Believing Vs Claiming to Believe

[Whateverist]

There are reasons we have terms such as self deception, and delusion.

In deed there are because the phenomenon is pervasive. But much of what we generally accept as normal to assume is cut from the same fabric. Our brains routinely present us with perception and cognition which are preprocessed for our conscious consumption. When it is adaptive, who cares? It isn't a problem so long as it doesn't create any problems, but they leave behind blind spots. Stage magicians are expert at exploiting these blind spots to fool us.

Another normal form of self deception is the sort an actor or novelist engages in to create a character. To be effective, they need to suspend disbelief. If they don't 'become' the character they can't adequately portray it to us. Some people even think we deceive ourselves into thinking we have free will. Our psyches are malleable.

I suspect that if you instruct a child to pray and talk to God from a young age and do it yourself with great sincerity while keeping them immersed in a community of like minded people, the child's psyche will respond with a manifestation of 'God'. (I'm not sure why I bother with scare quotes: it isn't as though this God has any other existence.) Just as the actor and novelist suspend disbelief when they create other characters, so too does the child. On top of that, the child was never aware of having created the character as it was accomplished socially rather than as the result of his individual intent.

When a Christian tells you God is as real or more real to them than you are, I can believe them. Are they deceiving themselves? Yes just as we all do all the time in so many ways. If they are happy and successful in life, what does it matter?