At what point does faith become insanity?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Yeah, thread's gone to hell anyway. Ya'll can thank me later.

[Fake Messiah]

Yeah, thread's gone to hell anyway.

It could not have gone to a nonexisting place. Which reminds me that faith becomes a mental aberration when it strays out of the realm of the possible (an idea for which there is no supportive OR refutative evidence) and into the realm of delusion (a fixed false belief held rigidly in the face of clear evidence of its falsity).

[HappySkeptic]

There was a brief time when I was a True Believer. I consider it a time of insanity.

[emjay]

There was a brief time when I was a True Believer. I consider it a time of insanity.

In my own case I look back on it as a time of stubborn delusion. I still remember the frustrated eye-rolls of atheist acquaintances at school, one in particular, as whatever they said washed right over me and didn't make a dent. I sometimes wish to this day that I could meet that guy again and say 'you were right, and I was an idiot'.

[Belacqua]

There was a brief time when I was a True Believer.  I consider it a time of insanity.

In my own case I look back on it as a time of stubborn delusion. I still remember the frustrated eye-rolls of atheist acquaintances at school, one in particular, as whatever they said washed right over me and didn't make a dent. I sometimes wish to this day that I could meet that guy again and say 'you were right, and I was an idiot'.

May I ask about your time of delusion? I wonder if in your True Believer days you were a member of a True Believer group. Were you raised that way? Or maybe recruited? 

I'm asking because this goes to what I was saying earlier about beliefs being a social thing. If you believe what the other members of your society believe, then I don't think we can say you're insane, even if the beliefs look crazy to us now. 

America is probably unusual in that we have two very different societies existing in the same space. So if some significant percentage of the students in your school are fundies, but you also have respectable people who roll their eyes at fundie beliefs, then there is bound to be frustration. I'd imagine it's also easier to switch from one group to another, because it means leaving one existing group for another. It's not like you have to move to another country or something. 

I recall beliefs I had and things I said when I was really young that seem wildly wrong to me now. Life teaches you things. But I wouldn't say I was insane for those beliefs, because they were in fact well-accepted in the place where I was.

[no one]

I can only imagine there is a sliding scale, depending on the weight of your family's faith.

For instance, the insanity sets in before you can crawl in the Hovind household.

[The Grand Nudger]

The manson girls fit into their society too. Couldn't possibly say there was anything askance there, huh.

[emjay]

In my own case I look back on it as a time of stubborn delusion. I still remember the frustrated eye-rolls of atheist acquaintances at school, one in particular, as whatever they said washed right over me and didn't make a dent. I sometimes wish to this day that I could meet that guy again and say 'you were right, and I was an idiot'.

May I ask about your time of delusion? I wonder if in your True Believer days you were a member of a True Believer group. Were you raised that way? Or maybe recruited? 

No, it looks like I got the wrong end of the stick there, my mistake; I didn't know there was a specific group called "True Believers", I just thought he was talking generally as in 'I was a true/strong believer once', and just recounting my experiences of the same. I was whatever denomination my parents were when I was growing up, which was Baptist and/or Pentecostal, with a helluva lot of tele-evangelism thrown in (they changed churches a lot), I don't really know the difference. So not recruited, just raised that way.

I'm asking because this goes to what I was saying earlier about beliefs being a social thing. If you believe what the other members of your society believe, then I don't think we can say you're insane, even if the beliefs look crazy to us now. 

America is probably unusual in that we have two very different societies existing in the same space. So if some significant percentage of the students in your school are fundies, but you also have respectable people who roll their eyes at fundie beliefs, then there is bound to be frustration. I'd imagine it's also easier to switch from one group to another, because it means leaving one existing group for another. It's not like you have to move to another country or something. 

I recall beliefs I had and things I said when I was really young that seem wildly wrong to me now. Life teaches you things. But I wouldn't say I was insane for those beliefs, because they were in fact well-accepted in the place where I was.

In my case I don't think I was 'insane' during that period, just delusional. A delusion to me just means a set of beliefs, stubbornly held, and largely resistent to reason/outside influence, primarily through massive amounts of confirmation bias. The same thing can happen in a mafia game, but I wouldn't (necessarily) call it insane.

In my school, in Britain, theists were a minority. I don't remember any of my friends or classmates being theists, so I was the odd one out in that regard. So from my classmates perspectives, I guess I arguably could've appeared pretty insane, but from a different relative baseline, that of a Britain where my parents beliefs were/are pretty common/standard, if technically in the minority, less so. I can't really speak for America, never having lived there, with religion being so ubiquitous in one way or another, such that the only way to get anything done or be heard seems to be to join or start a religion/church. That's a very different baseline for comparison.

[Belacqua]

No, it looks like I got the wrong end of the stick there, my mistake; I didn't know there was a specific group called "True Believers", I just thought he was talking generally as in 'I was a true/strong believer once', and just recounting my experiences of the same.

Oops, sorry, I think I was misleading there. I don't think there's a group called "True Believers," though of course they all think they're true believers. I assumed you meant you were just enthusiastic about your beliefs -- so no issue there. 

In my case I don't think I was 'insane' during that period, just delusional. A delusion to me just means a set of beliefs, stubbornly held, and largely resistent to reason/outside influence, primarily through massive amounts of confirmation bias. The same thing can happen in a mafia game, but I wouldn't (necessarily) call it insane.

I think this is the point I want to emphasize. Being really really wrong is not the same as being insane. Anybody who's raised that way, who has heard it from birth, is reasonable to believe it -- whether they're reasonable to KEEP believing it or not is of course a different issue. 

In my school, in Britain, theists were a minority. I don't remember any of my friends or classmates being theists, so I was the odd one out in that regard. So from my classmates perspectives, I guess I arguably could've appeared pretty insane, but from a different relative baseline, that of a Britain where my parents beliefs were/are pretty common/standard, if technically in the minority, less so. I can't really speak for America, never having lived there, with religion being so ubiquitous in one way or another, such that the only way to get anything done or be heard seems to be to join or start a religion/church. That's a very different baseline for comparison.

I've heard that Britain is overall less religious than the US. And of course the US history with Christianity is more Puritan and evangelical from the beginning, probably. In England there are socialist Christians and apparently less of the Jesus + Capitalism + guns = freedom sort of unpleasantness. 

I'm so old that when I was growing up religion was less of an issue in my American hometown. Probably 99% identified as Christian but the Moral Majority and others hadn't yet weaponized it politically. It was still considered impolite to talk religion or politics. My dad was a left-wing atheist and also City Manager for decades, but I suspect things have changed so much that he wouldn't be welcome in the government any more.

[emjay]

No, it looks like I got the wrong end of the stick there, my mistake; I didn't know there was a specific group called "True Believers", I just thought he was talking generally as in 'I was a true/strong believer once', and just recounting my experiences of the same.

Oops, sorry, I think I was misleading there. I don't think there's a group called "True Believers," though of course they all think they're true believers. I assumed you meant you were just enthusiastic about your beliefs -- so no issue there. 

Ah, right    No harm done though.

In my case I don't think I was 'insane' during that period, just delusional. A delusion to me just means a set of beliefs, stubbornly held, and largely resistent to reason/outside influence, primarily through massive amounts of confirmation bias. The same thing can happen in a mafia game, but I wouldn't (necessarily) call it insane.

I think this is the point I want to emphasize. Being really really wrong is not the same as being insane. Anybody who's raised that way, who has heard it from birth, is reasonable to believe it -- whether they're reasonable to KEEP believing it or not is of course a different issue.

Yeah, that seems fair enough. I consider myself to have been deluded when I was a smoker as well, given all the beliefs and fears that maintained it, but not insane. As a general rule I'd say it usually takes looking at it from the outside-in, ie from a position of total freedom from whatever mindset it is, to truly recognise how deluded it was. It's much harder from within, while under its influence, and especially if it's let's say 'normalised' within a group you are part of. Such that the more insular that group is, and the more let's say 'co-dependence', there is, the harder it is to escape its influence. I was relatively lucky in my case regarding religion, because it was ultimately cognitive dissonance that released me from that mindset, and once out it was easy to see it for what it was, just the same as when I later quit smoking.