How does one distinguish faith from delusion?

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.

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.

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.

WTF? Message 144I am trying to make my posts shorter rather than have ever increasing in length back and forth replies as has been my past tendancy.Tell me which points of yours you think I have missed and I will address them. All of them.

I don't get what you mean? Are you agreeing that me making things up about material reality is as reliable as others apparently experiencing aspects of material reality by means of a sixth sense? You cannot. In either case. Which is exactly why both are logically equal.Do visions etc. lead to material conclusions that are superior to guessing? Can you make predictions that we can verify in the material world? If not why do you even think they might do with regard to immaterial reality?

OK. Yet another one of those that advocates a from of evidence that both requires an immaterial sixth sense and which is unable to be demonstrated as superior to guessing falls by the wayside.I am amazed that those with such a strong and evidenced position would be so willing to give up on it.

I am not trying to fight you. Or piss you off. You reported me in the problem thread and then signed yourself out of the dabate with a series of laugh and rolleyes emoticons. What reaction did you expect in return? Actually in this thread I have pretty much opened myself up, as a starting point at least, to acknowledging ANY form of evidence that can be both demonstrably detected and demonstrably shown to be superior to blind chance. Even if that means accepting a sixth sense of some sort.These would seem like very obvious bare minimum criteria to qualify as evidence as opposed to reasons.But obviously you disagree. This is of course a possibility that we should all accept and recognise in ourselves.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

And I am saying that this commonality is better explained by objectively evidenced aspects of human pschology and culture. As opposed to an immaterial sixth sense and evidence that is indistinguishable from blind chance.Which of the two do you think is the most rational and evidenced position? Well if your only way to distinguish between your form of evidence and blind chance is to apriori assume that they are different then I would suggest that your position on this is rather weak. Of course you can. People claim to have dreams, visions etc. about all sorts of material things. Winning the lottery or whatever. Do we have any reason to think that such things result in conclusions that are superior to mere chance? If "internal" immaterial visions of the future could be shown to be reliably true then arguably we should have more confidence in similar immaterial visions pertaining to aspects of immaterial reality.Equally if such forms of evidence are known to be utterly unreliable with respect to testable material conclusions why would we think the same forms of "evidence" any better as applied to immaterial entities? You are advocating a form of evidence that cannot be demonstrated as being either detectable or distinguishable from blind chance.I would suggest conviction rather than logic and reason are quite evidently in play here.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Good post. And I have no problem with that in principle in some circumstances.But when the claims in question require not only that we accept this "Consensus gentium" form of evidence but that we accept some sort of immaterial sixth sense with which we can somehow detect non-empirical entities in order that such "evidence" exist Vs empirically testable reasons for the same commonality of internal experiences .......Then I see little difference between intentionally making things up and what all the evidence suggests are equally, if unintentionally, made up things. In terms of the reliability of conclusion at least.Believability between the IPU and other gods may be different. Just like your diagrams. But reliability of conclusion? No.And how much would any of us bet against a suitably charismatic individual given a "blank slate" population being able to inspire faith in the IPU that would not meet the medical criteria of "delusion" and would thus be genuine faith? Would the IPU then be suitably evidenced?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.