Speaker 1: Good evening, viewers, Thank you for tuning into the nonprofits
Speaker 1: on this wonderful Friday night. Don't forget that immediately after
Speaker 1: the Nonprofits tonight you can tune into Truth Wanted, hosted
Speaker 1: by the wonderful resident geologists of the ACA, Kelly Laughlin,
Speaker 1: and his special guest is going to be Dan excuse me,
Speaker 1: it's going to be Chris Mallard from the dam Or
Speaker 1: Daily Atheist morning show, so check that out. Also joining
Speaker 1: them on backup is our own Eli Slack. And Eli
Speaker 1: is here tonight to introduce an article to us about
Speaker 1: belief and delusion? Do they have anything in common our
Speaker 1: belief's delusions? Are religious people delusional?
Speaker 2: Who knows?
Speaker 1: We are going to dive into this topic? And Eli
Speaker 1: take it away?
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: So. Although we often try to stress that religious people
Speaker 4: aren't crazy for being religious, and that being religious is
Speaker 4: not the same thing as being delusional, can the nature
Speaker 4: of delusions give us some insight into the nature of beliefs?
Speaker 4: Well to university professor claim that yes it can. In
Speaker 4: an article summarizing their research, Connors and Halligan right that
Speaker 4: when offered a stimulus, our brains naturally search for context
Speaker 4: against which to compare it, and this context that it
Speaker 4: searches for is exactly the same for both, the same
Speaker 4: context that forms our beliefs, whether true or not. The
Speaker 4: primary difference between a belief and a delusion it seems
Speaker 4: to only be the number of people that believe it.
Speaker 4: But what else can we learn about the relationship and
Speaker 4: interplay between these two categories of thought. This article is
Speaker 4: from the conversation by Michael Connors and Peter W. Halligan
Speaker 4: on November nineteenth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Excellent. Yeah, so, Eli and Aaron on.
Speaker 1: Wednesday's show the other night, you both talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about pattern recognition. Aaron, you spoke about how our
Speaker 1: brains are inclined to find patterns, and I can't help
Speaker 1: but see a similarity here with this article. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about that in the context of forming delusions?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: This article is about a case study for a woman
Speaker 5: whose name is Natalie named change to protect the anonymity
Speaker 5: of the actual person. She was admitted to a hospital
Speaker 5: with post partum psychosis, and as part of her psychosis,
Speaker 5: she would see strangers and think that they were her
Speaker 5: in laws, and then also at one point she thought
Speaker 5: that she was dead and the because this was an
Speaker 5: ongoing thing. Doctors were able to interview her afterwards and
Speaker 5: try to come to understanding, well, obviously these are delusions.
Speaker 5: These strangers aren't her in laws. That is you know,
Speaker 5: that's an objective reality. Obviously she's not dead, that's an
Speaker 5: objective reality. But she thought she was. So the interviewed
Speaker 5: and tried to figure out, well, why did you believe
Speaker 5: these things? And she actually described as thought process that
Speaker 5: we all go through that we look out in the world,
Speaker 5: we try to find evidence to support the things that
Speaker 5: we see or trying to understand the world, and she
Speaker 5: saw mannerisms what did she say, mannerisms and other things
Speaker 5: in the strangers that made them that were similar to
Speaker 5: her in laws which made her think that they were
Speaker 5: her in laws. And the one when she thought she
Speaker 5: was dead, it didn't take her very long to realize, oh,
Speaker 5: I'm actually not dead. Like she actually looked out and
Speaker 5: tried to think in analyze and trying to figure out
Speaker 5: what was going on. So the what is really puzzling
Speaker 5: about this story is Okay, so what they really are
Speaker 5: demonstrating is there's really nothing different between forming a delusion
Speaker 5: and forming a belief. So how do one thing that's
Speaker 5: missing from this article is how do we protect ourselves
Speaker 5: from forming delusions versus forming beliefs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that it was really insightful to see
Speaker 1: the steps that people go through to arrive at a
Speaker 1: belief and then also arrive at a delusion. I do
Speaker 1: have a sense of similarity between them because, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: while the author didn't really define belief accurately, you know,
Speaker 1: I feel that belief the author's definition fail else to
Speaker 1: account for the fact that beliefs lack proof. You know,
Speaker 1: we often say a belief is just a lack of evidence.
Speaker 1: It's it's you know, something you don't have evidence for,
Speaker 1: but you choose to believe it anyway. And so on
Speaker 1: that note, Kelly, you know me being of the mindset
Speaker 1: that that belief here is not accurately defined, does that
Speaker 1: have any bearing on the author's ability to make her case.
Speaker 3: I think it does, and I agree with you. I
Speaker 3: had a problem with the article from the very beginning
Speaker 3: because it didn't really define believe and I like to say,
Speaker 3: I don't really believe anything. Do I think some things
Speaker 3: are true? Yes? I accept facts. If I believe something,
Speaker 3: then I no longer have to think about it, And
Speaker 3: the more I believe, the more I don't have to think,
Speaker 3: and I'd rather be thinking. You know, once you stop thinking,
Speaker 3: you're dead, right, So yeah, I think I think it
Speaker 3: does have a bearing on her case because if you're
Speaker 3: not completely defining what you want to comment on, how
Speaker 3: do I know that you and I are can ever
Speaker 3: be in agreement when we haven't first agreed on what
Speaker 3: it is that we're talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, how do you even have the conversation if there's
Speaker 1: no common ground of understanding there?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Right? That's what I doubt, That's what that's I think
Speaker 3: was probably the biggest problem with the beginning of this
Speaker 3: article that we didn't get those complete definitions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it talks a lot.
Speaker 1: The article talks a lot about, you know, how religion
Speaker 1: and belief go together, and then of course compares belief
Speaker 1: and delusions and Eli, you don't think that religious people
Speaker 1: are necessarily delusional, but doesn't their belief in a sense
Speaker 1: fit the criteria for how we define a delusion.
Speaker 5: In a sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I'll clarify that. What I what I like
Speaker 4: to stress that just because a person is religious, that
Speaker 4: doesn't really necessarily say anything else about their cognitive state.
Speaker 4: It means that they have these beliefs and they have
Speaker 4: reasons for them. They may be bad reason as far
Speaker 4: as we are concerned, But I try to that doesn't
Speaker 4: mean they're crazy, It doesn't mean they're delusional. This, that
Speaker 4: or the other. Try to dismantle the ideas rather than
Speaker 4: the people. But what this does say is that all beliefs,
Speaker 4: whether they are true or not, whether they are delusional
Speaker 4: or in line with reality, are formed in the same
Speaker 4: exact way. And that's based on whether that's with you know,
Speaker 4: the sensory input that is like the event that you're considering,
Speaker 4: and that is interpreted through personal bias, your emotional connection
Speaker 4: to the event or to any of the factors, and
Speaker 4: your subjective interpretations of your experiences. So you're interpreting that
Speaker 4: event subjectively, you are applying your personal bias, and you
Speaker 4: are applying your emotional state, your emotional response to that,
Speaker 4: to that new belief, and whether what you believe now
Speaker 4: is true or not, it's formed the exact same way.
Speaker 4: So this what this says is not that religious people
Speaker 4: are delusional or that people who believe things are delusional.
Speaker 4: What it says is that firmly held religious beliefs don't
Speaker 4: have any advantage that a non religious delusion doesn't also
Speaker 4: have just because it's a religious belief. That's what I
Speaker 4: take away from it.
Speaker 1: I find that interesting, you know, because you can make
Speaker 1: the argument in the opposite direction as well. It's like
Speaker 1: when it comes to good things in society being done,
Speaker 1: and people make the argument that religion is necessary for
Speaker 1: those good things, we can say, no, there's actually zero
Speaker 1: advantage to having a religion in place to carry out,
Speaker 1: you know, a certain groups or the objectives of society.
Speaker 1: If you will, you know, will you know, we can
Speaker 1: do all great things without without religion, And so you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to see at the opposite end of the
Speaker 1: spectrum there that there's really no difference either. And I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to disparage people who are religious.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: You know somebody who was a former Christian that you know,
Speaker 1: you you know and ask for the religion, but you
Speaker 1: certainly from an early age are taught how to make
Speaker 1: sense of it and it sticks with you, and you
Speaker 1: do have your reasons for better or worse.
Speaker 2: But Aaron, you.
Speaker 1: Know, other religions are often treated as mythology, as being
Speaker 1: silly but not Christianity, and I wonder what do you
Speaker 1: think makes that possible?
Speaker 2: How does that happen?
Speaker 1: And what does that say about our understanding about belief
Speaker 1: versus delusion?
Speaker 5: Well, the only thing that's different between mythology and accepted
Speaker 5: belief is the number of people that believe it. As
Speaker 5: soon as the number of people, as soon as the
Speaker 5: number of Christians dwindles or it becomes a minority, that's
Speaker 5: when Christianity is going to start to be seen as
Speaker 5: a mythology as opposed to I don't know, do we
Speaker 5: have a word for it, non mythology.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 5: And how does this relate to belief as a delusion? Well,
Speaker 5: the author the author of this article defined belief as
Speaker 5: convictions of reality that we accept as true, and then
Speaker 5: they want to analyze delusions as opposed as different than beliefs. Well,
Speaker 5: delusions are also convictions that people accept it's true, they're
Speaker 5: just not objectively true, right, And so I think psychology
Speaker 5: kind of has a problem in this in this aspect,
Speaker 5: because the only way to know somebody's delusion if is
Speaker 5: a objectively true or not. If somebody's not objectively true,
Speaker 5: then it's a delusion. Well, well, then that means religions
Speaker 5: are a delusion. And I happen to believe that religions
Speaker 5: are a delusion because there's no evidence for believing them.
Speaker 5: Just like this woman and she's thought that these people
Speaker 5: were her in laws. These trainers were in laws, but
Speaker 5: they weren't objectively right. People may believe in religions, but
Speaker 5: there's no objective evidence that they are actually true. There's
Speaker 5: actually you can look out in the world and see, well,
Speaker 5: if God exists, we would expect to see X, Y,
Speaker 5: and Z, and we don't see that, right, And so yeah,
Speaker 5: I think the only difference between belief and delusion is
Speaker 5: a number of people that believe it. And if a
Speaker 5: lot of people believe your delusion, then it's more considered
Speaker 5: a belief, But a fewer people believe what you believe,
Speaker 5: then it's considered a delusion.
Speaker 1: Kelly, I see you kind of wincing and moving around
Speaker 1: and get and ready to speak. I'm gonna get to you,
Speaker 1: but I want to capitalize on Aaron's Aaron's point. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm in the military and sometimes I tend to have
Speaker 1: conversations or cross paths with a chaplain and I do
Speaker 1: remember about a little over a year ago, year and
Speaker 1: a half ago, I had talked about the types of
Speaker 1: chaplains that the military offers, and I said, well, we
Speaker 1: should have we should have a I didn't use the
Speaker 1: word mythology, but I said, like the religion of Poseidon.
Speaker 1: And I have this running joke because I have a
Speaker 1: tattoo Poseidon on my arm. And so when I want
Speaker 1: to make a point about how silly religions can be,
Speaker 1: I often pretend to be a worshiper of Poseidon and
Speaker 1: people will say, come on, you don't believe in that crap,
Speaker 1: And MY response is often.
Speaker 2: How dare you? How dare you right?
Speaker 1: But anyway, this chaplain said, ah, that's just mythology, and
Speaker 1: I'm like as opposed to you because you get the
Speaker 1: badge and because a whole lot of people.
Speaker 2: Believe in it.
Speaker 1: Anyway, you know, Kelly, when we were talking earlier, we
Speaker 1: talked about the definition of belief, but we didn't really
Speaker 1: delve into your point of view on the relationship between
Speaker 1: belief and delusion.
Speaker 2: I just want to see if you want to expand
Speaker 2: on that.
Speaker 3: I agree with a lot of what Aaron said, but
Speaker 3: I think there's more to it, because, like I believe,
Speaker 3: I want another drink. Now I have a delusion that
Speaker 3: this is straight vodka. It's not right. So I don't
Speaker 3: need a whole bunch of people to believe that I
Speaker 3: got a cup of vodka to be deluted. So there's
Speaker 3: more to it. And it's just like a lot of
Speaker 3: people often don't understand that their belief is a delusion,
Speaker 3: and that's what it becomes a real problem, right, and
Speaker 3: we all have delusions. One of the ex hosts of
Speaker 3: AXP used to talk about walking down the alley and
Speaker 3: seeing movement by the trash can and thinking, oh, someone's
Speaker 3: going to jump out and get me in, and they
Speaker 3: get closer and they just see it's a trash bag
Speaker 3: wa even in the wind. Right. So it's easy for
Speaker 3: anybody to be diluted at any point. It doesn't mean
Speaker 3: we have to stay deluted. Can become aware of the situation.
Speaker 3: We become educated to the situation. So belief and delusion,
Speaker 3: I don't know if they're that directly related to each other,
Speaker 3: right they are. We can believe our delusions, but we
Speaker 3: tend to understand that they're delusions unless we become indoctrinated
Speaker 3: by the belief. So you have to get that extra
Speaker 3: pushover to make that delusion become a real belief to
Speaker 3: me anyway, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I have this this delusion that I'm like
Speaker 1: a really good host at the ACA, and even though
Speaker 1: our producers, even though our producer Greg and Glenn and
Speaker 1: Cynthia are always like, no, you're the best we got.
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 3: I am, you know, I M conuer that one.
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: But in all seriousness, yeah, I think that I think
Speaker 1: there can be a little bit of a discussion between
Speaker 1: what makes them different. And that goes back to I
Speaker 1: think Eli, you were talking about the reasons we have.
Speaker 2: Don't you think that maybe the reasons.
Speaker 1: That people have for a belief versus the reasons that
Speaker 1: they have for delusion are are just a little bit different.
Speaker 2: I mean, are it? Do you think that you're being
Speaker 2: soft on people.
Speaker 1: On theists by keep and and you know, just attempting
Speaker 1: to keep the discussion amicable instead of instead of calling
Speaker 1: them out.
Speaker 2: And saying, yeah, you are delusional. I mean, what are
Speaker 2: your thoughts on that I'm being a little hard on you?
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, I want to unwrap this one to
Speaker 2: be fair.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it probably is a little bit of that, like, well,
Speaker 4: you know, because the thing is, the word delusional doesn't
Speaker 4: necessarily mean like delusion doesn't mean like you are a
Speaker 4: bad person for having a delusion. It means that, hey,
Speaker 4: the thing that you believe is very clearly not true,
Speaker 4: and here is all of the evidence saying that it's not,
Speaker 4: yet you still believe it. That is definitionally called the delusion.
Speaker 4: But people, when you start to use words like that,
Speaker 4: they start to get defensive. They're like, I'm not delusional,
Speaker 4: I'm not crazy, I'm not you know, wor be So yeah,
Speaker 4: there's a little bit of that, like, hey, well let's
Speaker 4: make sure that you know we're not calling people crazy.
Speaker 4: But what it like there, what we learned is that
Speaker 4: there is no difference in the way that you form beliefs,
Speaker 4: whether they are true or delusional. The difference what makes
Speaker 4: it a belief or a delusion is whether or not
Speaker 4: it's true, and how many people believe it and other
Speaker 4: things like we've talked about that you said. There could
Speaker 4: be a number of things we could say about what
Speaker 4: makes a difference. All it really means is that I
Speaker 4: don't have to take your delusion. You're sorry, I don't
Speaker 4: have to take your religious belief any more seriously than
Speaker 4: I would need to take a delusion with the same
Speaker 4: amount of evidence.
Speaker 1: So I think you hit the nail on the head,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of why I was picking on you
Speaker 1: a little bit. But I agree one hundred percent with
Speaker 1: what you said. No, seriously, people think the word delusional
Speaker 1: is like insulting, and it's just a definition for a
Speaker 1: concept that we kind of all need to take a
Speaker 1: look in the mirror sometimes and recognize our delusions.
Speaker 2: Right, you know, I.
Speaker 1: Had this, Uh, I had taken a course one time
Speaker 1: where we were learning about rational actors. Okay, is a
Speaker 1: suicide bomber rational? Well, of course, not, of course a
Speaker 1: suicide bomb.
Speaker 3: Actually wait wait wait wait, are exactly, yes, exactly exactly
Speaker 3: rationalize anything pretty much.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I wasn't saying that they're not. And
Speaker 1: thank you Kelly for stepping in and preparing to keep
Speaker 1: me on course. Uh and and you know, keep me honest.
Speaker 1: But but in reality, you know, we we as people,
Speaker 1: I think it caught so caught up on definitions that
Speaker 1: we failed to kind of get past it and break
Speaker 1: down that barrier and examine our own our own biases.
Speaker 2: If you Will, so, yeah, really interesting article.
Speaker 1: I I want to just real quick harken back to
Speaker 1: the fact that the the woman in this article was
Speaker 1: suffering from post postpartum depression and psychosis exactly. Uh, and
Speaker 1: having a tough time and so, you know, empathy to
Speaker 1: all the women that deal with that. Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, my heart goes out to you and and
Speaker 2: and you know she was able to get help. Yeah,
Speaker 2: struggle is real. On that note, though, I thought it
Speaker 2: was a really not something. This isn't really.
Speaker 1: Like a topic we talk about a lot, but uh,
Speaker 1: something pretty a pretty cool kind of mix up from
Speaker 1: our normal articles. I'm gonna I'm gonna take it home.
Speaker 1: Kelly will start the last word off with you. What
Speaker 1: do you got for us?
Speaker 3: Real quick? Just one thing. I believe I've been brustfreeding
Speaker 3: my inner child all day.
Speaker 2: You've been what.
Speaker 3: I've been breastfeeding my inner child all day.
Speaker 2: You've been breast I don't get it, guys. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Somebody helped me show.
Speaker 3: You how how delusional belief can be.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, you know what, Kelly's so delusional so much
Speaker 1: of the time that I just thought he was talking normally.
Speaker 3: But anyway, you know, it's also great. I have a
Speaker 3: weird sense of humor. And while none of you guys
Speaker 3: might have thought that was funny, your faces were totally fun.
Speaker 1: That'll be that should be the screenshot of this episode.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Scott, Yeah, good conversation, Kelly. If you've got
Speaker 1: nothing will We'll move on to Aaron.
Speaker 5: We are we are not rational creatures. As much as
Speaker 5: we try to be, especially here on the nonprofits, we
Speaker 5: try to be rational and logical, we are not. We
Speaker 5: are emotional, we are irrational. We are delusional. There are
Speaker 5: all things that we are delusional about, and that's why
Speaker 5: we've developed as a as a culture, as a society.
Speaker 5: That's why we've developed the scientific method so that we
Speaker 5: can develop hypotheses, we can test them, and we can
Speaker 5: create hypothies that have predictive powers, so we know what's
Speaker 5: actually true and what's false, so that we know what
Speaker 5: beliefs comport with reality and what beliefs are delusional. So
Speaker 5: that's why I'd like to rely on experts, people that
Speaker 5: study things, people that understand them, because they're the ones
Speaker 5: that have done the work to understand things that I
Speaker 5: don't have time to understand. Right, They're the ones that
Speaker 5: have done the work. So that's why I trust experts
Speaker 5: so that I could not be deluded. I can be
Speaker 5: as delusion less as possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a very important point and something our friend
Speaker 1: doctor Ben says a lot like, if you're not an
Speaker 1: expert on something, stop talking like you are. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of us just like talking about things
Speaker 1: so much that we kind of get swept up into
Speaker 1: this whirlwind of of making commentary right, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of like maybe we shouldn't. But yeah, great point, Eli,
Speaker 1: what do you have?
Speaker 4: Uh oh yeah, might not be relatively short as well.
Speaker 4: I think I was gonna If Aaron hadn't said what
Speaker 4: he said, I would have said that. But I'd say,
Speaker 4: given given that all beliefs we know now are they
Speaker 4: come from the same neurochemical result, I guess you could
Speaker 4: say that makes all ideas equally eligible to be ripped
Speaker 4: the funk apart.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, hell yeah. Something that can be destroyed by
Speaker 1: the truth deserves to be destroyed by the truth. I
Speaker 1: love that phrase. But yeah, so awesome discussion. Thank you
Speaker 1: gentlemen for joining me this wonderful Friday night. Don't forget folks.
Speaker 1: Check out Truth Wanted immediately after this, you can talk
Speaker 1: about anything and you can talk with Kelly about it
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, so you know, we cover it all.
Speaker 1: Scientific Methods believes delusions. Kelly's in her child