When is a Religious Belief Delusional?

[polymath257]

Mathematical objects exist *as language constructs*. If you are claiming that deities only exist in the same way, you might be able to avoid the delusion label.

Platonism was the first major philosophical mistake.

Added: If you pray to the number 2 and think you get an answer, you are delusional. if you think any mathematical object has an intelligence, you are delusional.

I understand your frustration. Theists dragged philosophy and fucked it around like a cheap whore. Math however, is just out of their reach. It's a hard mistress, needs attention and careful thought. I should know. Contrary to theology (lel), where one just makes things as they go.

No person with any basic understanding of math could equate it to a god. It has been the foundation of mankind progress ever since goat herders made marks on sticks to count the lifestock. Way before they were able to write the silly fables of gods.

There is no limit for ignorance. Math requires formal proof and consistence. Its work in process. But then, theists of the delusional kind just piss and shit on everything on their personal path.

It goes even deeper than that. Plato used math as an example of his 'pure forms', suggesting that we don't actually *learn* math as much as we *remember* it. Rather silly on the face of it, actually.

The idea was that math allows us purely intellectual access to a realm of truth that is irrefutable. One of his examples was Geometry (as later written up by Euclid).

Unfortunately for this metaphysics, we learned about 200 years ago that more than one geometry is possible, then more than one number theory, and finally more than one set theory.

We realize today that math does NOT give access to some irrefutable realm, but instead is fundamentally a type of language with certain assumptions made (axioms) and conclusions made from those axioms via assumed rules. Math is more like a game of chess than it is a science like physics.

I'd also point out that the rise of modern set theory and its study of the infinite has refuted *logically* many old claims against infinite regress being illogical, etc. Any time an infinite regress argument is made, it is likely to be faulty simply because it fails to take into consideration our more recent understanding of infinity.

But, no, the whole metaphysics upon which mathematics rests does not and cannot support the extremes required for the existence of a deity. That requires an outmoded philosophical stance based on the ideas of 'necessity' and 'contingency'. if those words are used, you can be almost guaranteed that the underlying philosophy is no longer creditable.

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No, not really.

Morality is based on something, some subjective baseline. Once the baseline is agreed, OBJECTIVE assessments can be made as to morality with regard to that baseline.

So what is the baseline subjectively? The bible? The Koran? Gilgamesh? All of those would have us butchering each other. With the imprimatur of whichever deity.

What Neo is talking about, and what I was talking about, was the ontology or nature of morality; not how you know what is moral.  When you are talking about "objective assessments"  you are talking about something else.

The nature of morality is that a sense of fairness and of justice are part of our genetic heritage (they are seen in other primates also). That is a common thread in humans and then supplies the basis for further extensions of morality to larger and larger groups.