Atheism 25 - On Delusions

    I recently listened to a NPR broadcast in which the commentator was interviewing a psychologist who had lately published his findings from an exhaustive study on delusions.  The psychologist's conclusion was that delusions obviously serve a human need (since we all have them), but as for what need they serve the study was inconclusive.

    When asked for an example, the psychologist mentioned the concept of nationalism.  He pointed out that there is nothing in nature that would suggest any need for nationalism.  From orbit, astronauts cannot detect national borders on the face of the earth.  Animals pay no attention to borders; they simply go where the food is.  And plants, well plants just follow the wind.  The idea of nationalism is a completely human construct.  We made it up.  It's a delusion that we all share.  Yet, the delusion is so strong that hundreds of thousands of us are willing to both kill and die to protect it.  Why?  Science doesn't have an answer.

    Many would say - have said - that religion is another form of mass delusion.  Richard Dawkins certainly thinks so.  Carl Sagan would agree.  When faced with such minds, who am I to argue?  Yet, I do.

    What exactly is a delusion, and how does one know if one is suffering from one?  Are delusions good things or bad things?  Healthy or unhealthy?

    As for a definition, Merriam-Webster says a delusion is "a false, persistent belief maintained in spite of evidence to the contrary."  I would add to that the tag "and despite the lack of substantial corroborating evidence."   For example, I have known many people in my life who could be impolitely but accurately called "control freaks."  In order for these people to maintain a healthy psyche, they need a sense of control over their lives and surroundings.  Of course, they can never produce any substantial evidence that they actually have any control over themselves or their surroundings, but they need the delusion of control in order to function reasonably.  Disprove the delusion and these people fall apart.  As far as that goes, how many people would become completely unhinged by the suggestion in the second paragraph that the idea of nationalism is a delusion, although there is no evidence to support the idea that it is not, and all the natural evidence in the world that it is?  How many people are in social media groups today insisting that the earth is flat?  Contrary to popular myth taught to elementary students, no learned person in all of human history has ever mentioned any reason to believe in a flat earth.  From the time we could look up in the sky and watch the stars pass us in great arcs, we've known the earth is round.

    As for the good/evil aspect of delusions, I suppose it depends on the circumstances.  The delusion of control seems reasonably harmless as long as it is helping the deluded person to be helpful, organized and efficient.  It's only problematic when it begins to interfere with their ability to work well with others and maintain a sense of decorum.  I suppose the question of a delusion's goodness versus evilness would depend, like all neuroses, on how it affects the believer's ability to function in society.

    How does one know if one is deluded?  I'm not sure if I can answer that one.  I'm not sure if anybody can.  Delusions, like the bully impulse discussed previously, render themselves beyond question unless one makes a conscious point of questioning them.  I suppose the only real option is to make a habit of questioning each of one's opinions on every subject all the time to see if an idea might be a delusion, and, frankly, I suspect that would be too exhausting for most people to endure.  Short of that, perhaps the only way to tell if an idea is delusional is to see how well it fits in with other ideas.

    By way of example, let us return to the statements mentioned above by Drs. Dawkins and Sagan regarding the delusion of religion.  Might they be right?  I would certainly be willing to entertain the possibility.  But I would be equally willing to entertain the possibility of the delusion of scientism, or the worship of science.  In scientism, anything outside the purview of science does not exist, a conclusion that is itself, I'm afraid, a fairly sophomoric delusion.

    Science answers many questions, but, as we have previously examined, not all.  There are some questions that science isn't even designed to answer because the scientific method doesn't apply equally to every question a human mind can conjure.  Science can determine which kinds of foods are healthy and which are not, but it can't tell you where to have lunch today.  Science can tell you the physiological reactions involved in sexual arousal, but it cannot tell you whom - or even if - to marry.  Just so, the scientific method isn't intended to answer religious questions.  Religion resides outside the field of science.  That's why, in the past, most persons of science were also persons of faith, just as - according to a recent AAAS poll - 51% of scientists continue to be today.  I have no issues with science, scientists, or the scientific method (which is a good thing, since I'm married to one), but I do question scientism as being the final definition of every possible point of existence.  Since the scientific method cannot address a question like "what's the meaning of life," scientism concludes that life has not meaning.  I can readily fit science into my religion, but religion cannot fit into scientism. 

    In "Is Theology Poetry," C.S. Lewis said this: "I was taught at school, when I had done a sum, to 'prove my answer.'  The proof or verification of my Christian answer to the cosmic sum is this.  When I accept theology I may find difficulties, at this point or that, in harmonizing it with some particular truths which are embedded in the mythical cosmology derived from science.  But I can get in, or allow for, science as a whole.  Granted that Reason is prior to matter and that the light of the primal Reason illuminates finite minds, I can understand how men should come by observation and inference, to know a lot about the universe they live in.

    "If, on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science.  If thoughts are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.  And this to me is the final test.  This is how I distinguish dreaming from waking.

    "When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream.  The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world.  I know that there are such things as dreams: I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner: I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons.  But while in the nightmare, I could not have fitted in my waking experience.

    "The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world: the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one.  For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific point of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking.  Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions.  The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself.  I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else." (Several phrases here may ruffle more modern feathers.  While brilliant, Lewis was still a product of his time and place.)

    So, one is left to ponder if God and Heaven and immortal souls are the delusion, or if scientism is the delusion?  We already know, thanks to Einstein, that our linear concept of time is a delusion; perhaps our whole idea of time and space are delusions.  Many theoretical physicists today think that there may be multiple other universes existing in dimensions outside our own.  If we concede that our solitary universe could be a delusion, couldn't all universes be equally so?  Might all universes be contained within the infinite idea that is Heaven?  There's certainly nothing in science to preclude the possibility.  So, with lack of contrary evidence, I'm not so sure that religion actually does represent a delusion as defined by Webster.  I can fit the necessary material for an infinite number of universes into my idea of Heaven, but I cannot fit Heaven into the naturalistic idea of infinite universes.  So, which is the delusion?

    I recently heard a snippet from a Christian comedian (unfortunately, the snippet did not include the man's name) who put the question in this humorous manner: "Some people don't believe in God; they insist that the universe came from nothing.  They don't believe that God exists.  You know what definitely doesn't exist?  Nothing!  That's what the word means!"

And finally, in terms of my potentially delusional belief in God, I'm left begging the question, "so what?"  So what if it's a delusion?  So what if I die, only to find that I did not, in fact, have an eternal soul after all and that death actually is the complete end to life, consciousness and everything?  It seems to me that I will have lost nothing.  By definition, oblivion doesn't hurt.  There is no remorse or anguish involved, no matter my living beliefs.  In the meantime, I lived a better life.  I had more joy, more peace, more tranquility than I would have had without that delusion, and so did those around me because they got to spend time with someone calm and courteous who loved and respected them unconditionally as a consequence of his delusions.  I've done no harm by my delusion and, with luck, I've actually done some good.  I've lost nothing, but gained everything.  I was, in short, a better man for it.  For that, I'm willing to risk a glorious delusion!

Pax