How does one distinguish faith from delusion?

Hi Bailey aka weary, welcome btw to the fray. I've been a member of a science-fiction writing club - does that qualify?One of the problems with your question is what you mean by "non-evidence" -- I think what you are really asking is whether the determinations are delusional if they are reasonable (to you) or unreasonable (to you). Framed this way, I think you'll find the question answers itself.Enjoy.

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Do you agree that purely deistic non-interfering, non-interacting immaterial gods are necessarily unevidenced by any form of personal expereince that is reliant on our material senses? You seemed to initially agree and are now subtly changing the subject. Do those who believe in deistic non-interfering, non-interacting immaterial gods believe in souls? I don't know. It is an interesting question.The obvious question to ask you here is on what basis you conclude that an immaterial component to humanity exists? And is this unique to humanity? On what evidence do you make this conclusion? Or is this belief itself unevidenced and thus delusional? Well then he is not immaterial is he? He is flipping between material and immaterial.Why is he only materially detectable in individual, single isolated experiences that are immune to investigation of any sort? Why does he reveal himself in such a way as to be best rationally explained by delusion? Well that is a question for you and your priest..... Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

How about - On what basis do I conclude that the experience in question possibly relates to anything external to my own mind? Do I have the means of physical sensory perception for this to be an experience of something genuinely external to me?Is that not a fairly basic question that any meaningful philosophy of evidence must ask?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

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Do you agree that purely deistic non-interfering, non-interacting immaterial gods are necessarily unevidenced by any form of personal expereince that is reliant on our material senses? You seemed to initially agree and are now subtly changing the subject.

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I agreed to something similar to this (without the word "deistic") in Message 132. Then you changed the subject in Message 133 by omitting the qualifiers "non-interfering, non-interacting", which caused me to respond differently in Message 134.You've mentioned the concept of a "deistic non-interfering, non-interacting immaterial god" at least twice now--why do you see such a hypothetical god as so significant? (I really don't see the point of a truly "non-interfering, non-interacting god" who either does not or cannot affect the material world. Why would anyone want to worship such a weak, distant deity? Why even consider him any more of a god than Dawkins' cosmic teapot?)And what bearing does any of this have on the subject of the thread? How do these hypotheticals help us to distinguish between faith and delusion?

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Further, if this immaterial God is truly the creator and sustainer of all that is material (i.e. the Christian view of God), then can't He interact with the material world (and our material senses) as well?

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Well then he is not immaterial is he? He is flipping between material and immaterial.

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No, there is no flipping between material and immaterial implied in my comment. The God of the Bible is "immaterial" but is not the "non-interfering, non-interacting" god that you have hypothesized above.Edited by kbertsche, : No reason given.Edited by kbertsche, : No reason given.

Straggler, let's make sure we stay focused on the topic here. While this discussion is going in interesting directions, foremost in my mind is (the what should now be obvious, fact,) that "delusion" is a subjective judgment, based on cultural norms and personal beliefs about where the ultimate truth lies. I'm going to get into philosophy a little more here in order to show that "where the ultimate truth lies" has been debated for centuries. The things that you and I believe are championed by some and decried by others -- but they are epistemologies -- ways of knowing, rather than the truth itself (if indeed you believe that to be an objective thing).First of all, it's sloppy to equate rationalism with empiricism. While these two epistemologies work well to enable the process of science, they are not the same thing, and different Enlightenment philosophers are credited with their modern descriptions. A rationalist believes that reason leads to the truth via the process of logical deduction. Knowledge is obtained a priori, independent of experience (e.g. all bachelors are unmarried). Positivism is an extreme form of empiricism, though often the two are equated. For the positivist, knowledge is obtained a posteriori, dependent upon experience or empirical evidence (e.g. some bachelors are very happy). Immanuel Kant (A priori and a posteriori) said, "Although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience." The article goes on to say,

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According to Kant, a priori knowledge is transcendental, or based on the form of all possible experience, while a posteriori knowledge is empirical, based on the content of experience. Kant states, "... it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion)."[3] Thus, unlike the empiricists, Kant thinks that a priori knowledge is independent of the content of experience; moreover, unlike the rationalists, Kant thinks that a priori knowledge, in its pure form, that is without the admixture of any empirical content, is knowledge limited to the deduction of the conditions of possible experience. These a priori, or transcendental conditions, are seated in one's cognitive faculties, and are not provided by experience in general or any experience in particular.

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So as I said previously, while rationalism and positivism are useful in science, rationalism is an epistemology that can be independent of empirical evidence. In its pure form it also gives people rather more credit than you do for possessing some innate faculties with which to gain knowledge. I believe RAZD has been making a similar argument here; namely, that rationalism can be suitably applied in situations where empiricism cannot be. Mycroft Holmes sat in his armchair solving Holmes' cases (and other problems for the British government) while Holmes did the empirical work of finding evidence. Mycroft didn't need that evidence because his own chain of reasoning usually proved to be correct. Of course it's an anecdote from fiction, but it illustrates these two principles at work.Expanding our scope outwards, we find that there are still more epistemologies to choose from. Hermeneutics involves interpretation theories that concern the meaning of written texts. These theories focus on the relationships found between the author, reader and text. They can be viewed as a mixture of science and art. Solipsism had its Enlightenment proponent in Descartes:

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The foundations of solipsism are in turn the foundations of the view that the individual's understanding of any and all psychological concepts (thinking, willing, perceiving, etc.) is accomplished by making analogy with his or her own mental states; i.e., by abstraction from inner experience.

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In other words, the only thing we can be sure of is that we have a consciousness which perceives. An extreme solipsist would believe that this therefore is the whole of reality, and all else is a construct of the self. I doubt if you would find many people who subscribe to this view, but it does raise interesting questions -- again, some of which RAZD has been discussing. We experience reality through perceiving, and everyone has their own way of doing this. What's more, the very nature of an objective reality is questioned. (i.e. RAZD's discussion of assumptions that the table and chairs will be there when we come back, and we can feel sure that they will support weight just like they have done in the past.)We also see some interesting philosophical systems stemming from solipsistic concepts. From the same link as above, idealism:

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Idealists,[4] on the other hand, believe that the mind and its thoughts are the only true things that exist. This doctrine is often called Platonism[5] after its most famous proponent. The material world is ephemeral, but a perfect triangle or "love" is eternal. Religious thinking tends to be some form of idealism, as God usually becomes the highest ideal (such as Neoplatonism).[3][6][7] On this scale, solipsism can be classed as idealism, specifically subjective idealism.

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If you believe that both ideals and an objective reality exist and that both can be known, you are employing Cartesian dualism:

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There is another option, of course: the belief that both ideals and "reality" exist. Dualists commonly argue that the distinction between the mind (or 'ideas') and matter can be proven by employing Leibniz' principle of the identity of indiscernibles. This states that two things are identical if, and only if, they share exactly the same qualities, that is, are indistinguishable from each other. Dualists then attempt to identify attributes of mind that are lacked by matter (such as privacy or intentionality) or vice versa (such as having a certain temperature or electrical charge).

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This gets interesting when you try applying solipsism to the concept of the divine. What if God-consciousness is the real and only consciousness, and everything else is its construct? You get something similar to pantheism, which is the belief that everything is God and part of God.Branches of Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism hold the idea that the ultimate reality is the unity of the self and the universe. The belief that everything has a separate and independent existence from us is called maya, the world of illusion; and the process of our belief in that illusion creates samsara, the world of suffering. The process of moksha, release and enlightenment, frees us from this illusion. Hindus believe that we are reincarnated on the wheel of samsara until we learn this ultimate lesson.So how do you choose which system to personally subscribe to? You can't invoke logic or empiricism because they are only some of the things on the menu; the menu itself transcends them. It actually helps to read the menu first so that you have an awareness of what there is to choose from. There's a lot more on offer than what I've stated briefly here.One more thought I'd like to leave you with. If you are an empiricist then you must believe that we can find the answers to questions by hypothesising, testing and observing. Please tell me how you would propose to do this for the following questions:Is there a god?Is there a purpose to our existence; and if so, what is it?Is there any such thing as free will?Does Ultimate Truth exist? And if so, can we know its nature? And if so, what is it?Am I in love? (asking oneself)Enjoy.

It's a good question. An even better question is; "Is atheism a delusion?"Is it really logical and realistic to believe that organisms came from a soup and that natural processes are more mindful and clever than a mind with intelligence? Certainly counter-intuitive at the very least.Also, God is only an "absurdity" to one particular group of people, called "atheists".How do you distinguish between subjectively absurd and objectively absurd, when logic nor science favour either God nor Godlesness?I'm afraid it is not a simple topic.Do I hold that I might hold myself as delusional? No - only I can know whether I am subject to delusion. If I base my actions on my beliefs and the results match with them, am I not being practical? Wouldn't it be illogical to disregard a belief which is constantly proved as relevant to reality?

But your god (Abrahamic) is only recognized by Christans, Jews & Muslems. People of other Religious groups don't accept your god any more than we Atheists do.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

I've suffered from delusions. Not in a 'religion is a delusion' sense of the word, but 'invisible agents are plotting my demise and watch my every move via reflective surfaces' kind of delusion. I had a pile of evidence based on personal experience, gut feelings and an inner voice that suggested that these agents were real. Mostly I thought they were malevolent but sometimes I thought there was a grand purpose behind their torments.How is a person to discriminate between their personal experiences et al leading to delusion or being true? I am convinced now that these experiences were a temporary (lasting about a year) bout of paranoid delusions. At the time, I felt quite the opposite.As an external observer how would you discriminate between my beliefs then and faith based belief in entities such as ghosts, angels, demons or gods? Before you ask: I visited these entities, and had a brief conversation with them. Sometimes they would give me sage wisdom for guidance in life, sometimes they would give me mental tasks such as cleaning out an (imaginary) room. I even saw with my own eyes (so I thought) the device they used to spy on me (it was a rectangle about the same dimensions as 'the obelisk' set into a cloudy floor which they stood around).I have a feeling that some people think that delusions are 'obviously delusional'. They aren't to the people who are deluded.Delusions protect themselves with rationalisations, halucinations, confirmation bias, filtering out contradictory information etc etc.Having had powerful delusions, and deep religious faith - I struggle to differentiate them in any way other than in social acceptability. Before my delusions, the role of the twelve demon/angel entities was played by God and Jesus who would offer advice, comfort, love, reassurance as well criticize shameful thoughts and deeds and be constantly watching me (though they didn't need reflective surfaces so it was kind of more oppressive).Study real delusions - not the two dimensional "I'm Napolean" Hollywood movie delusions, and those that suffer from them - maybe even take some powerful hallucinogens or other psychoactive drugs, read about the psychology studies surrounding such mental health problems. Whatever you do, become familiar with what a delusion is and then try and explain what makes it different from religious faith.The only thing I can think of is that religious faith is commonly less powerful than delusions. People can 'turn it down' or even 'off' a lot more readily than delusions can be.Maybe a delusions is an erroneous belief that you convinced yourself was true whereas faith is an erroneous belief that others believed in before you so you feel comfortable following suit so in a sense faith is a belief that the actions of other people as well as your own experiences has convinced you was true? Maybe this explains why religious faith tends to be a bit weaker - there isn't generally an underlying mental problem causing the issue - just a universal frailty of human psychology? Sorry Mike - there are lots of people who aren't really qualified to determine if you are deluded. The least qualified person is yourself. It is likely that you know someone with schizophrenia. When they are having an episode, ask them if they are delusional - what do you expect the answer would be?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Hi Modulous,Thanks for your honesty. I take on board your point that it can be difficult for a person to know what's real and what isn't. If you read my previous post here, even intelligent, educated, and (to all intents and purposes) sane people debate about this. My general answer to you is what I have been saying here: that the judgment that someone is deluded is a subjective one based on cultural norms and a belief in what the truth is, if you believe that to be an objective thing.Different cultures would probably have dealt with your situation in different ways. Perhaps a shaman would have helped you, or you might have been considered to have talent in that area yourself. In some aboriginal cultures, future shamen are often identified by such experiences and they are helped to get both feet back on the ground so that they can function in the world and receive training. This idea might be very distasteful to you but I'm just highlighting some alternative possibilities. You mention trying hallucinogens, but again some native cultures use those as stepping stones to spiritual experiences. Our empiricist/rationalist society might judge those visions to be meaningless dreams caused by chemicals in the brain, but how can we really be sure? For that matter, how can such epistemologies enable us to be sure that we understand objective reality? If we lived in the Matrix we'd likely never find out.I've spoken to others who have had hallucinations, schizophrenic episodes, whatever you want to call them. These are often painful or embarrassing experiences that they want to forget. I suppose I would just suggest that if one is willing to consider what happened more closely, maybe there are some genuine messages to be learned as well. Who's to say that something wasn't communicating with you? Or that you were getting some information from your subconscious? Whatever the nature of what happened to you, I would guess that it was highly personal.So who is to judge whether someone is delusional? I've suggested in other posts that a group of people representing different cultures, beliefs, experiences and epistemologies is ideal. Unfortunately this does not happen. In our society you would be judged by psychiatrists who will give you a label such as "schizoid" or "bipolar" and give you drugs. Some people are happy with this. Others suffer from it.I guess I'd conclude by stating what my sister-in-law said last night when she was visiting; she is a scientist and I was discussing some of the issues from this thread with her. While empiricism is crucial for her job, she willingly admits that there's a lot we don't know, and today's paranormal/religious/unexplained phenomena could be tomorrow's science (as has been the case many times in the past).Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

Many of the explanations you threw out there, were ones that at one time or another I geniunely believed to be true. Indeed - the experience led me to seek out methods of astral communication etc etc, in an attempt to 'thwart' the entities.Apart from all of that - the major issue is that it significantly impacted my life. I took actions that I would not have done otherwise. Some people are driven to murder or suicide by faith based beliefs, not just the more classic delusional beliefs such as paranoia.Of course, it could be that in my specific case I was geniunely gifted with communication from 'the other side' or 'a higher plane' or what have you. And yes, in another culture I may have been followed as a Boddhisatva, a Sannyasin or a shaman.However, it seems to me likely that not all such experiences are spiritual or what have you and that it might be an idea to develop a tactic for discrimination or dealing with this ambiguity.You seem to be arguing that we can't know with any reasonable confidence if someone is deluded or enlightened. Do you think that the man's wife really was a hat? It depends what you mean by 'sure'. I think that before accepting any proposition there should be some way of verifying it independent of the conception thereof, that it leads to conclusions about the way reality works that are reliable and so on. Otherwise, the proposition could simply be a random idea we pulled out of a hat. It seems daft to accept a random idea we pulled out of a hat simply on the basis that it could be true and that we can't definitively rule it out. If we used this methodology we would have major problems with resolving conflicting ideas (all currently unobserved entities are green (and revert to their 'correct' colour upon being looked at) versus all currently unobserved entities are black). Right - nor can we know if we are subject to Descartes' evil genius or any other similar concept. What we can do is try and understand the construct that we experience and develop methodologies to do so.Since we have experiential knowledge that people can be completely convinced of falsehoods (A large number of victims of miscarriages of justice were convicted on the grounds of an eye witness identification eg., Ronald Cotton^* as well as controlled scientific experiments showing the phenomenon is reliably repeatable), it seems a bit premature to believe that because someone adamantly believes something to be the case, without being able to show why it is the case beyond themselves, that we should think their experiences are gospel. If I understand you right, nobody can since it is impossible to determine what a delusion is versus a vision quest or other such spiritual event. And what if someone's experience falls outside of present cultures but would happily fit into a culture that has now passed - or a culture that has yet to be (what about a cultural pioneer, someone who may be the start of a new religious or cultural movement) - who would be on your delusion jury that would speak for them? The only way to represent all cultures, beliefs and experiecnes is to have every single human being that has ever, or will ever exist on the jury at the same time.In the meantime this delusional/enlightened person could be sexually abusing children under the belief that it is a rite of passage that is required to ensure their soul fixates to their body and is ritualistically protected against impurities.If we stipulate for the argument that they geniunely believe this to be the case - is it a delusion or a faith? What is the difference when it comes to dealing with it? I get the impression you don't think there is any difference.

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^*The victim was raped, and studied the face of her rapist deliberately so she could track him down. Ronald Cotton was arrested and she identified him as the attacker, by the time the trial began she was convinced it was him. Ronald Cotton later met a man in prison who looked more like the photo-fit than he did who was in prison for a very similar crime. At appeal, the victim had the opportunity to see Ronald Cotton and the other man and she still identified Ronald Cotton as the rapist. DNA evidence later confirmed that the second man, Bobby Poole was the rapist all along, and this was corroborated by the fact that he was heard bragging of committing the crime to other inmates. I believe it was on US TV recently. A friend of mine has been a victim of a similar miscarriage of justice (a single witness identified him from an incident 12 years ago, no corroborating evidence, still convicted).

As a person with "faith", you may think non belief in a god is "counter-intuitive", but that is not at all how I or other atheists would see it.
Your beliefs and faith do not trump what others believe, no matter what you think. The problem I see with you and your views is that you totally discount others that have beliefs different than yours. You make blanket statements based upon your world view. Another statement with no support. You may feel there is a relevance to your reality. That does not mean it is truly relevant or that others feel it is relevant.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

This is a very good point. In order to get a grasp of how the brain can make people believe or think many strange things, everyone should read the books by Oliver SacksThe brain is a strange and wonderful thing. For many reasons it can distort and alter reality and our perceptions of it.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Much like RAZD you seem simply unable to specify the exact nature of immaterial "evidence" that lies at the heart of your position.For anything to qualify as evidence it must reliably and demonstrably lead to conclusions that are superior to randomly guessing.What specifically are the forms of personal experience you are citing as evidence in favour of immaterial concepts and do they meet this criteria? I don't think that strictly I am. It is you who keeps describing me as such. Not me. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

If a god cannot logically be evidenced in any way then having any confidence in the existence of such a thing is delusional. Particularly given the highly objectively evidenced fact that humans are prone to such delusions even when there is contradicting evidence. Really? Material senses can only detect material aspects of material reality. So are you saying that people who claim to have had audio-visual experiences of God/Jesus/Mary/Angels have got it wrong? That they have in fact not "seen" or "heard" what they claim to have seen or heard?Are these experiences material? Or not?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

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If a god cannot logically be evidenced in any way then having any confidence in the existence of such a thing is delusional.

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It appears that your agenda is to argue against specific evidences for a god and try to conclude that all religious faith is delusional. That's not the topic of this thread.The topic of this thread is the broader, philosophical issue of how to distinguish faith from delusion. This question applies not only to religion, but also to science and other endeavors.