I think Thayatira fits better than Laodicea!
1 Like
If a patient came to me endorsing delusions of paranoia, it would appropriate to consider a paranoid thinking. If two persons living together endorse the same delusions of paranoia, the possibility of folie a deux should be considered. And so forth. But there is a limitation. If 20 million church members share the same delusion of paranoia, no mental health professional can claim for certainty that all 20 million members are delusional. Or better still, if about 70% of the US population endorse religion, there is no way a mental health professional can stand in front of his professional society and claim all 70% are delusional, whether the system was built on arbitrary presupposition or not.
1 Like
I would agree- it is bankrupt on a few fronts and appears to not really care (or notice). Itâs raison detre for too many things appears to be that of all other secular institutions, that being, the end justifies the means.
2 Likes
Yet, if the concept is unsupportable except in the imagination, they are deluded. Iâm not using the term in a clinical or mental health sense. Neither is the author of the article. It is more in the sense of being fooled or stubbornly continuing to believe in the highly improbable even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
A billion and a half people believe Muhammad flew on a magic horse named Barack and landed on the temple mount in Jerusalem. I would term this a delusion. You? About the same number believe that Satan flew Jesus up to the pinnacle of the temple. Delusion or reality?
A few years ago, an American couple traveling through central Africa came upon a superstitious tribe who kidnapped them and restrained them, thinking they were spirits. They were only released after eating and drinking, something spirits just donât do. Delusional? Jesus was said to pass through a wall. The disciples thought he was a spirit and he ate and drank to prove he wasnât a spirit. Delusional belief? You choose.
2 Likes
Brother Bart, please inform us why rational positivism is not a religion? Since many of your authority figures affirm what is obvious to me, that is the human brain was made for survival and could not care for what is really true. Its all delusional my friend! This is the basic reason why many atheists love Buddhism.
So how do you know that this discussion is not eliciting evolutionary (subliminal) Freudian/Jungian archetypal sub-routines which are reenactments of the hunt and kill?? What we believe to be true and false are simply tools in the struggle for survival. What content we are talking about really doesnât exist; its the game that counts.
1 Like
You keep quoting Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris to me as though you are certain that they are my âauthority figuresâ. They are not. Dawkins is great in his field; evolutionary biologyâŚbut not in philosophy. Neither Harris nor Dawkins are conversant in church history or theology.
Logical Positivism declares that âreality,â âidentity,â âexistence,â âmindâ are meaningless terms, that man can be certain of nothing but the sensory perceptions of the immediate moment . It does share elements in common with Buddhism. I am not part of that school of thought. Realigy,Identity, existence, and mind are axiomatic concepts standing at the base of all knowledge, not meaningless constructs. If you wish to discuss my viewpoints, inform yourself on Objectivism, preferably with primary sources rather than critiques.
We are only âdelusionalâ when we attempt to deny the above axiomatic principles in the construction of a meaningful philosophy.
I might ask you why you so easily and completely subject yourself to the claims of mystical knowledge as seen in the writings of other people, many of whom are anonymous and make no claims whatsoever. It seems to me to be an abrogation of the importance of thinking for oneself.
1 Like
When used among mental health professionals, a belief is a delusion if and only if it contains the following four elements. The belief or ideation is:
- False.
- Based on a faulty inference from reality (i.e., not simply false because of ignorance or wrong informa-
tion). - Sustained in spite of clear evidence to the contrary.
- Discordant with beliefs accepted by oneâs culture.
Just for your information.
2 Likes
Thanks for the clarification. Again, I am following the usage of the author in equating âdelusionâ with that which is manifestly false and persistently clinging to a belief in it. Perhaps âmisconceptionâ and a sense of reality emerging from it would be better terminology, but âdelusionâ flows better.
1 Like
Well, not quite:
âThe law conservation of mass and the analogous law of conservation of energy were finally overruled by a more general principle known as the massâenergy equivalence. Special relativity also redefines the concept of mass and energy, which can be used interchangeably and are relative to the frame of reference. Several definitions had to be defined for consistency like rest mass of a particle (mass in the rest frame of the particle) and relativistic mass (in another frame).â
1 Like
This monster can only be a reflection of Godâs creators, Homo sapiens.
3 Likes
In the words of Sigmund, âIf god created man in his image, man has more than returned the favor.â
1 Like
Demonstrably false, yet with the remote possibility of the delusion being true. For example, I am fixated on a certain female celebrity. I genuinely believe that we are in a romantic relationship. My delusion is demonstrably false, but in the abstract itâs possible. This would differ from a hallucination such as âHey Doc Elmer! Look! Your office walls are bleeding!â I would also add that confronting a delusion head-on is usually fruitless, even counterproductive.
Does this, in your opinion, allow for the creation of something from nothing?
Ah, yes! The biggest monsters of all.
2 Likes
A delusion is based on a false belief whereas a hallucination is based on the senses, feels real but is not.
2 Likes
Nicely phrased. Iâll stick to test construction and leave the DSM to the clinicians. 
2 Likes
I think you may be misunderstding @elmer_cupino , because you are stuck with binary understanding of human conceptual framework either being âtruthâ or being âfictionâ.
Iâm sorry to break it to you, but what we call âtruthâ is actually a subset of the much broader hierarchy and subcategory of âfictionâ 
These are not some separate concepts that can exists independent of each other. And that broader purpose of âfictionâ we use serves as a directive for human development and progress in history. In fact, almost entire conceptual structure of a modern human is written as a fiction that manages, constrains, and even rewires your inherited biological instincts that can be counterproductive to large-scale functional societies.
Itâs a much more complex subject than one could parse through an article, or even a book. But, no delusions can be build on arbitrary presuppositions, because there are no arbitrary presuppositions. Any presupposition has to somehow leverage the existing conceptual framework to even be intelligible. Even if you are trying to make one up right now, you would be purposefully structuring a presuppositions dissonant with our present conceptual framework. It wouldnât be arbitrary.
Delusions that are in question are more internal to various systems themselves, and which sit at the lower hierarchy of value due to their lack of benefits or even detrimental nature.
2 Likes
No idea, but creation ex nihilo isnât really biblical in any case, if thatâs what youâre getting at.
1 Like
If ever a people were represented by the Laodicean message, it is the people who have had great light, the revelation of the Scriptures, that Seventh-day Adventists have received. {18MR 193.2}
This was penned in 1902 by EGW
The word was made flesh is an example of creating matter from audible sound.
8 Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
9 For he spake, and it was [done]; he commanded, and it stood fast.
10 The LORD bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect (Psalm 33:8-10).
3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.(Hebrews 11:3)