Queerer than we can suppose: the strangeness of science.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
It is, Im afraid.

"A delusion, in everyday language, is a fixed belief that is either false, fanciful, or derived from deception. Psychiatry defines the term more specifically as a belief that is pathological (the result of an illness or illness process). As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, apperception, illusion, or other effects of perception."

Thats also the sense in which Dawkins means it.

Not hatefully spitting the word like the delusional are evil schizos or something, merely that the god hypothesis is wrong.

No additional judgements made.

That's a terrible definition of delusion. You can never know what will be shown "untrue" in the future nor should you be judging things by the future in the first place.

Blame wiki. 😛
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion

I think that there is a great deal that we are certain about in the universe that we know is not delusional.

Hold a cup out in front of you out of a window.

Release your grip on it.

Its my non delusional belief that the cup will fall towards the earth.

Its non delusional because its reasonable faith I have that is based on 99.something% predicable, workable, tested theory.

If I believed, no matter how sincerely in my heart, believing all day long that when you release the cup that a god would show to save the cup, in the face of pretty much all evidence offered to the contrary.... then I'd be delusional.

DEFINITION WAR!

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
Blame wiki. 😛
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion

I think that there is a great deal that we are certain about in the universe that we know is not delusional.

Hold a cup out in front of you out of a window.

Release your grip on it.

Its my non delusional belief that the cup will fall towards the earth.

Its non delusional because its reasonable faith I have that is based on 99.something% predicable, workable, tested theory.

If I believed, no matter how sincerely in my heart, believing all day long that when you release the cup that a god would show to save the cup, in the face of pretty much all evidence offered to the contrary.... then I'd be delusional.

I don't disagree with that. My contention is with the use of "delusional" to simply mean "wrong" which mischaracterizes the word and adds a completely unneeded loaded word into the conversation.

Originally posted by Digi
DEFINITION WAR!

😛

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
It is, Im afraid.

"A delusion, in everyday language, is a fixed belief that is either false, fanciful, or derived from deception. Psychiatry defines the term more specifically as a belief that is pathological (the result of an illness or illness process). As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, apperception, illusion, or other effects of perception."

Thats also the sense in which Dawkins means it.

Not hatefully spitting the word like the delusional are evil schizos or something, merely that the god hypothesis is wrong.

No additional judgements made.

I'm sorry, when I use proper medical terms, I attempt to use them properly

If your argument is that yourself and Dawkins use the term delusion in an incorrect fashion, then I agree with you

If you want to get into the linguistic side of it, defining delusion in the terms you are is both redundant and hypocritical. Post-modernism would basically show that all belief and knowledge is then delusional, as perceptions of truth are relative.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
If I believed, no matter how sincerely in my heart, believing all day long that when you release the cup that a god would show to save the cup, in the face of pretty much all evidence offered to the contrary.... then I'd be delusional.

for something to be a valid mental health issue, it must make a person incapable of living independently in society (re: cause persistant problems in the individual's life). Your belief about that cup does not, thus it is not a delusion.

The proper psychiatric term would be: opinion.

Ahhhh. I think thats where our misunderstanding seems to be stemming from. 🙂

Im not talking about the belief, even a delusional belief as having any medical connotations/connections.

Like you say: People believed a lot of wrong things over time.... were they loonies..? Probably not in a lot of instances....
(Once it was proved otherwise, however, the loonies would still continue in their belief unabated.)

If the 1st guy told to jump from the ledge because a sky alien would catch him, maybe there was the slightest possibility it could happen, so fair play.

He hits the ground.

The 2nd guy should know better.. Probably represents the sky-alien's more hardcore supporters and surely his demise would mark the end of all sky-alien safety net attempts.

As the 4th guy hits the floor we start to think...WTF.
These must be the last of the morons in society. "Ok. Fair enough.
There cant be anyone else that dumb or mascochistic left now."

As the 40th becomes one with the pavement, (and all the previous jumpers) we must start to question the minds of those that jump beyond that point, imo.

Originally posted by inimalist
I'm sorry, when I use proper medical terms, I attempt to use them properly

If your argument is that yourself and Dawkins use the term delusion in an incorrect fashion, then I agree with you

If you want to get into the linguistic side of it, defining delusion in the terms you are is both redundant and hypocritical. Post-modernism would basically show that all belief and knowledge is then delusional, as perceptions of truth are relative.

All saves addressing the point at hand. I guess.

There is a big difference between 'non-medical' and incorrect.

Originally posted by inimalist
for something to be a valid mental health issue, it must make a person incapable of living independently in society (re: cause persistant problems in the individual's life). Your belief about that cup does not, thus it is not a delusion.

The proper psychiatric term would be: opinion.

I disagree. Opinion is opinion, IE "God creted the earth in 7 days, a few thosand years ago." with no evidence.

Science backs the facts.
It disputed the above stated opinion.

Ive already shown that mental illness is not what Im talking about.

Well yeah, the most powerful president/prime minister in the world were starting wars cause' god' told him to, nutters on planes fly those planes into buildings for virgins in the afterlife, when there was a movement to get creationalism was taught as fact in schools, when the UN was trying to pass a blasphemy law that would, if passed, be a predecessor to heresy laws...

When people are nearly killed because of a cartoon, when a religious institution is a center of paedo activity yet the practitioners, protected by 'holy men' , claim piousity... when religion is used constantly as a lever for starting wars, attacking groups that refuse to play ball....

The role it plays with politicians/power, and the way that people get to live their lives cherry picking from a book to suit their own agenda. When people live in fear of judgement 24/7 because of a belief/fear system that is self perpetuating and all pervasive...?

When you believe that there is a being watching you all day, watching you shit, sleep, shag and even think, you're under complete control of a way of thinking based on no evidence, with a lot of evidence saying that the history of the universe is not definitely not the way it was said to have happened in any organised religion... ?

If that doesnt qualify as delusional in the non medical sense....and in the sense posted, then nothing is.

How can anyone argue that Religion doesnt affect them...? Or that it isnt a control device used to mitigate horrors that otherwise would be abhorent to other men...? Or that blind faith doesnt do damage to your every level of existance..?

"Even if if its comforting, does it make it anymore true..?"

The argument that religion is valid because of cited merits of its occasionally comforting attributes to some of its followers...is not a convincing one.
You might argue that thats fine as long as their religious beliefs arent allowed to affect others.

don't you think using needlessly divisive terms like "non-medical" delusional [sic] would lead to more of the problems you associate with religion rather than solving them?

This is to amusing....

Originally posted by Bardock42
I see where you are coming from, though I am not sure if that is actually an attribute that I see in Dawkins. It is true that he gets painted 8and perhaps paints himself) as a radical, no other possibility atheist, but everything I read and especially what I saw in videos of him, gave the impression to me that he, quite to the contrary, is very thoughtful and aware of other possibilities.

I assume you don't mean to suggest that knowledge of the reasons behind the certainty we feel should stop us from supporting a topic altogether?

I think I'm having trouble explaining myself. I'm not critical of Dawkins for his conviction, in fact, I would paint myself as someone who would be more prone to checking themselves into a mental institution rather than accepting supernatural explanations to events. It is rather that he is convinced that the patterns and routines which created his cognitive sense of what is true is the only and proper way of knowing, as if other people could be "reasoned with" to completely redefine what the physiological experience of truth is.

Not to mix convos, but I think Sadako may also share this mind set. It isn't that people don't accept that they might be wrong, which frankly I feel is more often lip service than anything, but the dismissal of the real experiences that people have had that lead them to be religious as being nothing but "delusion", or of no significance. It dismisses other forms and ways of knowing, which might not produce material results in the world, but are of formative importance to individuals. Defining what should be personally significant through only materialistic terms may be more "logical", or such other anthropic concepts, however, it is not how the majority of the people on the planet experience the world. My feelings, and Sam Harris echos this to some extent, are that these experiences are hugely important, not because they mean supernatural things are real, but because they help us understand how other people construct what is real.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
As the 40th becomes one with the pavement, (and all the previous jumpers) we must start to question the minds of those that jump beyond that point, imo.

do you really think this is comparable to major religions?

you might be referring to the fringe minority of cults and the minority of their followers, where mental illness often plays a major role in their behaviour. Often these are more social issues, and might not be technical "disorders", but things like no support net or loneliness.

Like, I just think your whole conception of how people understand what is true is off. You aren't born with "I know what is true based on material science" parts of your brain. What makes logical sense to you only does so because the previous experiences in your life have created physical information processing channels that interpret all incoming stimuli in that way.

For instance, when an event happens and your body enters an aroused state, your brain develops a story for the arousal based on available stimuli and previous experience. This all happens prior to conscious knowledge of the arousal, so when "you", the conscious you, experience it, you already have a story for why you are experiencing it.

This story comes from your memory. So when you see an event, the cause you attribute comes from a bank of possible causes stored in your mind. If one of those is "God", because that is what you were taught as a child and has thus become a physical part of how stimuli are processed in your brain, that doesn't make someone delusional, it means they interpret how to attribute causality in a different way, which leads them to understand the universe in a different way than you. Their way is no less valid simply because it doesn't conform to your view.