Faith and Delusion

How does one separate whether the beliefs that they have are delusional or not? I am reluctant to say that the God that I believe in is similar to the God described in Gnosticism because it really seems like the closest idea to what I am trying to describe but I really lack the historical knowledge base of gnosticism to know if I am misattributing my idea of God to a completely seperate idea of God. More than that though, the idea of what I associate as being god might similarly be assigning the wrong idea to what I have experienced. I believe that I can't be wrong about what I experience, however I can be wrong about my interpretation of experience. Is there an objective definition to delusion or faith? Should one mostly keep to themselves about their beliefs or should you try to make your beliefs compatible with others?

>delusion When we use the term delusion we are usually saying that there exists a mismatch between what someone thinks about reality and the objective reality that actually exists (if it does). >beliefs Realistically all we can ascertain about reality is that we are having an experience, everything else we think we know is just a belief we hold with differing levels of conviction. Even the idea of objective reality breaks down under this analysis (ie brain in a vat/living in the matrix), which makes the idea of pinpointing delusion extremely challenging. Generally when we are trying to define reality we are using a concensus mechanism, the shared experiences of many humans can shed light on what is actually true (or at least reinforce your beliefs). I'd say if you have a strong conviction in the ideas/tenets of gnostcism then you should read more about it and try to speak to other believers and attempt to understand their views. >Should one mostly keep to themselves about their beliefs or should you try to make your beliefs compatible with others? I personally think it's important to test our beliefs and that all beliefs deserve scrutiny, but when it comes to deeply held beliefs like religion it really is like kicking dead whales down the beach. I think modern gnostics generally don't try to evangelise non-believers but instead focus on their own personal journey for gnosis.

All beliefs are delusional and you are always wrong about what you experience. If you allow faith into your heart it may allow you to build on top of it, but there will never be any perfect foundation, there is wrongness and cracks in all of them. Doubt is good.

>>5939 You're broadly right that experience, particularly sense data, isn't wrong, but interpretation can be. Improving interpretation comes from improving reasoning, which is a skill that can be practiced - remembering that reality doesn't contradict itself and to use Ockham's Razor to keep things simple is a good start. And never fall for any modernist nonsense about how absolute certainty isn't possible, it's a self-refuting notion to begin with.

As human's aren't perfectly rational subjects, The best a person can reasonably aim for is to be 'as reasonable as possible' but as is pointed out by Nietzsche in his dialectic/dichotomy between Apollo and Dionysius, Both are essentially critical to 99.9% of people who existed, exist or will exists reality. - So to a degree all humans are 'delusional' constantly as we all experience the world with a level of abstraction between 'pure-reality' and our experience. >Faith. Faith is the belief in the existence of a posited Noumena [an object, event or concept which can't be directly observed or interfaced with by any human sense or augmented sense]