Theism is literally childish

[emjay]

As I just said, some people display delusional traits regarding their beliefs. Belief in god itself cannot be said to be delusional because it's not proven that god doesn't exist. The only people that might say that are gnostic atheists but even then it's still subjective opinion. So as I said, no conclusions can be drawn from it, but nonetheless it's hard to ignore.

-that's not at all why it isn't delusional.  Supposing god did exist and did talk to people, that doesn't mean that's he's talking to Joe T Crackpot, specifically.

If an entire community believed in a literal santa clause but not jesus, and a person in that community believed that santa clause was watching him...and knew when he was sleeping, and knew when he was awake......and knew if he'd been bad or good, r was somehow speaking to him.....

...that wouldn't be delusional either.  However, believing that jesus was or knew any of the above, would be.

It's just an issue of deference to what otherwise delusional beliefs can be expected.  The people who classify these things weren;t looking to write a treatise on the nature of the beliefs themselves, or whether or not there was a god or a santa clause, they were looking for a way to spot patterns of behavior or thought that might cause dysfunction, disorder.  In a santa clause or god believing community, god and santa delusions are neither.

So, consider what a believer is retreating into...when they retreat into the classification of a delusion.  They can only be saying that their delusions are common and expected.  Yeah....no shit.

Okay... fair enough. But what I basically mean is as soon as confirmation bias... banging the same drum regardless of what anybody says etc... and, la la la-ing, and special pleading come into play, then those are behaviours associated with delusional thinking... ie clinging to a belief despite overwhelming and clear evidence to the contrary - and as such are plenty enough to make me realise that it is utterly pointless to even engage in debate with some theists who come here, on those grounds because whatever is said, will simply not be heard. That's why there's no point to me in arguing with Little Rik or MK... and even a few atheists.