This is of course a complete strawman with regards to what the great majority of self-described atheists actually think.
Certainly I would agree that as a matter of policy we have to use a functional approach to questions of sanity. We forcibly restrain or institutionalize people because they pose a demonstrable threat to the safety of themselves or others, not because they have beliefs which I may personally find to be unwarranted or even downright bizarre.
Maybe there should be some sort of prize for the millionth poster who says “You can’t disprove God”.
Atheism is not a belief; it is a lack of belief. You do not have to disprove fantastic claims in order to lack belief in them. Can you PROVE that the government is not controlling your mind with invisible beams? Do you believe that they are?
Shodan, it’s been my understanding that while a person who holds as axiomatic that no such thing as a god can possibly exist may very well be considered to have taken this assertion as a belief, the customary stance of the atheists here and in the public eye elsewhere is simply one that says that while a god may be theoretically possible, nonetheless the factual matter of whether such an entity exists requires substantially more evidence or logical proof than has been provided him or her, and that in consequence the only reasonable conclusion is that such an entity does not exist. This is a logical inference from the absence of adequate satisfactory evidence (at least in the opinion of the atheist), not a belief of any sort – except insofar as a belief that logical conclusions from empirical data or its lack should be accepted as reasonably describing the world can be considered “a form of belief.”
We theists who debate here on a regular basis can respect that stance, and simply assert that we feel we have adequate evidence, of one form or another, to convince us to the contrary. Are you comfortable with that POV?
Princhester:
Quite simply, I’ve been asking for what constitutes your idea of “insanity” and how actual proof of a really existent deity would be distinguished from it. I think it is obvious that there are persons who otherwise behave in a sane manner who nonetheless adhere to a belief in a God, which it appears you are defining as “insane behavior.” Quite simply, if that is the case, then your system cannot allow for a sane non-atheist. However, it then becomes effectively trollery – anyone who attempts to disagree with you is ipso facto wrong, and probably insane in the bargain. This is what irked me enough to make the comment about the Pit.
The reason I asked you to set those definitions is that I wished to argue based on your standards for identifying true vs. erroneous perceptions, the bounds of what constitutes insanity, and the like. I’d attempt to make my case that there can be a completely sane believer in a supernatural event working from your standards. In addition, I asked first. 
Let’s not pick on religion. The OP question is a special case of a more general question, namely: How do you distinguish disagreeing with me from insanity? I knew someone who insisted that her cats were livelier in the winter because the static electricity in their fur gave them more energy. Now, unlike the existence of God, the charged cat hypothesis has not been debated for centuries by the world’s greatest philosophers, and it has been scientifically proven false. But she had friends, and hobbies, and made it to work each morning, so I didn’t think she was insane, just wrong. Unlike Princhester, I haven’t seen functioning but insane.
Now hang on a gosh darn moment. Would you mind going back and reading my posts (just my posts and not all the others which have rather gone off elsewhere) and then read your above post and see if what you attribute to me is consistent with what I have actually said.
And then, if you think it worthwhile, would you mind rephrasing your complaint appropriately.
Why would you think that you would get an answer out of me as to what the bounds of insanity are, or where the border between truth and erroneous perceptions lies, given my OP? I’m asking a question here, not providing answers. I don’t know the answers to your questions, I don’t know that answers exist: that is to a large extent my point.
I have a friend whose theory is that cats are able to turn gravity up and down at will. Thus their ability to either sneak very very quietly to catch mices or go GALUMPH GALUMPH down the hallway like a thousand charging elephants, as the whim takes them.
He does own four of them though, so I think we can excuse him for his theories 
Seriously, though, I think where a lot of confusion is coming from in this discussion is that the OP conflated two cases which, IMO should be kept completely separate.
Case 1) All the data on {whatever the wierd opinion is about } is freely available to everyone, and everyone draws logical conclusions based on the agreed data.
This encompasses people like those who think that there was a CIA conspiracy to kill JFK, or the American government is hiding aliens at Roswell.
In these sort of cases, we tend to be less likely to view people with “out there” views as complete loons if there are lots of people who think the same way, even if we ourselves are in violent disagreement with their position. This is because we recognise that our own logic can be fallible, and so when we disagree with someone on the state of reality it might be us who’s mistaken
Case 2) Some of the data on {whatever } is only available to the person whose sanity we are questioning.
This applies to people who hear voices, or have memories of aliens anal probing them, or whatever.
In this case we are MORE likely to judge someone a loon if there are lots of other people saying roughly the same thing, particularly if the claims of all such people are similar, but conflicting (eg - three people all claiming to be Jesus)
Back to the OP - it was discussing a guy called James Matthews who thought he was being mind controlled by Some Vast Conspiracy. And the point was - why do we judge him insane given that lots of other people also think they’re being mind controlled. That is, we’re thinking of Matthews as a “type 1” under my classification scheme above.
My contention is - he’s actually a “type 2” because I’ll hazard a WAG that the specific things which caused him to believe in the conspiracy were things which only he could detect (ie ‘voices’, strange-feeling impulses and so on). Therefore the mere fact that there are other people with similar sounding opinions should NOT lead us to conclude that he’s sane.
In fact, concluding that Matthews was sane will lead to big logical problems because we should then conclude that all the other people who talk about Vast Mind Control Conspiracies are also sane, and in fact there is one. And I’m guessing that all the various Mind Control Victims out there CONFLICT with each other on the details of this conspiracy, so that we can’t believe them all at once.
If they didn’t conflict with each other, (for instance if all the Mind Control Victims independently agreed that the mind control was by microwave and that their base was under the icecaps in the North Pole) then in fact we would be justified in judging them sane and sending an excavation team to Santa’s House.
Thinking about this, perhaps I should extend my classification scheme to three cases:
Case 1) Data is publicly available to everyone to draw their own conclusions from. Data doesn’t conflict (obviously, since we can all see it ). No insanity here.
Case 2) Data is only available to the affected people. Does conflict. Affected people probably insane.
Case 3) Data is only available to the affected people, but they all or most (without collusion) agree on a non-conflicting interpretation. Affected people probably not insane.
Now I would argue that we can make a good case for at least some of the “charismatic christian” stuff falling into case 3 rather than case 2.
But perhaps I should leave that for another post, since if I make this any longer the Great SDMB Post-Eating Monster will probably target me…
“At least some”, yes. But what about the rest? With the greatest of respect Aspidistra, you seem to be addressing the unimportant and leaving the nub of the matter unresolved.
Well, I’ll agree that a lot of that was off the OP. But mostly that’s because I’ve seen a number of posts in the thread start discussing insanity in terms of ‘wierd opinions without actual hallucinations’ and I disagree that any opinion, no matter how wierd, is insanity - insanity, IMO is a distorted * perception * of the real world.
To get back on topic, specifically.
I would say that the particular instances you quote are more likely to be “type 1” situations - no hallucinations involved. Most people who I know who say “God told me to do X” actually don’t mean “I heard a voice in my head”, it’s really shorthand for “I feel very strongly that I ought to do X”. They base their opinion that it’s the will of God on other, clearly checkable factors, like quotes from the Bible that support their position, or dreams, or vague undefined but strong feelings, or coincidences that seem to lead in that direction. That’s all stuff from which logical inferences can be made. Clearly a non-theist is going to make a completely different logical inference from a theist, so if you have an opinion that there is definitely no God at all anywhere ever you are bound to think them mistaken - hugely mistaken even. But not insane.
In the case of speaking in tongues it’s even clearer. Everyone agrees on the physical facts of a case - there’s a person standing around with syllables coming out of their mouth that they don’t understand. It’s the logical interpretation of that that everyone disagrees on.
On the other hand there are definitely people who claim that they do have a ‘voice in their head’ from God telling them stuff. Where one stands on their sanity/insanity is clearly dependent on one’s opinion about the existence of God. If you think there definitely is no God, you are required to think all such people insane. I, however, being of the opinion that there is a God, wouldn’t conclude that automatically, since my worldview includes God talking to people as a possible phenomenon. But this belief includes specific details of the characteristics of such a God and if any of them were violated, I’d have to go with ‘insane’. For instance ‘God told me to kill someone’ - a definite no-no. Or ‘God told me that Atlantis will rise in 1969’ (and then it doesn’t)
Well, that’s all very well, insofar as you may be correct that “most” people who say “God told me to do X” actually mean something different. But once again you are simply avoiding the issue, because (as is quite clear from the OP) I am not talking about them, I am talking about the ones who actually claim to have personally interacted with God. Stop sliding off on red herrings and tangents. You are not going to get anywhere in a Great Debate attacking something that is not the issue (if I can help it.
Insofar as we are talking about the interpretation by others of what the noises coming out of people’s mouths actually mean, I agree with you. But what I am talking about is a claim by those who are “speaking in tongues” that they know through some personal mental experience, that the voices are coming from outside of them, in some supernatural way.
Yes, OK, fine. Your conclusion here is that if one’s frame of reference is the same as that of the person reporting supernatural phenomenon, you will regard that person as sane. See Mangetout and others posts above. We’re going over old ground.
But that does not help the observer to distinguish a subject who reports supernatural religious experiences (such as the Nigerians of the OP) from a subject who reports mind-control beams (a la Matthews of the OP), when the observer’s frame of reference does not fit with either subject.
[Fixed code --Gaudere]
Darn it all. Mods, could you please fix up the bracket at the end of the first paragraph.
I’ve used a darned } instead of a ].
Many thanks
I think it boils down to this.
Is a person insane some of the time, so he’s completely functional and normal otherwise, or is he insane most of the time so that he’s completely and mostly detached from what we considered as objective reality?
For example, if I talk to my teddy bear, lay its part in talking to me, and really think that my teddy bear is alive, am I insane? If so, will I be sane enough most of the time as not to be detached from reality?
I would define atheism as the positive assertion that there is no God. You can phrase it “There is not enough evidence to convince me there is a God, so I will assume until proven otherwise that there is not” if you like.
Unless and until you can produce some evidence that the concept of God is invalid - i.e. prove there is no God - your assumption remains that - an assumption, or what I would term an act of faith. Strictly speaking, we don’t know anything unless we have evidence or reasoning either to prove or disprove it.
Polycarp put it as follows:
Actually, the only reasonable conclusion without evidence is that we do not know.
Certainly if someone makes an assertion and fails to prove it means that we need not believe in the assertion. But neither does it make the assertion impossible.
The OP - perhaps in tone more than anything else - seems to be taking it for granted that there is no God. Therefore, almost by definition, those who believe they have had contact with Him must necessarily be insane. If you grant the assumption, it follows. If you assume that there is a God, the insanity appears more with those who refuse to recognize Someone who is right in front of them.
Is there any method we can use that does not assume either theism or atheism? I think we are reaching consensus on “sanity depends on how well the person can function in the context of his or her society”.
Simply assuming nothing exists until you can see it for yourself is a possible philosophical position. But
Unfortunately, he was talking about meteorites.
Regards,
Shodan
I refuse to perform a major hijack on my own thread, but this strikes me a extraordinary. First you are told what atheists mean when they say they are atheists, then you tell them that in fact they believe something different, and then you castigate them for what you (not they) say they believe! Unbelieveable!
Keep your assumptions to yourself. See my post above responding to Polycarp.
I really regret even mentioning Christianity in my OP. That is not what this is about. If you are quite unable to view the OP without letting your particular frame of reference get in the way, then just concentrate on Matthews and the Nigerians.
Certainly this seems to be the most satisfactory practical definition. It still seems a bit lacking philosophically, to me, but maybe that and the group thing is all we have.
I agree with Princhester that to go through this completely would be a major hijack, but I’ll just say that to define atheism this way is like defining Christianity as the belief in transubstantiation, stigmata, and the infallibility of the Roman Catholic pope. To be sure, there are Christians who hold these beliefs, but not all. Not even most, I would guess (and hope). Similarly, atheists do not all assert that gods cannot exist. They just lack belief that gods exist. “A” is a prefix meaning “without”; “theism” is a belief in God or gods. “Atheism” is simply a lack of such beliefs. It’s really pretty simple. So many people have explained this on the SDMB, but I don’t think I ever have. I guess it was my turn.
About the OP, the question is terribly interesting, and I’ve held off commenting on it for some days now, thinking about my response. Bizarre behaviour isn’t enough to claim insanity; I think it’s bizarre that some people like mayonnaise and Britney Spears, but it isn’t insane. I think insanity has to involve some clear departure from observable reality, which is another tough question.
On the one hand, I’m convinced that “reality” is not as clear as most of us think it is, and our perceptions lie to us all the time. But that “most of us think” part is what makes consensus reality, and like it or not, that’s the one we have to go by as a matter of public policy. “Insane” is generally defined as an unacceptable departure from consensus reality, to the point that functioning among those who share that consensus is insupportable. And since the consensus seems to be that supernatural phenomena are real, belief in such, and even reports of personal experience of such, is not considered insane.
Yes, I’m afraid I think so. I can’t watch most TV shows or listen to most politicians without thinking that those who support this crap are insane. Our society pays some tall guys millions of dollars a year to play a children’s game with a ball and a hoop, while those who teach children to read, write and think are paid just enough to survive. Pro basketball players live in mansions; teachers take extra jobs during the vacations so they can repair their used cars. Is this sane? Well, our society accepts it.
If I emphasize the third word in the OP question (How do you distinguish religion from insanity?), I have to say that, with all due respect to the many good religious people I know, I personally cannot distinguish between religion and insanity. I don’t mean to say that all religious people are insane across the board, only that they are deluded about some things. No doubt I delude myself about some things too. Sanity and insanity are points along a continuum. The sanest of us have some elements of insanity, I think. I hope so, actually; it makes life more interesting. The line between sane and insane is hazy, and shifting all the time.
Many people that I love are religious, and some report personal experience of the supernatural. I believe their religious beliefs are utterly insane. They may think my atheism insane. But we accept each other as generally sane people.
My ex-wife, though–she really was insane.
Is sanity a question of your society only, or just the vantage point?
Caligula functioned “well” in his society (head of the whole damn thing, I think counts as “well”) … was he any less insane to our view?
I am discomforted by the assertion that sanity is a popular vote, or a functional definition, but still convinced that it is contextual. A man who says that he has heard God talk to him and that God said that he is the new prophet and to kill group X and take their stuff is insane if no one else believes him and Muhammad (pick your religion) if enough others do? Can Muhammad simultaneously be a sane prophet spoken to by God when viewed by those who submit and an insane man suffering from hallucinations and delusions when viewed from the vantage of nonbelievers? In the absence of absolute knowledge of “truth”, are both points of view equally valid?
You’d think that after thinking about that post for so long, I’d have done a better job. It was late when I wrote that, I was rambling, and I left out some things. I’ll try to rectify. (Interesting word, rectify. Seems like it ought to mean to stick something up one’s . . . oh, never mind.)
I reckon Caligula was probably insane, if the stories about the sea-shells are true. Then again, I wasn’t there–maybe he did conquer Neptune. It’s as plausible as most religious stories I hear. He may have even been considered mad by his contemporaries, but he had the power to declare himself sane. Did that make him less insane? No, it just made society accept him as sane. It’s the same with basketball players and teachers. Capitalism has the power, and in this capitalistic society, people are willing to pay more to watch a ball game than to educate children. The pay imbalance is insane according to me, but not according to the system in control.
I don’t believe that society should decide what is sane and insane, only that it does. Because a large enough part of modern society accepts the existence of the supernatural, religious beliefs are not considered insane. They still are, in my opinion–but I’m not Caligula, so society tells me I’m welcome to “rectify” (see above) my opinion.
In the postmodern world, or whatever we’re calling it these days, we accept that many different realities are possible, and as long as they don’t clash too much, we’re supposed to consider all of them equally valid. Personally, I’ve always thought this was sort of a philosophical capitulation, an admission of defeat. I suspect that deep inside, we really do think that there is a Truth out there somewhere, but it’s all so complicated, we’ve just decided to admit that we’ll never find it, so we’ll pretend to respect each others’ “insanity.” Spiritual “truths” are not readily demonstrable, so it seems unlikely that we’ll ever get to the bottom of it.
To me, evidence is important. Most religious stories provide very little convincing evidence and a lot of hearsay. This is why I think that religious faith is tantamount to intellectual laziness, and strong religious faith is verging on insanity. I don’t discount the validity of intuition–I do believe some things that I can’t provide evidence for. But not stuff that I heard from someone else, who read it in a book written by superstitious bronze-age folk and translated by who-knows-who with who-knows-what agenda. That, to me, is indistinguishable from insanity.
Still, as I said before, I don’t think that religious people are necessarily insane, just that they have some insane beliefs. They’re welcome to them, as long as they don’t try to cram them down my throat.
I don’t know that much about the life of Muhammed. In the case of Jesus, I suspect that he was somewhat delusional, but mostly just poetic and parable-prone, and therefore misunderstood. Nowadays we’d probably prescribe some pills for him. Back then they prescribed the cross.
In my opinion, religious beliefs are the same as insanity when they are held very strongly. That is, the point where the beliefs become more important than logic is the point where insanity begins.
(This goes for any belief, not just religious beliefs.)
Put another way: Anyone who says (and honestly believes) the idea expressed as: “I don’t care if it’s illogical - I believe it anyway”, is insane, at least to some degree.
Addendum: don’t try to cram them down my throat, and don’t kill each other over them.
OK, lets try to nail this down once and for all.
My definition of insanity is that you directly perceive something that isn’t there, no more, no less. Wierd beliefs don’t cut it, just by themselves.
Apparently you believe this too. Good! But my first post of this thread was in reply to coffeecat who was going for a ‘functioning member of society’ definition (our post order makes this less clear than it might be - sorry. First paragraph makes it pretty clear tho’)
There is no distinction. If a person reports seeing and hearing stuff that you know to be impossible, then you are required to think them insane OR to change your ideas about what is or is not impossible. This is no different from people who report seeing yetis, or martians, or whatever.
The Nigerian thing is a total non-issue, IMO. Basically his point seems to be if you tell someone your grandma spoke to you out of a boiled egg then if they’re English they’ll think you’re insane (because they think such things are impossible) and if they’re Nigerian they won’t think you’re insane (because they think such things are possible).
Likewise with pentecostals. If they tell a fellow-pentecostal ‘God spoke in my head’ the other person will consider them sane, if they say the same thing to an atheist, they’ll consider them insane.
If your question is ‘why aren’t all Pentecostals locked up by the non-believing majority’ though, I would say (a) because there’s not actually a consensus among the potential-lockers-up (ie the rest of society) that God doesn’t exist and (b) because 99.9% of Pentecostals don’t have experiences of ‘speaking with God’ that actually fall into the hallucination category - they either experience ‘feelings’, dreams, coincidences and so on or they don’t have any direct personal experiences at all, but simply believe that such things can happen.
Still too tricky; what makes you think anybody holds the absolute standard on what is and isn’t ‘there’?
What you could just as well be saying is “that you directly percieve something that I am unable to directly percieve”; who is right?