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Author | Topic: How does one distinguish faith from delusion? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
themasterdebator Inactive Member |
This is a question for all those who claim to have "faith" in something.
First definitions:
quote: quote: 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.
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
There are also many beliefs that cannot be considered delusional because we don't know that they are false. 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
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
I think you are a bit confused as to what is going on. There are people who understand their faith, and understand that it may not be an accurate representation of reality. They find great comfort and self-confidence from their faith. However they do have a healthy understanding on the limitations that their faith can provide for them. No one is calling these people delusional. They tend to use their faith for what it's actually meant for: personal matters. There are other people who believe their faith is an accurate reflection of reality. Without any objective reason to think so. Sometimes with plenty of objective reason to think otherwise. These are the people being called delusional. When someone claims to have an accurate description of reality, and their basis for such a claim is "faith," then their basis is no different from pure imagination. They do not have any verifiable information to rely on, yet they demand that their "faith" be taken as an absolutely accurate model of reality. Such a belief is what's being called delusional. Nobody is negating the healthy, personal, internal approaches and benefits of faith. The term "delusional" is only being used to describe individuals who adamantly believe their faith is an accurate description of reality, and they attempt to force others into thinking the same. 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.
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
Posts: 477 From: Leicester, UK Registered: 09-16-2007 LindaLou Posts Only Message 30 of 36 (519361)08-13-2009 10:51 AM Reply to: Message 26 by Stile 08-13-2009 7:23 AM Re: Internal faith vs. externalized delusion quote:The term "delusional" is only being used to describe individuals who adamantly believe their faith is an accurate description of reality, and they attempt to force others into thinking the same. Hi Stile, Do you think that is accurate though? So the person who is convinced that their family are secret members of the KGB who are out to get them, is in the same category as a Christian who believes in the righteousness of their faith, and in letting others know how they, too, can get to heaven? I had trouble typing that because it's probably as galling to me as it is to you. But IMO "delusional" is too extreme a term. Other words I might personally use are intolerant, ignorant, unthinking, unquestioning. Stripping away all the earthly trappings of religion itself though: holy books, thou shalt/thou shalt not, saints and messiahs, etc -- at the core we've got a belief in a god, gods, something transcendent. 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.
Atheism is faith, too, so be careful. 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
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
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.html Essentially, 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.
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
[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.
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
Wisdom and discretion. If someone honestly had trouble distinguishing between those two examples then they, as well, would probably be considered deluded. Christianity is not a mental illness. 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.
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
What people seem to be wanting here is a very definite distinction between verifiable and unverifiable reality. I think that can be a tricky line to draw. For example, some people believe that their faith is the only "true" faith. These people tend to be frightened and angry, and usually pretty ignorant of the ways of others as well. Should we equate closed-mindedness with delusion? Is it delusional to try to convert others to one's way of thinking? Actually that's what we all are doing in a way, by debating here (hopefully with some open-mindedness mixed in). 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.
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
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.
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
Yet you still haven't explained what you mean by guessing (at what?), so by this point I'm going to assume you won't. There are quite a few people for me to talk to here now so please excuse me if I wait to see something new or original from you before I reply again. 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.
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
I really don't see how this is fundamentally different from the question of whether or not you love your girlfriend. Both are questions of fact. Neither are "scientific" statements, so cannot be tested scientifically. What do you see as the fundamental difference between these two claims of fact?
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.
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
Which comes back to the question of distinguishing those with +faith+delusion from those with +faith-delusion, rather than lumping all +faith into the +delusion category. 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.
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
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.
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
Although, since the results can't be empirically verified, if you only accept empirical verification as the method to measure the value of the explanation, then you're never going to see the results as anything better than a guess. 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.
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themasterdebator Inactive Member |
epistemology Hi Straggler, It doesn't seem (to the likes of us) like anyone could seriously propose a method of establishing truths about the world in this fashion, but Consensus gentium is essentially a potential criterion of truth. This is one of the non scientific ways you've been asking for for establishing if a belief is delusional or not. Of course, you can argue several points: 1) It is empirical (knowing what other people think requires gathering data about other people's thoughts) 2) It is unreliable - sometimes it makes sense to assume that if everybody is running south it might be a good idea to do likewise even if you don't know what is north. {to be completed} 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.
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