When is a Religious Belief Delusional?

[Minimalist]

I don't think most of us are stating that the religious delusion being discussed are clinical/medical. There are all types of delusions (mostly fantasy) that don't meet the "clinical" criteria.

I'd think they'd prefer delusional to the other obvious choice - batshit crazy.

[Angrboda]

Is belief in the existential equality of all human beings delusional? No natural facts support that belief.

Not if it's taken to be a political construct rather than an inherent or objective fact. Moreover, even as an inherent or objective fact, it can be derived from the morals of fairness, that all should be treated as equal, regardless of any objective existence of such an equality. As a practical matter, equality is only concerned with certain dimensions of human existence, such as equal treatment, dignity, and so on; nobody believes we are inherently equal in all ways, such as intelligence, strength, and height.

[Amarok]

Too bad no ones doing that 

I can make a thread filling it with examples of Atheists doing exactly this on these forums and it would be pages and pages of examples.

No you can't you can misinterpret them doing that but you cannot she them doing as you claim

[chimp3]

From the tail end of another thread…

Whether or not a theist's perceptions of God represent a "delusion" (in the sense of being a firmly maintained yet irrational belief) was the conversation I was interested in having.

So I say, lets have that conversation.

Let me first say that, as a Christian, this is very difficult conversation to not take personally. ‘Delusion’ has a very negative connotation, even when used colloquially. For many Christians, and I suppose believers in general, their religious convictions are central to their identity and serve as the core around which their values and principles develop. Having it maligned is perceived as dismissive and disrespectful.

At the same time, sincere and thoughtful believers are very much aware that there are seriously disturbed people who truly believe supernatural entities have directed them to do dangerous and/or heinous acts (a mother drowning her three children in a bathtub because she thought they were demons, comes to mind). For a non-believer, to lump mainstream Christians in with people who are clearly mentally ill and failing to acknowledge various safe guards (that are by no means infallible) built into religious traditions, is at best IMHO thoughtless and at worst offensive and provocative.

So for the purposes of this conversation, I will assume that ‘delusion’ is being used moderately by atheists, not indicative of actual mental illness, but rather as something that hinders reasoning. As such, what criteria must be met for a belief to qualify as a delusion? Some I have heard some of the following proposed and with which I agree:

- Unquestionable certainty.
- Resistance to scrutiny.
- Contrary to what is demonstrably false.

That said, the devil is in the details. My initial question to atheists is this. How do you justify the claim that all religious beliefs, or those most commonly held, satisfy the above criteria (or others you may propose that are not listed)?

For believers, I also raise the issue of how one can examine one’s own beliefs and those of others to avoid the above criteria. I alluded to safe-guards commonly found within religious traditions. Some of those are as follows:

- The predictions of a prophet must be 100% accurate.
- If someone feels called by God to a specific course of action and it violates Scripture then it didn’t come from God.
- If a personal revelation contradicts the clear teaching of the tradition it is not valid.
- To the extent that the ‘inspired’ behavior seems extreme or overtly dangerous the more clearly it should align with Scriptural teachings. For example, missionary work can be very dangerous and may require great personal sacrifice and yet it is very clearly justified by the Great Commission.
- Is the belief motivated by sincere love and concern for others or does it appear grounded in fear or deny the humanity of others?

That’s all I have for now but I think it sufficient.

(Full disclosure, I will be away most of Labor Day weekend and will not directly participate initially. Nevertheless, I am very interested in what people have to say and seeing where the discussion leads in the first few days. In other word, don’t be surprised if I appear to have dropped-out entirely.)

RN here. The definition of delusion clinically is a fixed, irrational idea that is not shared by others. 

 "I am Harry Truman!" is an example of a delusion that I witnessed a person experiencing.

 " Jesus is King" is just a belief that millions share. 

I am trying to do mentally ill people a service by not associating their disease process to the bullshit perpetuated by religious people.

[Minimalist]

RN here. The definition of delusion clinically is a fixed, irrational idea that is not shared by others. 

 "I am Harry Truman!" is an example of a delusion that I witnessed a person experiencing.

 " Jesus is King" is just a belief that millions share.

Okay - except "jesus" is not "king" of anything.  And if you want to play the argument from popularity card well then more people in the world do not believe it than do. 

"Jesus" being anything other than mythological seems to be a fairly irrational idea.

[chimp3]

RN here. The definition of delusion clinically is a fixed, irrational idea that is not shared by others. 

 "I am Harry Truman!" is an example of a delusion that I witnessed a person experiencing.

 " Jesus is King" is just a belief that millions share.

Okay - except "jesus" is not "king" of anything.  And if you want to play the argument from popularity card well then more people in the world do not believe it than do. 

"Jesus" being anything other than mythological seems to be a fairly irrational idea.

Beliefs are different than delusions in the same way that tortises and apple pies are different. Delusions are treatable with antipsychotics. People on antipsychotics continue, and often are encouraged, to attend church. Antipsychotics do not cure religion.

[Minimalist]

And yet many people escape the chains of religion.  Happens every day and there are plenty of us here who serve as examples of such escapes.

And we didn't need drugs.

[Fake Messiah]

[Angrboda]

Wikipedia || Katalepsis

Stoicism

According to the Stoics, the mind is constantly being bombarded with impressions (phantasiai). (An impression arising from the mind was called a phantasma.) Some of these impressions are true and some false. Impressions are true when they are truly affirmed, false if they are wrongly affirmed, such as when one believes an oar dipped in the water to be broken because it appears so. When Orestes, in his madness, mistook Electra for a Fury, he had an impression both true and false: true inasmuch as he saw something, viz., Electra; false, inasmuch as Electra was not a Fury. Believing that the mind instinctively discriminated between real and false impressions, the Stoics said that one ought not to give credit to everything which is perceived, but only to those perceptions which contain some special mark of those things which appeared. Such a perception then was called a kataleptic phantasia (Greek: φαντασία καταληπτική), or comprehensible perception. The kataleptic phantasia is that which is impressed by an object which exists, which is a copy of that object and can be produced by no other object.

Cicero relates that Zeno would illustrate katalepsis as follows:

"he would display his hand in front of one with the fingers stretched out and say "A visual appearance is like this"; next he closed his fingers a little and said, "An act of assent is like this"; then he pressed his fingers closely together and made a fist, and said that that was comprehension (and from this illustration he gave to that process the actual name of katalepsis, which it had not had before); but then he used to apply his left hand to his right fist and squeeze it tightly and forcibly, and then say that such was knowledge, which was within the power of nobody save the wise man"

Katalepsis was the main bone of contention between the Stoics and the two schools of philosophical skepticism during the Hellenistic period: the Pyrrhonists and the Academic Skeptics of Plato's Academy. These Skeptics, who chose the Stoics as their natural philosophical opposites, eschewed much of what the Stoics believed regarding the human mind and one's methods of understanding greater meanings. To the Skeptics, all perceptions were acataleptic, i.e. bore no conformity to the objects perceived, or, if they did bear any conformity, it could never be known.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Is belief in the existential equality of all human beings delusional? No natural facts support that belief.

Not if it's taken to be a political construct rather than an inherent or objective fact.  Moreover, even as an inherent or objective fact, it can be derived from the morals of fairness, that all should be treated as equal, regardless of any objective existence of such an equality.

Any notion of fairness already presupposes some measure existential equality. You're arguing in circles. Let's step further back. I believe there are moral facts. Are those delusions?