[ExI] Prisoner of bad philosophy: Carl Sagan couldn’t allow himself to hope

[William Flynn Wallace]

Interestingly, part of the definition of a delusion in psychiatry (e.g. in
the DSM) is that the belief is not held by people from the same culture. If
this  criterion were not included then religious beliefs and other beliefs
held in the absence of evidence would be classed as delusional.
-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
*Which just goes to show you that you should not let psychiatrists be in
charge of anything important (especially things like involuntary
incarceration).  Do you know how things get into and out of (like
homosexuality) the DSM?  Voted on at conventions - by some who are lit up
like a supernova.  Realize that the DSM is a political and cultural thing,
not a scientific categorization.  For the worst case of this, look at
Russia and China and see who they regard as abnormal.*

*Spike, I think if you would look at the evidence, you would find that your
opinion that IQ and religious beliefs are orthogonal - that is, not
correlated - may be incorrect.*

*We do have many discussions on this site that would be illuminated by
surveys of the literature - meta-analyses (which are often surveys of
surveys and involve hundreds of studies, and I am going to find out how to
access them so we can start from data and not opinion - will let you know -
will visit a reference librarian, as I am somewhat out of touch)*

*bill w*

On Sat, Aug 4, 2018 at 11:38 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, 5 Aug 2018 at 1:30 am, <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> *On Behalf
>> Of *William Flynn Wallace
>> *Sent:* Saturday, August 4, 2018 8:07 AM
>> *To:* ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Prisoner of bad philosophy: Carl Sagan couldn’t
>> allow himself to hope
>>
>>
>>
>>  For some atheists it is upsetting that so many base their lives around
>> religious belief given this, and they feel obliged to tell them why they
>> are wrong at every opportunity;  stathis
>>
>>
>>
>> And the other way around:  Yet another reason for atheists to be
>> militant:  being lectured to, patronized by people they consider
>> intellectual inferiors.  It doesn't have to be that way.  I've been
>> 'corrected' by students in my 101 classes and I found it funny (though I
>> tried to hide it).
>>
>>
>>
>> bill w
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Occasionally in our lives we meet someone who is so clearly our
>> intellectual superior it is startling.  In the controls biz, we sometimes
>> had a very gifted young person who just seem to have that rare talent, an
>> ability to see everything, to use the complicated systems of differential
>> equations like Tarzan swinging from vines in the jungle, as effortlessly as
>> flying.
>>
>>
>>
>> We had a guy come thru like that, exactly one, a PhD candidate when he
>> was still in his early 20s.  We have never had one like him before or
>> since.  He was only there about a year before our customer discovered him
>> and somehow coaxed him away.  He was religious to the core, and I do mean
>> fundamentalist, tortoises all the way down hardcore fundy.
>>
>>
>>
>> I don’t know how it works or why it works, but somehow religious belief
>> is orthogonal to intelligence.
>>
>
> People can be frankly delusional, symptomatic of a psychotic illness, and
> still be intelligent. The more intelligent they are, the more elaborate
> their defence of their delusion.
>
> Interestingly, part of the definition of a delusion in psychiatry (e.g. in
> the DSM) is that the belief is not held by people from the same culture. If
> this  criterion were not included then religious beliefs and other beliefs
> held in the absence of evidence would be classed as delusional.
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
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