Delusion?

[Angrboda]

Your poll includes the assumption that delusion is both a binary property, and a readily cognizable property. This depends critically on what is meant by "true" because without a firm concept here, it is impossible to delineate which "beliefs" are false. To cut to the chase, skipping a lot of intermediary material, I would say, a) theists aren't deluded in the sense that theistic beliefs are pathological -- in the medical sense, being an improper functioning of the relevant organ (we don't normally hold simple falsehood to be delusion; I may believe my car keys are in my coat, but if they aren't, I'm not delusional), and b) the notion that theist's reasonings are defective in a way that non-theist's reasonings aren't -- in my studies of the human animal, its psychology and so on, I have come to the conclusion that both are functioning according to the same set of rules -- or, perhaps it would be better put as "meta-rules"; they both value truth, when choosing pick what they view as "best", live socially, accept and reject beliefs on filters that were constructed the same way, and so on. The biases, capacities and limits of both have, ignoring phylogenetic variation, gotten them to where they are by the same road -- the human mind and its functioning in social and emotional environments.

So no, they aren't deluded -- pathological -- and since their reasoning is not qualitatively different from non-theists, there is no real meaning to calling one delusional and the other not -- except to comfort oneself that one's prejudices are acceptable.