This is a topic which has recently become of interest to me, after an intriguing conversation on a YouTube comments thread. The question of whether “delusional” is an adjective appropriate in the description of theists has never been of much importance to me, but since I offered a challenge to the claim that it is not, I now feel compelled to deliver a full argument in favour of my position.
Originally, my claim was that it is acceptable to call theists delusional in casual conversation, where the philosophical rigor of the formal debate tends not to be present or necessary. Now, however, I am making the positive claim that theism is almost certainly a delusion, and that it can reasonably be referred to as such in any sort of conversation (as long as the person making the claim understands the reasoning behind it). Note that I have been careful not to claim absolute certainty, since the nature of reality and the human experience do not allow absolute certainty to exist. This disclaimer applies to every statement I ever make: I never possess absolute certainty, no matter how strongly I defend or support a position. Also, note that I do not offer proof, because proof does not exist outside of mathematics and pure logic. I am merely presenting my reasoning.
Part One: Definitions
Before I get into the serious discussion, allow me first to define some of the terms I will be using. The following are definitions of “delusion”:
Oxford: an idiosyncratic belief or impression maintained despite being contradicted by realityor rational argument, typically as a symptom of mental disorder
Merriam-Webster: something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated
Collins: a belief held in the face of evidence to the contrary, that is resistant to all reason
Dictionary.com, based on Random House: a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact
In my comments discussion, the DSM-IV medical definition of “Delusional Disorder” was mentioned. This is an interesting case, in which the definition has been created such as to exclude mass delusion, or religion. It would make an interesting topic for another time, but since it is a definition of a specific mental disorder with a name containing the word “delusion,” and not a definition of the word itself, it does not apply.
To summarize these definitions: To be delusional is to stubbornly believe something which has not been shown to be true, and/or is contradicted by the evidence that has been presented to you.
Part Two: An Example of Delusion
Person A makes a claim: The Earth is flat.
Person B: A ship slowly sinks downward under the horizon as it moves away.
Person A: Of course; it is an illusion based on our eyes being overloaded with information. Our brains cannot process everything we can see on the flat plane!
Person B: Shadows are cast at different angles depending on where you stand on the Earth.
Person A: Of course! The air bends the light from the sky so that it illuminates from different directions in different places.
Person B: I circumnavigated the globe and did not fall off the edge.
Person A: Of course! When you reach the edge, you are magically phased onto the other side. Isn’t the Earth glorious?
Person B: Here are thousands of photos and videos of the spherical Earth.
Person A: The land moves from one side to the other, and, like you did, phases onto the other side when it passes the edge. Use your head.
Person B: Here is a library consisting entirely of scientific papers and records on the subject.
Person A: It’s a government conspiracy to hide the truth of the flat Earth from us.
Person B: What is your evidence for all of this?
Person A: I just know it. I mean, it’s obvious. Just look around.
Consider this against the history of theistic belief. Each object had a god, because we understood nothing. Over time, as our understanding improved, only the unexplained forces such as wind and lightning and the seas had gods. Once those were explained, the gods were consolidated and moved out of the reach of science, into the sky. When we flew above the clouds and visually explored the universe almost to the edge, the god retreated to some transcendent place outside of spacetime. This is a direct parallel to the flat-earth excuses we saw above. Rather than accepting the evidence that is presented, the believer simply modifies their belief and pretends that nothing has changed. This is particularly striking among the most devout members of specific religions, but it can even be seen in deism, where instead of accepting that there is no sign of a god and no reason at all to belief one exists, the individual places their god safely outside the reach of current scientific investigation.
Part Three: Is Theistic Belief Always Resistant to Reason?
It seems to be. We know that some theists do eventually become atheists. However, what only the individual in question can know is the state of their faith when reason finally becomes important enough to respect. Maybe a theist’s faith can be removed simply by the use of reasoned arguments made persistently over a period of time; or, maybe reasoned argument can only be effective once the faith has already begun to recede. However, what is clear is that while a believer’s faith is strong, they will be at least resistant to reason, if not impervious to it.
Part Four: Is Theism Necessarily a Delusion?
No. “Necessarily” would imply a logical necessity. However, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that theism is not a delusion. Imagine that a scientific hypothesis was proposed two thousand years ago. In the time between then and now, millions of man-hours have been spent performing experiments and observations relating to this hypothesis, but no piece of reliable evidence has ever been presented. The hypothesis provides no predictive utility. Over the years, as theories have been established which compellingly explain aspects of the world which this hypothesis hopes to explain, and which have predictive utility, the hypothesis is modified to fit within its new parameters. Because the hypothesis is always modified to fit only within areas of human ignorance, there is at no time a theory which can compete with the hypothesis. However, there is no evidence for the hypothesis, and no way to call it a theory, because it explains nothing and has no support. But, there exists one person who insists that the hypothesis is a full-blown scientific theory that explains everything to perfection, and which deserves an equal place alongside the others. What do we call this person? DELUSIONAL.
Delusion is not merely believing something which is untrue. One can be wrong for the right reasons, or wrong for the wrong reasons but open to changing their mind. Delusion is stubbornly believing something not demonstrably true, and/or contradicted by the evidence. Which means that because millions of man-hours of study have failed to provide any evidence at all in favour of the existence of one or more gods, all theists are probably deluded. Perhaps there are rock-solid unseen reasons for their belief; but since they are undemonstrable, to outsiders they appear as symptoms of delusion, and outsiders are fully justified in assuming that this is the case. Once the believers can demonstrate that they actually have valid reasons for their belief, or even provide some evidence for that idea, it will become less justifiable to call them delusional.
We all understand that it is never possible to conclusively prove a claim about the world. We must, at some point, accept a close approximation to proof. For example, we know that Newton’s laws of motion have a high predictive utility and value, and we are justified to believe and claim that they are true within a reasonable margin of error. Einstein’s relativity is even more accurate, and we are also justified to believe and claim that it is true within a reasonable margin of error. However, neither of these is accurate, nor can either be proven. Equally, we know that evolution by natural selection is a fact, due to the mountains of evidence in support of it. However, our theory explaining it is not accurate, nor can the theory nor the fact be proven.
If a claim is proven to 99.999% certainty, we can and should confidently accept it until it is either disproved or put significantly into question. In the case of theist delusion, considering the number of man-hours that have been invested in finding evidence for the claims without result, the complete lack of predictive utility of theism (and the thousands of failed predictions that go along with it), and the stubborn insistence that faith is a path to knowledge despite strong evidence to the contrary, we can see clear signs of delusion. Indeed, we can claim with an extraordinarily high level of confidence that theists are delusional based on these facts. And, unless the theists have some actual evidence unavailable to the rest of us, we can say that even if their claims turn out to be correct, the fact that the evidence pointed away from, rather than toward, their claims’ truth still means that they were delusional.