Diogenes wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 4:49 pm
The question for debate is stated in the title,
Are Religious Beliefs Delusional?
No, because it's the DSM's prerogative to say, and it specifically exempts religious beliefs.
However, to many atheists, this specific exemption smacks of a favouritism that arguably does not belong in any field that calls itself a science.
If
Prot believes he's an alien without good evidence, and that he's headed back to K-PAX, he rots in an insane asylum, but if someone else believes with no or scant evidence that their body carries a soul that's going to Heaven after they die, they get a pass? One is forced to ask why. (Note that the story for K-PAX was written in 1995 when you could easily be committed just for being crazy, but since then the powers that be have decided it's better to only commit those who are both crazy
and somehow dangerous, and this links to my final answer.)
Diogenes wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 4:49 pmA subordinate question: Should we distinguish between a learned belief in supernatural phenomena and those who believe and attribute their beliefs to personal experience... and how could we tell?
We can't tell and that's the point. I have a reputation for being logical but actually I'm very minorly superstitious. For example, I worry about religion even if it isn't true. I think that if you let it in, believe it, give it a place in your heart, it might have effects. I also think that to do something justice in a debate, you need to give it the credit of being true so I'm kind of walking the knife's edge with my own minor superstition, which is basically that as long as you absolutely know that Odin is a fantasy, Odin can't hurt you... but if you really believe in him, then maybe he can... even if he doesn't exist.
Should I rot in an asylum for this because I came up with it myself while someone who was taught it, perhaps by me, gets a pass? Well this would fit pretty well with our desire to punish deceivers and not the deceived. For example, cult leaders are crazy and the people they sway with their honeyed arguments are not. That sounds fair. But it's pretty much the only situation this holds for.
Final answer: I say we stop defining people as crazy because of what they believe. Religious beliefs shouldn't be considered delusional and neither should other beliefs because I do not get to decide who is right. It's just stigmatising people for the sake of stigmatising them if you're not going to lock them up. And do religious people and Prot deserve to be locked up? Gawd no. The place to call them irrational is on the debate floor where they can respond to you, not in the DSM, which would, in a fair debate, count as an inappropriate authority and an ad hominem. Look, this book I found says you're crazy so you must be wrong. Pfft, sounds fallacy-laden to me.
I think it's beyond hubris to suggest 1) that we can't be wrong and 2) that even if we're not wrong and we happen to know 100% of the truth, that people can't have a different experience that would steer a perfectly sane and logical person the other way. Being taught that something is true by those you trust is only one example of such an experience. You might believe in ghosts because you repeatedly observed some phenomenon that leads you to believe that.
And Prot might be an alien. Even if I do know better than him (and I might not) what people are committed for won't be some random genius opinion, what it will actually be is consensus, and that's so, so bad... it should literally make you cringe. Because that is tantamount to a free pass to bully people by calling them crazy and the DSM backing you up if you have the majority opinion. Society shouldn't work like that.