How does one distinguish faith from delusion?

Other people's "guesses" are similiar to my own. I think we're on to something actual. How are you measuring that reliablility again?

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.

You've lost me. Sorry.I'm not interested anymore.

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.

Huh?I'm saying that when my and another's "guess" is similar then that adds weight to it possibly being correct. Nope. Us not being able to tell the difference doesn't necessitate them being equal. You can't even measure the superiority. If it could then it would be empirical already. Logic and reason lead us to the consensus that we're all on to something actual.

Oh fuck you asshole.You ignore my explanations and then claim victory because I haven't explained.You define "evidence" to be scientifically verifiable and then say that everything that is not scientifically verifiable is a "guess" so therefore if you can't verify it then there's no evidence and you are guessing.What ever makes you feel like you're being rational You seem very desperate to rationalize your atheism. And even militant in your refusal to even accept other poeple's explaination as a possibility.I think you're the one who is delusional.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Note: 24 hour suspension for this message

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.

It has been noted by many parties that this is actually quite difficult, which is something philosophers of psychiatry have also noted^{1, 2}. Is a delusion not a delusion if it is religious or non-disturbing etc?I'm going to go with the following argument why faith is different from delusion.Underlying conditionA delusion generally has some medical or psychological underpinning. Temporary psychosis, epilepsy, schizophrenia and so on.It is feasible that someone who does not have a medically recognized condition (mental or physical) is also suffering a delusion - but this is a great starting criteria when examining whether there is a delusion going on.Since mental illnesses are defined basically as abnormal and generally negative conditions that affect someone - it can be said that something that is typical mental behaviour of a human is not a mental illness. Thus - most faith is not a mental illness (though I would still argue that it is symptomatic of cogntitive 'holes' common to humans brains that we all fall victim to.)BizarreSpeaking to god or his agents is quite a common experience, although it is a bit odd - it is generally quite normal. So even auditory hallucinations of this nature don't constitute as delusions.However, if the entity being spoken with is a twisted version of a common entity or entirely novel - or normal but in a strange context or it instructs someone to where pink shoes on tuesdays or kill their baby...then this is bizarre enough to count.Significant distressA lot of the time, communicating with God is comforting or leads to happy/warm/loved feelings. Even if this communication is coupled with hallucinations - if they are comforting then they generally wouldn't be classified as delusions. Such communication could evolve into something disturbing, frightening or otherwise threatening. Then it certainly fulfills this criterion of delusion.Excessive preoccupationFaith does often fulfill this criterion. But not always.Resistant to counter argument or evidenceFaith fulfills this one completely.

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So while some faith is delusional - it isn't often delusional in the 'abnormal mental life' kind of way. And it should be noted that what can be delusional about things that also happen to be true, even though normally delusions are defined as being 'false beliefs'.So really, all this talk of ascertaining truth isn't strictly speaking necessary to determining if there is some kind of delusion in play. Obviously all the criterion have some subjective position (what is bizarre enough? how much distress and to whom? How much preoccupation is too much?) but this subjectivity is at least somewhat tempered by empirical study into delusions.I am willing to believe that the question can be answered empirically, but it would be difficult - and some people will remain forever unsatisfied with the results. But as we study brains and how delusions form neurologically we can start to pull apart the differences between strong beliefs which have no empirical support to them (beliefs based on non empirical epistemologies, or simply non standard (either poor or inspired, usually the former )reasoning processes), and delusion - more commonly a pathological condition.It may well turn out that as far as behavioural impacts there is little difference, but handling them will probably require different strategies.I appreciate that some might read this and say "But that was what I was trying to tell you!!". I was reading your words, I assure you. However, much of the discussion centred on establishing the truth behind the beliefs and whether that can be done as a method for seperating delusion from faith.I thought I'd try and at least put forward some of the commonly accepted criteria (which I broadly accept), for determining if someone is delusional as opposed to other form of belief.Ultimately, the layman's understanding of delusion as a 'fixed false belief resistant to change' is useful for layman's conversations but when you start to look at things closer - a number of thorny issues must be dealt with.However, vague handwaving about possible other ways to determine if a belief is 'true' don't cut the mustard. I've managed to more or less defend that there is some difference between delusion and faith, as well as providing some guidance on how to tell the difference where a difference exists using only good old empiricism. I found it easy (if a little time consuming).If anyone has criteria they think is better which is non-empirical, I'm still interested in seeing it.

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¹On the Impossibility of Defining Delusions: David, Anthony S²Beliefs about delusions Bell et al.

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.

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.However It can be trivially shown to be problematic in the exact areas we are discussing. First of all despite the claims that there are commonalities between religions - commonalities are the exception rather than the rule and a good deal of the commonalities that exist now are partially the result of merging cultures thanks to our 'smaller world'. Some other commonalities have been explained by neuroscience, and others can be explained through history (common roots). Most unrelated (or at least very distantly related) religions are significantly different from each other in fundamental ways, even today. The only real commonality is 'there is something going on beyond our normal ken', which is actually true - one such thing is called nonvisible electro-magnetic radiation.However, even easier to demonstrate is with optical illusions. For example, no matter how much I empirically confirm that these two tables share the exact same dimensions as each other - every ounce of my subjective experience says they are different. My subjective impression is very convincingly telling me that there is motion in the picture above. And not only that - but those illusions and others like them 'fool' almost all humans that have ever encountered them. According to this kind of subjective experience + commonality of experience with other people method of ascertaining truth fails here. It is rare that anybody is prepared to argue that the tables are definitely different dimensions and the measurements are just an opinion of choice based on different epistemological starting points.True - technically most people actually 'know' that optical illusions aren't real so it might be counter argued that consensus wins here too - but that is only because optical illusions can be empirically shown to be illusions. Purely cognitive illusions are much more difficult to tackle (not necessarily impossible but we lack enough understanding of the brain to currently do it convincingly enough for most people's taste, I think). What is sufficient is that if we remove the ability to empirically confirm one way or another something like the tables above...there would be a lot (probably nearly all) of people who'd stake their life that the two tables have different dimensions.A lot can be said in favour of a kind of consensus gentium + own experiences method of truth finding, in all honesty. And if we stop and think we can probably think of times we all do it. However, a clear case can be made about its inappropriateness in this kind of situation.Arguments aside - I think you have your answer Straggler, at least from one person - and I think this is what others are trying to argue too. "Clearly IPU is not real - nobody believes it is true - it's ridiculous", is probably something you've read the like of a few times in the past few months. I think that kind of sentence makes sense in light of this epistemological method of subjective experience + how other people interpret this experience.Edited by Modulous, : I was about to lose what I had written so had to post a partial post early.

Perhaps at heart the problem is one of making clear the difference between consensus gentium (aka argumentum ad populum) and a scientific consensus.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

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.

Nice post Catholic Scientist. Indeed. Straggler has made it abundantly clear that he is unwilling to consider anything that violates his worldview.His whole attempt to parse and divide evidence into two categories are clearly attempts to put them in two different piles: (a) those he thinks are valid (conform to his worldview) and (b) those he thinks are invalid (violate his worldview) -- without considering the possibility that the evidence could reflect reality.If he was really interested in understanding my position he would not spend as much time misrepresenting it and denying\resisting understanding it. Shocking. Straggler equivocating again?Obviously subjective evidence IS better than random guessing when it does produce results. That it does not produce results every time means that it is not superior to the scientific method when it can deal with objectivised evidence.In addition subjective evidence can lead one to consider new ideas that would not otherwise arise, and it can very well develop that these ideas are valid even though there is a lack of validation for the intermediate subjective evidence.The issue, however IS off topic on this thread. The fact that Straggler keeps bringing it up, and keeps talking (falsely) about my position (if he doesn't understand it then how can he discuss it with any kind of honesty and validity), just shows that he is obsessed with proving something - something perhaps delusional on his part. Message 262
A conclusion I reached long ago. Strange that many people have this problem with Straggler, and nobody else, nor does anyone have such problems with those who have problems with Straggler. Do you wonder what conclusions would be reached from the objective evidence and empirical evaluation of that evidence of this problem. If someone says they had an experience of seeing an IPU in the woods, then I would be happy to consider further investigation, but if they say that because I saw something unusual in the woods that then I must also consider further investigation of the IPU as a reality, then I will consider them ignorant, illogical and possibly delusional.The IPU argument only works for those people who are convince that it works. I've yet to see\hear\read\whatever any evidence of it convincing someone who wasn't pre-convinced that it was a valid argument. Spent a whole thread on it, mostly wasted by Straggler's obsessions, but certainly an opportunity for someone to have presented evidence that it convinced someone. Curious, isn't it, that people are always getting down on YEC types for trying to redefine words to fit their worldviews, and here we have Straggler doing the same thing. I've noted many similarities between YEC arguments and his in previous threads. It is one of the bits and pieces of evidence of an irrational argument: you don't change the words to make your argument seem rational, you use the words as they are understood and used in the context of the argument, or your argument is logically invalid (improper construction). Good luck. Some people try, some people are trying.My psychologist mom frequently joked that just because you are paranoid, that doesn't mean that you are not being followed.To bring this back into the realm of the topic (something Straggler avoids frequently, as anyone can see by the responses to him trending further and further from the topic), let us consider the evidence of the effect/s of religious experiences versus the evidence of the effect/s of delusional experiences. This is objective evidence that is independent of the value of the subjective experiences involved, and it can be measured against the behavior of people without such experiences.Delusional experiences can lead to anti-social behaviors. Paranoid, schizophrenic, psycho etc. I am unaware (perhaps ignorant) of any beneficial results of delusional experiences -- at best a delusional person is judged to have a "harmless" delusion.Religious experiences can challenge people to lead better lives, be more forgiving of others, and lead to pro-social behaviors (volunteering, caring for others, charities, etc).Then we have cases like the woman that drowns her children to prevent the devil from getting them, because she heard voices from god\angel/s\whatever telling her to do it.When we look at the apparently religious justification for these actions, and then look at the religion to see if that indeed is a promoted behavior, we see that it is not, certainly not for any standard religion. From this we see that it is a delusional effect behavior rather than a religious effect behavior.There are people of faith
There are people with delusionsThey are not the same groups of peopleEnjoy.Edited by RAZD, : added 520148 comments

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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Hi Modulus, I saw your closing comments, good post.I also see that Moose has asked for closing summary positions to be done (Message 230), so I'll take this opportunity to do so. Understood, and I think it can be done, because the experiences affect behavior of the person, and we can see how those behaviors mesh with the religious concepts or delusional behavior. As noted in my response to Catholic Scientist, one of the effects of many delusional experiences is anti-social behavior/s versus the effects of religious experiences leading to pro-social behavior/s. It's not a strict one-for-one comparison but it provides another bit of evidence of each being a spectrum of experiences and behaviors that sometimes cross and sometimes do not cross. If one could measure quantitatively the amount of faith and the amount of delusion, and plot them in relation to their median values, it would appear from these bits and pieces of evidence that what we would have would be something like this: With faith on one axis and delusion on the other, and no clear relationship one to the other. One could overlay my previous table over this graphic:

+faith | +faith
-delusion | +delusion
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-faith | -faith
-delusion | +delusion

With faith on the vertical axis and delusions on the horizontal axis.Of course one of the problems is defining delusion and faith, as LindaLou has pointed out, as they are social definitions - delusion is measured against the society, and faith is measured against the culture (thus distinguishing between faiths and cults, for example) and they are essentially subjective interpretations and value judgements, rather than empirically measured items. Simply that if you can have delusional experiences without religious experiences, and you can have religious experiences without delusional experiences then the two do not correlate. Nor does a priori assuming that all religious experiences are delusional lead to a satisfying answer to the question. Starting from the assumption that all religious people are insane, and then only look for confirmation bias to your a priori assumptions is begging the question. To avoid that path you need to consider -- the open minded skeptic path -- that indeed there could be a difference. I note that you have taken that approach in your summary post.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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• • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •