How does one distinguish faith from delusion?

This is a question for all those who claim to have "faith" in something.First definitions:

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Faith - belief that is not based on proof. (dictionary.com)

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Delusion - in psychology, a rigid system of beliefs with which a person is preoccupied and to which the person firmly holds, despite the logical absurdity of the beliefs and a lack of supporting evidence. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008)

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As we can see, both terms involve a lack of evidence and reasoning to support them. A schizophrenic may believe they have voices in their held telling them to do things. The consensus among almost everyone other than the schizophrenic is that the guy is delusion. Yet when someone claims God is speaking to them, it is considered faith.So then, my question to you is this. How do you distinguish between a delusional experience you have had and a religious faithful experience you have had? What criteria do you use?I would prefer no circular arguments if possible (IE I have faith that my faith is not a delusion).Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Tweaked the formatting, including adding the quote boxes.

I think lack of evidence is a much better term because your definition excludes allot of people who should be considered delusional. Nobody can say for sure that a schizophrenic person is not in fact hearing real voices from aliens in his head. There is no way to "know" if those voices are real or a delusion. However, nobody else is hearing these voices and these voices provide no evidence of their existence, so they are considered delusions. Same if a psychotic person claims to have visions of things nobody else sees. These visions are considered delusions. Even if they are not falsifiable(as you cannot prove a negative). Maybe there is a better term to describe this than delusion, if so I would love to hear this.But back to the main point of my post. How do you distinguish a false voice or beliefs from a faithful belief? For instance, if a schizophrenic person claimed to have talked with God, how would you distinguish this as accurate or inaccurate compared to say, if he claimed to talk with rocks or frogs?Edited by themasterdebator, : No reason given.Edited by themasterdebator, : clarity

Thanks, I believe this covers my beliefs very accurately. And the fact is that most major religions belief their faith is an accurate representation of reality.

Do you have anything other than personal incredulity to back that up? I understand why you would think that way. Growing up in a Christian society where religion and its faith are treated as special ideas somehow in a different category than other beliefs may make one recoil at the idea that it is just a delusion, but that does not make it untrue. Most Christians believe their faith is an accurate representation of reality which everyone else should follow, this is a delusion. While someone theoretically could have faith in atheism, atheism is not inherently a faith based idea. Weak atheism, for instance, is most definitely not a faith. Weak atheism is simply the lack of belief in a God. That does not mean they believe God exists, simply that there is no reason to believe he does. I dont know any atheists who 100 percent believe there is no God, most simply find his existence unlikely or have no reason to believe in him. That is not faith. Thus, I dont believe an athiest can accurately be described as delusional or faithful.Negative and positive atheism - Wikipedia

Hi ICANT,You are describing what is known as the Pascal Wager.I like the addressal done of that here.http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/pascal.htmlEssentially, the problem is you are acting like there are only 2 possible options. The Christian God exists or no God exists. Thats simply untrue. There are an infinite number of possible gods. The God that exists could be one that wants us to follow rationality and evidence and punishes faith with eternal damnation. At which point, you have as much, if not more, than I have to lose. And anyway, based on this logic, the Christian God is not the right one to worship. Assuming like most Christians you believe God is just and merciful, then you are going about this all wrong. You should worship a cruel and vindictive God who will inflict infinite suffering on anyone who does not worship him regardless of their actions, because if you are wrong about this god, then you have allot more to lose than if you are wrong about a just and merciful god, who will punish you more lightly. The bible is not that clear about hell in the first place( http://www.what-the-hell-is-hell.com/...ellsEternalDeath.htm) and a just God would likely not inflict eternal torment on people for a finite punishment, but an evil god would. So your best bet is to worship the evil God under Pascal's Wager, because you have allot more to lose if he exists than if God does.

[qs]Well that's a caveat that didn't exist in the OP. As I recall, it was asking about how you tell the difference between faith and delusion.And his response was within that I believe. How do you tell the difference between the delusional KGB person and a christian in regards to faith versus delusion? How do you distinguish between the two? I believe distinguishing the two would be vitally important if someone plans on treating their beliefs as the truth.

Claims without warrants. Once again, personal incredulity is not an argument. Believing your family is the KGB is not a mental illness either. Its simply a delusional idea. As I pointed out earlier, religion seems to be given a special status in society and most of us have grown up influenced by this. What do you mean by "wisdom and discretion"? Are these specific ideas that distinguish faith from delusion or are you just trying to make a subtle ad homenem attack on anyone who thinks they are the same? In debate no idea should be considered too obvious to be open for discussion. Please explain what you mean by these instead of treating it likes its so obvious everyone should agree without you explaining.

Actually, I think it is a very easy line to draw. Verifiable ideas about reality are capable of making accurate testable predictions. Unverifiable events are unable to make any accurate predictions about reality.

Linda, if you have answered his question, I do not see it either. All I see is you evading Stragglers repeated request for a specific criteria for subjective evidence. You say there is subjective evidence separating delusion and faith but are not willing to provide a rigorous specific criteria separating the two. If you feel we are missing it, could you provide some examples? It would be nice to see examples of faith versus delusion with a clearly spelled out difference between the two. Common sense and "wisdom" are not clear differences. Something more specific than that is needed.

I would assume by guessing he means arbitrarily picking an answer on a specific subject matter. The at what is open for you to pick an instance you find that faith has provided a more accurate answer than random guessing. For instance, if one was claiming to recieve visions of if a coin will flip heads or tails. If they are beating 50 percent right then the visions they receive are superior to guessing. You can take any subjective evidence that has any use in the real world and perform a similar test.

Well, why not? I think their is a misunderstanding between value statements and unscientific ones. You could test if he loves his girl friend. Study their interactions, watch body temperature, body language, vocal tones and hormone counts. You could put him through a lie detector test and even put him in situations where his love was tested. While you can't quantify the amount of love he has for her, you could certainly test if he loves her. I really think both of you are wrong because it is certainly possible to test if he loves his girl friend. Honestly, I cannot think of something science is unequipped to test that some other method would do a better job with.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Deleted subtitle.

Is there really is a distinction between the two? How do you differentiate between a religious delusion and faith? As Modulus said earlier, he seriously thought he was talking to angels. Is that faith but not delusion?Other than the religious aspect, how would it be different if he thought he was talking to bunnies or Aristotle? It just seems to me that religion is given this special distinction from other ideas.

Brilliance creates results superior to guessing. There, I just put my finger on it. Its not that hard. Now, thats not to say that a person cannot be both brilliant and insane(Pythagoras believed beans were evil), but a brilliant idea will produce results superior to guessing. An insane idea will produce results equal to or worse than guessing. The Pythagorean Theorum produces great results. The beans are evil idea has not produced anything that great.Edited by themasterdebator, : No reason given.

Why can't they? Are you going to box out any sort of experience that could possible influence the real world? If this experience has any interaction with the observable world in any way then we could empirically verify it. Using the envelope example, if his feeling resulted in more than a 1/10 chance of winning it would be empirically verifiable. The only way it can't be empirically verified is if it is all in your head, which sounds like a delusion to me.

Of course, some times running the same direction as everyone else is a really bad idea(look at the stock market for an example). Of course, the main problem with this is that at one time most beliefs systems were small and did not conform to the larger norm. Christianity, for instance, was at one time a small cult and the majority did not see the same way as them. The same could be said of all religion which have a single founder in them. At one time, consensus pointed away from them. Now, the thing is that truth does not work like that. Whether or not people believe in something has no bearing on if that something exists. Germs existed long before any human discovered it.Furthermore, group pressure can lead to wrong answers on things we should absolutely know are right(http://www.trivia-library.com/...ions-and-group-pressure.htm), how do you think it would effect someone who is unsure about there beliefs?Overall, it seems like a pretty weak method. I can see this only being useful in a situation where there might be a danger in not running, but as the rebuttals to Pascals Wager show this does not apply to the supernatural.Edit: I do see how this could be useful though, but it would be almost impossible to eliminate peer pressure convincing people they had this vision or experience. If we were to pull a group of completely unrelated people and test them in isolation from each other and come up with similar answers, it might be useful as evidence. the problem is that even unrelated people still have the same biological instincts and societal pressures on them. The only real comparison for this we have is to compare societies in isolation to see if they reach the same conclusion and based on that so far they do not. There are similar moral codes of conduct, but vastly different beliefs in the supernatural. Some religions have an afterlife(Greek for instance) while others(Jewish religion for the most of the Old Testament) have no concept of punishment or reward in the afterlife. Most religions do attribute unexplainable phenomana to God, but that would come down to a human predisposition to explain things by any means possible. We have explained most of those phenomina, so that is not a very reliable method.Edited by themasterdebator, : No reason given.