He’s not necessarily saying that the character of a religious belief is identical to that of a delusion, and I’d certainly argue that it would be wrong to make that claim, but just that, as stand-alone claims, religious beliefs are only as well-grounded as delusions.

He’s appealing to the intuition that “everybody else believes it” is not a particularly good reason to believe something, especially when you further have very good reason to think that everyone else only believes it because they too saw that everyone else believed it. He’s saying that the only reason psychiatrists don’t call religion delusional is that it’s widespread (and the DSM acknowledges this explicitly). That is, “theists can behave in a way that in every other circumstance [or, in a context where their beliefs aren't widespread] would be treated as a delusion”. While he might agree that there are good medical reasons to keep them separate, he’s saying that there are no good epistemic reasons to do so.

Regardless, there are perfectly good senses of “delusion” that would work here, though perhaps not any that might literally be termed “textbook”. I don’t find that Dawkins is at all unqualified to refer to a God “delusion” unless it’s clear that he’s arguing for the religious to go see psychiatrists about their condition. My impression has always been that he’s clearly using “delusion” as just something like “a fantastical, false, and firmly held belief”, which is pretty much the colloquial sense of the word, I’d say.

Theists fly in the face of facts and logic, that’s their job description. And that’s why the American system was designed very specifically and carefully to keep them out.

That’s quite a different statement from “religion, at least in part, can’t rely on facts and logic”. In fact, that’s a statement I can easily agree with, so I’m happy to see you’ve come around to my way of thinking and, at least on that part, I guess I feel my work here is done.

I’m not quite sure what your point re: delusion is, though. Are you saying that the psychiatric consensus is wrong and a layperson like Dawkins is more qualified to define what a delusion is? I don’t think that’s usually how science works, is it?

Yes. Yes, I know. This is why I said:

‘And that’s the God Delusion, that’s the behavior that – ‘

wait for it, wait for it

‘*in any other walk of life* would be treated as the textbook definition of mental illness.’

Hang on, I’m an atheist, that means I’ve got to express myself in a uniquely strident way that involves a personal belittling. So … ‘that was in the resource you linked to above – did you even read that first?’. God’s balls, can you imagine a theist saying anything so rude?

Theists can behave in a way that in every other circumstance would be treated as delusion. Or, rephrasing it slightly, if it wasn’t called religion we’d have to call it crazy.

This irrationality can inspire a Tutu or a Beck. Part of the problem is that once you’ve allowed people to put aside rationality, once you decouple opinion from facts, it can allow just about anything.

This has been a long thread. I started out by saying that religion, at least in part, can’t rely on facts and logic. You spluttered away at that, but you’ve just ended up saying exactly the same thing. It took you a while, you got there. I feel my work here is done.

My Google is fine, thanks, it’s just that when you mentioned a “textbook”, I was expecting an actual textbook, ideally the DSM-IV-TR. Of course, I don’t mind doing your home work for you. So if you go look up ‘delusions’ in the DSM, you’ll find, under the “Decision Tree for Delusions” in Chapter 2, the following:

“A common error regarding the differential diagnosis in this decision tree is to assume that a belief that is unusual (at least from the clinician’s perspective) is necessarily a delusion. Such misattributions can be avoided through a careful application of the DSM-IV-TR glossary definition of delusion:

A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility. Delusional conviction occurs on a continuum and can be sometimes be inferred from an individual’s behavior. It is often difficult to distinguish between a delusion and an overvalued idea (in which case the individual has an unreasonable belief or idea but does not hold it as firmly as is the case with a delusion).

So as you can see, the diagnostical definition of a delusion specifically excludes significant cultural or sub-cultural beliefs, including religious ones (as does the medterms.com resource you linked to above – did you even read that first?)

More information on why this is the case is available in the relevant literature, which I’m sure will be available in a library near you, along with the DSM itself.

Also, expecting that your answer will be something along the lines of “well, that’s just wrong“, I’ll note that the DSM-IV-TR is the most current standard diagnostic manual for mental illnesses, and represents the scientific concensus of the world-wide psychiatric community.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/156888/delusion

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=26290

His belief in his God almost certainly strengthened him, no arguments there. I don’t think his *God* strengthened him, though. And that’s not splitting hairs or being naive, that’s the crucial point here.

Again – the sportsman analogy: an athlete may find his inner strength through religious faith. Becoming a top class athlete demands certain mental frameworks. But he wins by applying himself, not by some transmission of angelic power from Heaven. In the end, as with everything else we know about, you can remove God from the equation and still get the sums to add up to the same thing.

You’re a Christian. Whatever you say here, you simply don’t believe that fooling yourself there’s a God is the same thing as there being a God. You, surely, think God has at least some form of non-psychological, external, independent existence – otherwise God would be quite a different type of God Delusion to the one Dawkins talks about.

Speaking of which … yes. Beck and Tutu have something in common, and that’s faith that God exists against all the evidence. Clearly they took different paths, to different effect (although I doubt Beck and his fellow travelers imagine it’s all that different), but they share the ability to see believing in something *because* of the lack of evidence as a virtue and a strength.

And *that’s* the God Delusion, that’s the behavior that in any other walk of life would be treated as the textbook definition of mental illness.

Sure, and there were also thousands of clergy who, at great personal risk, opposed Hitler and Mussolini – such as those bishops and priests who distributed Mit brennender Sorge in 1937, or who hid Italian Jews in monasteries and churches in 1943. The point is that both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ are part of the same superset of ‘Christians’ – they’re just people, for better or worse, and trying to paint the ‘good ones’ as “exceptional” is just as fallacious as saying the ‘bad ones’ are “not real Christians”.

I’d say I respect Desmond Tutu, for example, *more* than a Christian would. If Tutu really did have an omnipotent supernatural force at his back the whole time, frankly why did it take him so long? In what sense would he be brave – it would be like standing up to a playground bully with a tank behind you.

There’s also a major tendency for Christians to point to the Tutus, the Bonhoeffers and so on and say ‘look what faith does’. OK … the whole point is that they are exceptional, even unique. There were many thousands of Christian clergy who supported apartheid, who enthusiastically backed Hitler and Mussolini.

‘Respect’ is a slippery word here. Christians in the West are used to being treated as special because they are religious. ‘Man of faith’ is seen as equivalent to ‘virtuous’. Priests and churches are accorded special status. I don’t believe that.

When Christians say atheists ‘don’t respect’ them, they tend to mean that we treat them just like everyone else, not that we treat them any worse.