How does one distinguish faith from delusion?

If we weren't guessing, in this context, then we wouldn't need the faith... we would know. But that is different from a random guess. But you can't objectively demonstrate the superiority of one subjective conclusion over another. We can all try to figure it out together, but its going to come down to how you feel about the conclusion, yourself, to determine if you're just randomly guessing or not. How's that follow?You keep jumping to your favorite tautology and the 'all A is B therefore all B is A' fallacy.Just because there isn't an objective standard to determine the difference between one of these conclusions and a random guess doesn't mean that all the conclusions are random guesses.

I don't think we can.Similiarly, how do you distinguish brilliance from insanity?But just because we can't put our finger on the difference doesn't mean they are the same.

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.

quote:

---

you evaded Stragglers repeated request for a specific criteria for subjective evidence.

---

I don't see how any can be rigidly defined. I am in all honesty struggling to answer questions which are loaded according to a specific point of view. I like Catholic Scientist's recent responses here and maybe this thread would have been more productive if he'd joined earlier. (I liked the skull avatar BTW!) I was trying with Modulous to address how we can differentiate spiritual experiences from mental illness but we haven't finished that discussion. At the end of the day I think we're going to end up here how we started: there are some who believe that a lack of empirical evidence for the divine means the divine doesn't exist, end of story. There are others who see reasons for the existence of the divine and yes I do believe that we have shared some of those. Sometimes there simply is no possible way to define whether an experience was real or a delusion other than to discuss it with others or make a judgment oneself. It's not very satisfactory for those who want a list of criteria to meet. I guess it doesn't help that my answers are scattered all around this thread in conversations with different people, but it's hard to know what else to do when a thread gets busy. Given the chance, I'd like to carry on talking with Modulous somewhere. Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

I agree with the sentiment, that just because you can seperate them it doesn't mean they are the same. However it still remains that one property of two things being the same is that you can't seperate them.And there are practical implication to consider: if they are to all appearances the same - should we treat people in the same way (minor delusions can be ignored, but as they start to encroach on a person's life and behavour we might want to consider intervening with psychological help? Or if they commit a crime as a result of their faith, should they be tried as insane --even if they are adamant they are not? (For example the Neumann case that recently concluded and other occasions where someone has prayed rather than sought medical help).

There is a difference in the reason. But not in terms of the reliability of the conclusion. It may be the case that reading tea leaves can provide us with essential information about immaterial gods. It may be the case that reading sheeps entrails can do the same? Those who find such things convincing would no doubt make the same arguments you are making about their preferred form of "evidence". I assume that you will be looking avidly at the bottom of your tea cup and taking an unhealthy interest in dead sheep from now on?Seriously - How are these things any less reliable as forms of evidence than the things you are actually proposing? Fine. No argument. Just don't expect me or anyone else making a rational assessment to treat your personally very convincing conclusion as any more reliable than a guess as to what might exist. No more convincing than you would rationally treat the reading of sheep entrails.That is all I ask. That is all I have ever asked.People may have all sorts of reasons for believing in gods. I accept their personal subjective reasons as reasons. But don't tell me gods are evidenced because they quite patently are not. No more so than the Immaterial Pink Unicorn. It is guessing, even if it doesn't feel that way.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

What about dreams?Anyway thankyou CS. Thankyou for having the decency to answer directly. Why will RAZD and others not just say so? Why the evasion? I didn't say you were guessing. I said your conclusions were no more reliable than guesses. Thus calling such things "evidence" is an abuse of the term. The commonality of human psychology is a very very evidenced explanation for such things. Evidenced in such a way as to be far superior to guessing. Look let me make this clear. I DO NOT THINK YOU ARE RANDOMLY GUESSING. However you are indisputably treating subjective reasons for belief that are no more reliable than simply guessing as evidence.You are letting your personal conviction persuade you that you have evidence when in fact you have subjective reasons.If I am given a choice of 10 envelopes of which one contains a million pounds and I make my choice on the basis of a feeling then I have a subjective reason for choosing that envelope. But my reason still gives me no more than a 1 in 10 chance of being right. Reasons are not evidence. Reasons do not result in conclusions that are better than guesses. My feeling was not evidence.Whether you agree or not does that make sense? Well if you can show me another way we can detect reality external to ourselves I am open to hearing it. Specifically one that allows us to somehow detect immaterial gods.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : 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.

I have not asked for a "rigid definition". Just whether or not you do or don't include certain forms of personal experience as non-empirical evidence. Do you include dreams for example? If reliability of conclusion is not your measure of inclusion and exclusion what is?Why does this have to be so hard?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I'm gonna combine the posts.From Message 246But if the conclusions were reliable, then they'd be empirical/objective. How are you measuring the reliability? If I propose that god does exist, how are you going to test my proposal to see if it is reliable or not?Anyways, lets say that they're not less reliable. So what? I don't doubt that those readers might be seeing something real.(I'm agnostic towards them because I honestly don't know. But I can see that they differ from some randomly made-up phenomenon like the IPU. The simple fact that people actually believe in tea leaf reading is more evidence for that being true than something that someone made up that nobody believes in.) Fine, that's fine. And you stop acting like you can rationalize strong atheism with the IPU argument. Oh, wait. Spoke too soon.I have more evidence for god than I do for the IPU. How are you going to measure how much more reliable my conclusion is than a guess?From Message 247Possibly. Because its besides the point. And in the same way that our confirmation bias might cause us to accept too many things, you're denial bias will cause you to oppose too many, and we'll never come to an agreement on what we can and cannot accept. We don't really even have to go down that road for the purpose of the discussion. How do you measure the reliability of the suppositions that we can't even measure in the first place? You can define words however you want if it makes you feel more rational. I don't think so, and I think you're using the term "guessing" a little to loosely, but again, all I see is you trying to rationalize your position. Again you're being a little equivocal with that word "guessing".Lets say I hear a voice inside of me and I believe that it was god. I have evidence to deal with in that I heard the voice. I can use logic and reason to determine that it very well could have been god. And because I am convinced, and with a little faith, I say that I believe it was. How is this the same as taking a random guess? How are you measuring the accuracy to determine that it is no more reliable than a guess? You're letting your personal conviction persuade you that my subjective reasons are not evidence. Sure it makes sense. The way in which your "feeling" causes/allows you to make the decision on which envelope to pick is how it is evidenced. If you are not randomly picking, but instead allowing something else to pick for you, then which envelope you pick is not a guess but has been evidenced. That you only get 1 of 10 right doesn't necessitate that your "feeling" was a delusion. Try.

quote:

---

I didn't say you were guessing. I said your conclusions were no more reliable than guesses. Thus calling such things "evidence" is an abuse of the term. The commonality of human psychology is a very very evidenced explanation for such things. Evidenced in such a way as to be far superior to guessing.

​

quote:

---

But because the explaination seem to be the same as a guess to you does not mean that we are simply guessing.

---

Look let me make this clear. I DO NOT THINK YOU ARE RANDOMLY GUESSING. However you are indisputably treating subjective reasons for belief that are no more reliable than simply guessing as evidence.

​

You are letting your personal conviction persuade you that you have evidence when in fact you have subjective reasons.

---

Three points:1) I believe your definition of "evidence" is too strict. It disagrees with dictionary.com, which defines "evidence" as "ground for belief."2) Even if the only evidence for religious faith were subjective, this would not put it on a par with "guessing." Subjective evidence is stronger than no evidence at all. Yes, subjective evidence can be unreliable, but it is not necessarily so.3) Religious faith generally claims objective as well as subjective evidence. Reducing religious faith to the merely subjective is incorrect.

Are your non-empirical forms of evidence able to derive conclusions that are more reliable than guessing?Are your conclusions more reliable than those that can be derived from reading tea leaves, sheep entrails or cloud formations to determine the nature of immaterial reality?If not then in what way are they superior indicators of reality to these other methods? Or even superior to simply guessing? And there is the problem. Those who do try will no doubt have very convincing experiences. Experiences that cannot logically relate to immaterial entities without invoking an immaterial "sixth sense". Experiences that are as a reliable indicator of reality as is simply guessing.And then you call it evidence and claim it is real. And tell me that I should respect it as such. I am guessing that cloud formations tell us what the Immaterial Pink Unicorn wants us to do?The two are identical in terms of being reliable indicators of reality. Why should I accept yours any more than you accept mine?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

If your grounds for belief are unable to result in conclusions that are superior to guessing then you might as well guess. The terminology used is immaterial. If immaterial subjective evidence cannot be shown to result in conclusions that are superior to guessing then in practical terms it is identical as a form of evidence to simply guessing. I accept that would make a difference (even though I disagree that such evidence for gods exists) but can we deal with one form of evidence at a time?Subjective immaterial evidence and it's equivalence to guessing. Lets concentrate on that first.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Wow... I wrote all that, answered your questions and you pick out just two lines. How disappointing. By what measurement am I going to determine this? How can I tell? Well, the post you replied to explained how it was better than simply guessing and you didn't answer my questions on how we can measure which one is more superior so I don't really know what you want me to do here. Are those even honest quesitons? So you ignore almost all of my post were I explain how I think the above is inaccurate and then you simply re-state your position!?I suppose this is exacly what LindaLou and RAZD were complaining about. Not really. I'm just saying that you shouldn't so desprately try to rationalize your atheism by equating all of the reasons poeple have for believing in god as delusion. You don't know that I cannot experience them and I've explained to you how they differ from guessing and, by definition, a personally convincing reason for a belief is evidence. I don't know, but you just made that up, didn't you? Its not about me providing you reasons to accept my indicator of reality. Its about explaining to you that me simply having this indicator makes my beliefs different from the IPU.You're just trying soooo hard to rationalize your atheism.

On what basis do you conclude that making things up about immaterial reality is less reliable than guessing about aspects of immaterial reality? To you. Yes.But on what rational basis should I accept your immaterial experience over my made-up if both are equally as reliable indicators of reality? Which logically they are.(I could even claim that as we can actually see clouds my evidence is superior to your expereince which requires an immaterial sixth sense of some sort)Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.