

Quote:
Mad
And I'm not saying that it is. I'm trying to counter a swing in the opposite direction, i.e. one that takes that process to be fundamentally trustworthy and essentially infallible as a guide to truth.

Again, for all we know it might very well be the truth, and even if it isn’t it a far cry more truthful than religion.

In any case trying to claim that “z” is faulty without knowing that “a” is faulty is not a rational argument because “a” does have data to support it.

Any counter claim has to show flaws in “a” before it should be seriously considered.

from my experience most religions try to teach things that are contrary to my personal observations of my reality, science has never done this.

Quote:
Mad
I think you may have an inflated sense of the operation of science. I'd be interested to see some evidence to the effect that any assertion has been scientifically tested even a quarter as many times as you say they've been tested (unless you're counting high school science lab), or that any tests have been made to confirm the "universality" of the results of any scientific theory.

I am counting every lab in middle school and high school, every chemistry set, makeshift lab and professional lab on this planet.

For example, When I was in middle school we did a gravity test, we set up several vacuum chambers and dropped a metal ball and a feather side by side. We witnessed exactly what everyone who conducts this experiment does, the feather and the ball falling at exactly the same speed.

This simple experiment is conducted in classrooms all across the nation and when conducted correctly every class without exception experiences the same phenomena. (universal)

There are other examples such as MOSI (Museum Of Science and Industry) in Tampa that houses similar experimental equipment for use by visitors, some of these experiments can be preformed hundreds of times in a day at a single location.

Other science museums do the same.

And these are only the lab experiments there are countless examples of people taking 2 objects of varing weight and dropping them off of something to see if this gravity theory holds weight. (heh, that works on 2 levels)

Later

MadArchitect

Frank 013: You seem to be assuming that “a” is faulty without any evidence to support that claim.

Why do you keep harping on the word "faulty"? You're like a broken record. I didn't bring that term into play. What I'm saying is that a is arational. Even if a is substantiated by logical argument, it's only substantiated in reference to another alogical premise. That's "faulty" only if you assume that logical arguments should be devoid of any arational premises, and if that's your assumption, then it makes sense to say that there is no logic.

Again, for all we know it might very well be the truth, and even if it isn’t it a far cry more truthful than religion.

You're right. For all we know, it might be the truth. My point is, "for all we know."

For example, When I was in middle school we did a gravity test, we set up several vacuum chambers and dropped a metal ball and a feather side by side. We witnessed exactly what everyone who conducts this experiment does, the feather and the ball falling at exactly the same speed.

The real test of the theory would be to craft a different experiment that tested the same principle. Practicing scientists may repeat a published experiment in order to check the original experimenters results, but if they want to challenge their conclusions or the theories derived therefrom, they devise a new experiment that isolates and tests those conclusions in application. Repeating exactly the same experiment only illustrates the conclusions drawn from that experiment. It tests the repeatability of the experiment, but the theory is an interpretation of phenomenon, and its application across the board depends on the assumption that it is applicable in a variety of situations.


	FORUMS	ABOUT	BOOKS	VIDEOS	TRANSCRIPTS	LINKS	BLOGS	DONATE	CONTACT