(April 25, 2010 at 11:39 am)Paul the Human Wrote: Delusion is defined as: a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact. Delusions are not necessarily hallucinations, delusions are belief in something that is not real. I contend that god(s) are not real and that believing that they are is a delusion. You know exactly what I am saying and have repeatedly used semantics to cloud my point. I have no more patience for such things.Sorry to have got on your nerves Paul, that wasn't my intention. My understanding of a delusion is somewhat different to yours, and that's probably why we've been going in circles - let's go with your definition.
If you would like to make a point of your own or, perhaps, refute anyone else’s directly, rather than circling them with word games… feel free.
All I can say is that my belief in God (and Christianity as a whole) is not fixed, resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact. I simply believe that theism makes more sense of the world (for various reasons) than atheism, and that Christianity in particular has the most evidence for it than any other worldview. In my experience that is also the way that many other Christians see it (though certainly not all). So I do not accept the inference from "theism is false" to "all theists are deluded". The fact is that there are many theists who are so not because of their upbringing, dogma or some psychological illness but because, in their best judgement, the way the world is points towards the existence of God. To say otherwise is to make a claim that there is no legitimate reason to make - it is a complete over-generalisation that is not grounded in fact.
