How does one distinguish a 'belief' from a delusion?

[razzelflabben]

The problem there is that God is rather an objectively ill-defined concept; you can gain objective, testable expertise about concepts and ideas related to God, e.g. scriptures, theology, ethics, etc., but everyone's God-concept seems to be personal to them, so there are no objective measures for knowledge or expertise concerning a personal God, and plenty of scope for biases (e.g. confirmation bias, expectation bias, etc.) and posthoc rationalisation.

Hum...I will challenge that...let's start with an analogy. I write an autobiography, but Frank down the road says, I know Razz...better than she knows herself because I have lived down the road for 2 years. Who should we believe?

In the case of God, scripture claims to be the authority on who God is. If we take the word of Frank on who God is, aren't we just taking his perception of God and claiming that the autobiography doesn't exist?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Easy to see exactly what you are doing, your latching on to worse case scenarios that you don't even believe exist to begin with because you don't even believe the God exists and all in order to do what Atheists like to do, make God out to be a stinker. Same tired ol' routine.

Not at all. I'm responding to claims. I don't need to make him "out to be a stinker" when those making such claims already do that. I'm just pointing it out.

 

[razzelflabben]

Not at all. I'm responding to claims. I don't need to make him "out to be a stinker" when those making such claims already do that. I'm just pointing it out.

who here are you responding to? Pretty much everyone here agreed talking about hell specifically was off topic so who exactly are you referring to when trying to continue to talk about God and hell and the justice or morality of that? Just trying to follow the discussion and who you are talking to, your comments rarely match the posts you quote as responding to.

 

[Kenny'sID]

Why don´t you go and complain to your fellow Christians who picture God in this way?
Indeed, there has to be a reason for them to do that...

You really should know buy now people have different views about what's what in the bible. Did you ever stop to think some of them might not be correct or would that not work for you?

Have either of you ever noticed some Christians actually picture God in a good light, or that there are actually a few *good* things about God? or does it not fit your agenda to ever dwell on that part?

Why don't you want us to like God?

 

[Kenny'sID]

Not at all. I'm responding to claims. I don't need to make him "out to be a stinker" when those making such claims already do that. I'm just pointing it out.

Yet that is exactly your purpose here.

And since when were *claims* so important to you? I claim God is the creator of all things, and a pretty darn good guy....why not take that claim and run with it?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

who here are you responding to? Pretty much everyone here agreed talking about hell specifically was off topic so who exactly are you referring to when trying to continue to talk about God and hell and the justice or morality of that? Just trying to follow the discussion and who you are talking to, your comments rarely match the posts you quote as responding to.

I'm obviously responding to Kenny.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Yet that is exactly your purpose here.

No, it's not.

And since when were *claims* so important to you?

What do you mean "since when?" This is the Philosophy forum... Since I first began posting here.

 

[razzelflabben]

You really should know buy now people have different views about what's what in the bible. Did you ever stop to think some of them might not be correct or would that not work for you?

Have either of you ever noticed some Christians actually picture God in a good light, or that there are actually a few *good* things about God? or does it not fit your agenda to ever dwell on that part?

Why don't you want us to like God?

In my experience some people just want to be angry and blame someone, when they can't find anyone else or blaming others doesn't satisfy they turn to blaming and being angry at God and all who Love Him...unfortunately I see it a lot and in people a lot closer to me than anyone here. I am not trying to speak for the posters you are questioning, just offering my observations as they would apply to the OP. You see, to blame everyone else, even to be angry and try to use the victim card which is all tooooo common, is to delude ourselves into thinking that we are not or at least have not contributed to the sin and destruction in the world that hurts so many people even some who are innocent.

One of the deep studies I did in scripture was about suffering. One thing I learned from that study is how many people refuse to accept that they are part of the problem. Their pride simply won't let them confess that they too have done wrong, they too have hurt others, they too are out of wack for finding satisfaction in this life. A satisfaction that the Bible says can only be found in fellowship with Christ. That is our purpose, the reason for life, and we miss it because we are too busy being angry and blaming others.

Just my thoughts as the question is applied to the OP question

 

[razzelflabben]

I'm obviously responding to Kenny.

the post you quote says nothing at all about hell or what it is or what it is used for...that is where the confusion comes in. You are not addressing the post you quote as if you are addressing, this is very confusing and actually very harmful to the communication we have established after getting past some of the bullying that was going on previously. Notice for clarity, I did NOT name any names, just spoke generally about bullying.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

the post you quote says nothing at all about hell or what it is or what it is used for...that is where the confusion comes in.

You clearly aren't following the conversation between Kenny and I.

You are not addressing the post you quote as if you are addressing, this is very confusing and actually very harmful to the communication we have established after getting past some of the bullying that was going on previously. Notice for clarity, I did NOT name any names, just spoke generally about bullying.

Bullying? You mean like when you insulted my reading comprehension even though you later misread my posts? Or when you wrongly accused me of misrepresenting someone else and then refused to apologise when I called you out on it? That kind of bullying? You might not name names, but I will.

 

[quatona]

You really should know buy now people have different views about what's what in the bible. Did you ever stop to think some of them might not be correct or would that not work for you?

Sure, works perfectly for me.

Have either of you ever noticed some Christians actually picture God in a good light, or that there are actually a few *good* things about God?

Why sure - there are as many different God concepts as there are believers.

or does it not fit your agenda to ever dwell on that part?

Agenda? Which agenda?

Why don't you want us to like God?

Why haven´t you stopped beating your wife?

 

[Kenny'sID]

No, it's not.

What do you mean "since when?" This is the Philosophy forum... Since I first began posting here.

You skipped a critical question there about the claims...and concerning your picking and choosing of them. That among your other actions proves you are just not being truthful when you say your purpose here is not to make God out to be a stinker. That would just be a lie.

You absolutely are here to make God out to be a bad entity. Do you honestly think that is not absolutely clear to anyone paying just a bit of attention? lol Yet you will actually argue, that is not a fact. Out there.

Why do you badmouth God?...Why don't you want us to love him? If you don't like God, then don't, why try to make everyone else dislike him? Are you mad at God for something personal that happened to you? If so, would you like to tell us about it?

 

[Kenny'sID]

Sure, works perfectly for me.

That didn't answer the question.

Why sure - there are as many different God concepts as there are believers.

Right, so why dwell on just the

Agenda? Which agenda?

Your agenda of wanting us to dislike God. Try to keep up....please.

Why haven´t you stopped beating your wife?

What reason have I given you to believe I beat my wife?

I think you and Archy need a little time to yourselves, in order try to come to grips with reality...just what you are doing here...you seem to actually be forgetting your actions here, or you know and are just being your usual contrary selves. I'd bet on the latter.

Once you come down from whatever it is causing your conflict with yourselves, answer me this please....Why do you want to turn us against God?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

You skipped a critical question there about the claims...and concerning your picking and choosing of them. That among your other actions proves you are just not being truthful when you say your purpose here is not to make God out to be a stinker. That would just be a lie.

You absolutely are here to make God out to be a bad entity. Do you honestly think that is not absolutely clear to anyone paying just a bit of attention? lol Yet you will actually argue, that is not a fact. Out there.

Why do you badmouth God?...Why don't you want us to love him? If you don't like God, then don't, why try to make everyone else dislike him? Are you mad at God for something personal that happened to you? If so, would you like to tell us about it?

Could you please address what I've actually written, rather than inventing positions for me.

 

[Ronald]

I'll let my great aunt - a nun for more than 40 years who became so distressed when she realised she no longer believed that she had to be hospitalised - that she never "truly loved Jesus and believed in Him".

We all experience periods of doubt, some fall away for a time especially when we don't get answers from God. Extreme circumstances as death of a spouse or children, debilitating diseases, cause us to question our faith - "Where is God, why doesn't he answer?" They can even respond in their grief as your aunt did, but later retract those words. We often say things in anger that we don't mean just to hurt the other individual. But the true Christian eventually turns back to God.
If she is still in this state, give her this verse:

"And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord." Rom. 38, 39

Plenty of faithful Christians accept and understand that evolution is the best explanation of the diversity of life, and big bang cosmology provides the most complete understanding of the structure of the macro scale universe.' Just because you don't accept these explanations of reality, doesn't mean that other Christians cannot.

True, they are called theistic-evolutionists. They can't seem to harmonize this theory with the Bible so they begin to distort the words to conform, like a day means millions or years or a epoch of time. The six days of creation in Genesis mean 6 24-hour days.

If there are no transitional forms, then how are there lists of transitional forms?

Your theory contains a lot of guesswork. They draw their fancy illustrations and examine similarities, assign names to species and group them into genus and families. All these assumptions are based on a fraudulent foundation that all life came from the sea/water starting out as a one-celled organisms, then advancing to fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals then finally humans. These transitional forms in these lists are just kinds of animals that are extinct, nothing more. They were all made finished. Now, changes within the kinds obviously exists, this can be called micro-evolution, but macro-evolution is folly.
When a evolutionist looks at how the animals adapt to the environment and sees changes, he assumes that these animals must have also changed into another kind of animal. Changes within the species occur not from natural choosing beneficial mutations (which are harmful defects - let's call it what is); they happen because they are programed with adaptive mechanism already in their genetic code which was btw intelligently designed.
All your theory is, is a rebellious escape from God, a fraudulent, illustrative, justification for your position. It's a clever delusion created to lead people away from Christ and a lure to capture many Christians and fools them as well.

 

[Kenny'sID]

Could you please address what I've actually written, rather than inventing positions for me.

I did, but if you need to skip past it because you can't handle it, no ones going to force you.

 

[razzelflabben]

We all experience periods of doubt, some fall away for a time especially when we don't get answers from God. Extreme circumstances as death of a spouse or children, debilitating diseases, cause us to question our faith - "Where is God, why doesn't he answer?" They can even respond in their grief as your aunt did, but later retract those words. We often say things in anger that we don't mean just to hurt the other individual. But the true Christian eventually turns back to God.
If she is still in this state, give her this verse:

"And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord." Rom. 38, 39


True, they are called theistic-evolutionists. They can't seem to harmonize this theory with the Bible so they begin to distort the words to conform, like a day means millions or years or a epoch of time. The six days of creation in Genesis mean 6 24-hour days.



Your theory contains a lot of guesswork. They draw their fancy illustrations and examine similarities, assign names to species and group them into genus and families. All these assumptions are based on a fraudulent foundation that all life came from the sea/water starting out as a one-celled organisms, then advancing to fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals then finally humans. These transitional forms in these lists are just kinds of animals that are extinct, nothing more. They were all made finished. Now, changes within the kinds obviously exists, this can be called micro-evolution, but macro-evolution is folly.
When a evolutionist looks at how the animals adapt to the environment and sees changes, he assumes that these animals must have also changed into another kind of animal. Changes within the species occur not from natural choosing beneficial mutations (which are harmful defects - let's call it what is); they happen because they are programed with adaptive mechanism already in their genetic code which was btw intelligently designed.
All your theory is, is a rebellious escape from God, a fraudulent, illustrative, justification for your position. It's a clever delusion created to lead people away from Christ and a lure to capture many Christians and fools them as well.

so, instead of getting off topic with all these specific beliefs and allow opportunity to start the bullying up again, let's take this and put it back on topic.

I think we have touched on this aspect of the OP question but I'm not sure we clarified some of it. One of the problems with testing, and this includes all aspects of testing, is that it is still open to interpretation of the evidence. For example the same evidence that is used to support the theory of evolution can be used to support created world as per what scripture says and does not say without reading anything into it. This is because micro evolution is not questioned by either theory and in fact, Gen. talks about micro evolution. Since all the tests are about microevolution, science does not contradict either theory...(don't even try to get us off topic here by bringing up parts of the theory you have been told to believe because this is based solely on what scripture says and doesn't say not all the fluff put in for drama) By contrast, both sides can if they way take the science and make very different conclusions. One or both of which are presumably delusion. It is when we step outside of what the tests actually tell us to make assumptions about the evidence that delusion becomes much easier to happen than when we limit our conclusions to only what the evidence tells us that testing is effective for knowing truth from delusion.

 

[ScottA]

if the present world is falling away and the spiritual world is coming ever closer, how would that affect our perception of reality?

That is the crux of the OP question - exactly.

So my answer would go something like this...if the spiritual world is real, then having an alive spirit/soul as described in the Bible as through Christ would be the only way to know truth from delusion which would be according to scripture by satan's design. See, according to scripture, satan purposes to deceive us, whereas one of the jobs of the HS is to keep us from those delusions that Satan tries to force upon us.

Right on!

 

[Ronald]

It is when we step outside of what the tests actually tell us to make assumptions about the evidence that delusion becomes much easier to happen than when we limit our conclusions to only what the evidence tells us that testing is effective for knowing truth from delusion.

When examining The Theory of Evolution, we find evidence is not only misinterpreted, it's distorted, removed and changed at times. There is nothing wrong with science, but the scientific method is not complete unless you have the initial conditions to test. Since they don't, they guess at them and make assumptions.
But we are fallible humans. We cannot put the Bible or God through a scientific testing that has flaws.
"Sir Francis Bacon developed a method for philosophers to use in weighing the truthfulness of knowledge". This pertains to the studying of the natural world, not the supernatural. He wanted to study God's creation, he didn't devise some sort of testing God's Word. Micro-evolution seems to be implied in Genesis, where sin came into the world and distorted what was perfect. This is when diseases, bacteria, viruses became a curse - the earth was curses and therefore changed the composition of it. Organisms started to die and our days were numbered. Yet, God knew this would happen, so He input adaptive mechanisms into each organism, so that it could change to adapt to the environment. So these adaptive mechanisms would account for micro-evolution.
That said, distinguishing belief from delusion is sometimes complicated. Faith can't be tested by science. It's a supernatural gift. "Being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we of what we do not see", isn't exactly in the realm of scientific testing. "By faith we understand that the universe was formed by God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible."Heb.11:3
How can you distinguish faith from delusion? Since their are many religions and atheism (which is somewhat of a faith), how do you know which one is true? God confirms our faith through life and experiences. He communes with our spirit and we believe. But we also see the experiences of faithful people throughout history and where it led them. We see the faiths of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and others and where the faith led them. Then we come to Christianity and where that faith has led the western civilization where it reached it's highest expressions of the fruit of the Spirit, knowledge, achievements, standard of living and prosperity in the United States. God surely blessed America like no other nation. Isn't that evidence? You can use that test with other faiths and very often find delusion, the wrong path, false god or lack of God, by just looking at their state. Does this country show blessings from God or does it express poverty, evil, selfish greed, and the lack of freedoms and simple joys of happiness that we so often take for granted?
Let's get down to business. Was Jesus the embodiment of truth? If so, then all the others were liars and false prophets.
If He was delusional, then it's all up for grabs. But then one could say, some other teacher is right and all the rest are wrong as well. Then you would have to examine the fruit of his and his follower's beliefs. If we are all wrong, and there are no absolutes (no truth), then we have a condition that many suffer today called Moral Relativism. It would be impossible to state that truth is relative.

 

[razzelflabben]

When examining The Theory of Evolution, we find evidence is not only misinterpreted, it's distorted, removed and changed at times. There is nothing wrong with science, but the scientific method is not complete unless you have the initial conditions to test. Since they don't, they guess at them and make assumptions.
But we are fallible humans. We cannot put the Bible or God through a scientific testing that has flaws.
"Sir Francis Bacon developed a method for philosophers to use in weighing the truthfulness of knowledge". This pertains to the studying of the natural world, not the supernatural. He wanted to study God's creation, he didn't devise some sort of testing God's Word.

which is why an understanding of testing beliefs requires that we understand we cannot test for example, God but we can test various claims that God either makes or are attributed to Him. But all that was already discussed.

Micro-evolution seems to be implied in Genesis, where sin came into the world and distorted what was perfect. This is when diseases, bacteria, viruses became a curse - the earth was curses and therefore changed the composition of it. Organisms started to die and our days were numbered. Yet, God knew this would happen, so He input adaptive mechanisms into each organism, so that it could change to adapt to the environment. So these adaptive mechanisms would account for micro-evolution.

that is one place it is talked about but I was referring to the character traits that are passed down through blood lines.

That said, distinguishing belief from delusion is sometimes complicated. Faith can't be tested by science. It's a supernatural gift. "Being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we of what we do not see", isn't exactly in the realm of scientific testing. "By faith we understand that the universe was formed by God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible."Heb.11:3

yep, faith is one of the things we cannot test for, but...Love has an actual check list we can use to measure by. Both concepts from scripture, one testable the other not.

How can you distinguish faith from delusion? Since their are many religions and atheism (which is somewhat of a faith), how do you know which one is true? God confirms our faith through life and experiences. He communes with our spirit and we believe. But we also see the experiences of faithful people throughout history and where it led them. We see the faiths of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and others and where the faith led them. Then we come to Christianity and where that faith has led the western civilization where it reached it's highest expressions of the fruit of the Spirit, knowledge, achievements, standard of living and prosperity in the United States. God surely blessed America like no other nation. Isn't that evidence? You can use that test with other faiths and very often find delusion, the wrong path, false god or lack of God, by just looking at their state. Does this country show blessings from God or does it express poverty, evil, selfish greed, and the lack of freedoms and simple joys of happiness that we so often take for granted?

1. you are suggesting that we cannot test, by testing to see what the results are. but more importantly I would like to ask a question 2. what would make you think that financial prosperity is evidence of anything at all about God? much less knowledge and achievements? Where are you getting these things are a measure of faith in God? Let me see, another way to word the same question... what is your source for these things being from faith in God?

Let's get down to business. Was Jesus the embodiment of truth? If so, then all the others were liars and false prophets.
If He was delusional, then it's all up for grabs. But then one could say, some other teacher is right and all the rest are wrong as well. Then you would have to examine the fruit of his and his follower's beliefs. If we are all wrong, and there are no absolutes (no truth), then we have a condition that many suffer today called Moral Relativism. It would be impossible to state that truth is relative.

I would then argue that the things you present as evidence of faith are indeed relative to begin with thus doing nothing to tell us whether or not it is a delusion. Think of it this way, what one culture would say is "good" another might say, "no that is bad, X is good"...this is why scripture says nothing about morality and a lot about justice because society does not determine justice.