Let's be biblically literary

[Acrobat]

But what if the nature of the barrier between us and the recognition of the truth of salvation, is akin to a delusion? This is what atheists often accuse theist of when it comes to the particular truth of reality they possess but religious people don't. That it's a delusions that keep the religious from recognizing it. In fact atheists often speak of their truth of reality, in salvationary terms, like liberation and freedom, a recognition that frees us from bondage.

One thing we understand about the nature of delusion, is that they aren't resolved by the clarity of facts. No matter how clearly you present the case for the holocaust, holocaust deniers will not accept it. And its not as if delusional people, want to know the truth, but fail to recognize it, but they don't want to know it. They want to believe the lie, and will do their best to preserve it. Even if that means killing someone who tries to show them the truth.

The other things about the delusional, is that it's not just a denial of truth out there, but more fundamentally a truth about themselves, a concealing of the underlying unresolved pain that manifests them. A projection of the world and others, formed from a contorted perception of themselves.

So, how do we distinguish between a delusion and reality then? Atheist says theist is deluded. Theist says atheist is deluded. By what method can we distinguish the delusion from the reality? If I say the existence of gravity is just a delusion you have, can it be demonstrated that gravity is real? If you think people who don’t believe god exists are delusional, can it be demonstrated that the god exists?

First, a delusion isn't so much the belief, but the condition in relationship to the way one thinks, to thought patterns. Children believing in Santa Claus, or people in the old world believing the earth is flat, aren't delusional, they just hold mistaken beliefs. 


I gauge it by how people process questions, and when whatever is taking place in their head starts to look  bit like when I ask my bipolar cousin questions, or people with less severe conditions, like cognitive dissonance, what appears like cloudy confused thinking,  avoidance, than clarity. 


I could also see that if it was my daughter or my wife, who stopped believing in God, people whom I have an honest and intimate relationship with, if they talked or argued the way atheists here did, it would become immediately apparent that something was off if they started going Dad prove to me that God exists, show me evidence that God exists, or that they lack a belief. If they talked this way, it would be apparent to me that they're hiding something, being combative to avoid introspection, concealing something. 

If two people were honestly interested in truth, but held divergent views, then the discussion would be less about demanding that others prove their belief, but a discussion of how they navigated to their conclusion, and how we navigated to ours, where those pathways are common, and where they diverged. In other words, honest discussions of truth are introspective, its an opening of ours minds to others. Where in such discussion like this, people attempt to detach themselves as far away from allowing this as possible. 

They make a sort of game, or riddle, composed in a way to make any answer unsatisfying,  before allowing anyone to get inside the gate of their mind. But the purpose of the riddle is to keep everyone out. So when I view atheists as delusional, it because of this tendency, observed over and over again. I can't say I understand it, but I'm the type of person who likes peering inside someone's head, and examine the pieces in there, so it's not hard to see when people refuse me entry, unlike with my wife, or sister, or friends. This refusal is understandable when the truths are private, but not so much when it comes to atheism, unless its also concealing something private as well, that's not acknowledged by the atheists, or anyone else. 

I'm of the view of the Church Father, like Clement, that the knowledge of God, and knowledge of oneself are connected, "For if one knows himself, he will know God". While atheists have composed a sort of concept of God entirely disconnected from such a view. A God whose purely a question about something out there, rather than something about in here. They like throwing a rock far from them, to distract a predator, to keep them off the scent.