When is a Religious Belief Delusional?

[Angrboda]

@Jorg

We share that tick with qualitatively dumb abstraction systems of all description.  If some input (or series of inputs) is labeled as x (in case of believers "god") then regardless of whether those inputs are firing in error or are actually not, in an external sense, x "god" - the system takes the product x as inviolable truth from which it operates, not a conclusion it works too.  It can't do otherwise.

While I have no way of knowing this, and we have no way of determining so at present - the concept of and belief in god, from a functional standpoint (and not just this concept but any concept) may be as simple as a label for the output of a gate.  A river of impulse.  I sometimes like to remind myself of that, when I'm considering disparate mythologies and trying to come up with a common thread.  Dumb machine may be overthinking the operation of dumb machine.  Any arbitrary input can satisfy the function of being labeled as such-and-such, and by simple virtue of having been labeled it will present itself as religious conviction does in human beings.

Just as I can rig my pc to recognize the "k" keystroke as an "x", through programming -or- hardwiring.....or unintentionally as a defect of both/either.  Delusion requires no grander explanation than this, even if the experience of the delusion is orders of magnitude more grand that it's functional explanation.  Consider a person who thinks that an inch is precisely half as long as it is and how that explodes into a vast and wild series of misconceptions about the reality around them.  

-a potential innocent cause.

I'm well aware of the points you mentioned, yet in my view, religious belief goes beyond that. It's not simply a matter of being biased in favor of your own opinions, theists have a surety and certainty about their religious belief which goes beyond that, even with respect to other beliefs they hold. I can accept the Republican view point without considering it deluded. Religion goes far beyond the ordinary biases and perspective dependent facts. I could probably talk more if needed, but I have a long history of thinking about the way bias and belief and such works in all people, religious or not, and there's something more going on in religion which isn't accounted for, say, the belief that Republican policy and Trump are right, and liberals out to lunch. There's a manic attachment to their belief which is unusual. Is their claim that they "know" that God exists different. I think it is. At the very least, it has a different source than the certainty attached to other opinions, likely based on selective interpretation of personal experience. That on the face of it is neither here nor there, but the reasoning involved tends to further the case for delusion, rather than weaken it. As a former Hindu, I know what that type of reasoning is like, and in hindsight, it's clearly problem behavior, a la Skinner's pigeon's. (I responded without reading your whole post. I may have missed the mark, but I think my point is relevant. I'm not sure I follow your overall point. I'll give it another look later, maybe. Only thing that pops to mind is that the behaviors may be inevitable because of certain factors, that doesn't justify our grouping those behaviors with ones we characterize as rational, nor does it ameliorate any potential negative effects stemming from that rather unique cascade of effects. I can understand that a person from a broken home may be more likely to commit crimes, that doesn't in and of itself give us a reason to just dismiss it.)

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-I'd add to the above that this is part of why I appreciate presuppositional apologetics.  

From an academic standpoint, it's blatant knob polishing...but from a human standpoint, it's more authentic with regards to the nature of their belief.

I don't know about that. Still struggling with your ideas a bit, but if that were true, it should have propped up sooner and been more mainstream.