But what if God doesn't exist? Then all the believers are delusional?

Question

No one can prove that God exist or doesn't exist. This makes the odds of his existence about 50:50. If God really doesn't exist, then all the religious people are living the lives of delusion. Someone who lives a life of delusion is usually considered by doctors to be a mentally disturbed person. This is a medical diagnisis, not a value judgement. In other words, if God doesn't exist, then we, atheists, live among psychologically sick, mentally disturbed people?

Answer 1

God's existence is not 50/50. You either will or will not get struck by lightening this weekend, but the odds aren't 50/50. There's a specific name for religious delusions. Let me see if I can find it.

Answer 2

I do not think there is any risk at all, but anyway :
what would believers lose ? Vision of eternal life.
But their lives they lived here wer nice,full of love..( thought whole idea of eternal life could have been just illusion, they lived a nice life )
It is a gain. No chance for eternal life would be sad reality for both, unbelievers and believers.

But what will be loss of unbelievers when they find out at the end of their lives, that God is real? Not comparable loss...but just for unbelievers.
Unbelievers are loosing in both cases...

The main logic of our lives is, that those who do not believe, always ask : " Tell me, how can you know God really is ? Give me some facts that can confirm that !" ( why do they want the facts ? they could just simply live with opinion that God does not exist . Why do they need the believers persuade them about Gods existance ? )
It is funny and sad at the same time, how unbelievers ask for prove , this natural way of searching for God. Why would believers need to provide any prove ? They do not do so...

The believers, who knows God, never tell the unbelievers : " show me the facts that can prove God does not exists ." Why does searching for the truth and happiness end here ?

Our Soul dies for being persuaded by someone of Gods existence, but not the opposite way

This is logical way of the souls searching for the truth...

Answer 3

Mentally disturbed, shmentally disturbed. We all take chances on what we're prepared to believe is possible.

You know, there's a fleeting chance that the Matrix was a documentary and we're all hooked up in a giant lab full of energy sucking robots. Phenomenologically, you can't rule it out.

In some way, we're all delusional. Nobody perfectly sees the world as it is. We see it through the heavy filtering of our limbic system, our cognitive window which is based on past experience... there is a difference between what we perceive through all of our mental abstractions, and the reality that these perceptions are based on. We can't actually "see" reality. Instead our sensory organs and perceptive and interpretive faculties take a vast amount of input from photons, pressure waves, nerve endings, and chemical receptors, and try to fire an "executive summary" at our conciousness.

All we can do is try to find the best interpretation of reality we can, and try to finesse it as best we can. This is true no matter which side of the fence you land on.

Answer 4

No, it does NOT make the odds 50/50.

God is an extreemly UNLIKELY thing to exist.

The odds are that ther is no god.

Just because there are two possibilities, doesn't mean those 2 are 50/50.

Either I am about to be hit by a meteor, or I'm not.

The odds aren't 50/50, even though there are 2 options.

You're abusing the medical concept of delusion here.

When people thought the sun moved around the Earth, they weren't all mentally ill.

Not all believing untrue things is mental illness.

Answer 5

I am believing, and guess what, I wittnessed the miracle of GOD thur the birth of my son. I was like you once, but then I got tirerd of running into dead ends all of the time, so I thought that I would give this "GOD" thing a try and guess what, not only is it a "GOD" thing, but it is a "way of life thing". regardless of what you or I believe, only GOD knows your heart, and because he knows you are angry with him right now, he loves you more than anyone right now and wants you to find him, its kinda cool I think. Also, people are easily hurt with words, look how kids are geting hurt by people saying bad things about them on the internet, its only human nature, but you could say a million bad things about GOD and he will never give up on you, can you say that about any human on earth. And here is the kicker, if you dont believe in the word of GOD, then thats okay becuase you are human and you still have time, but if you dont believe in GOD, then that means you believe what people tell you, which means you are a follower and not a leader, and you are scarerd to stand on your own and have faith in something that you cant see yet, and let me tell you something, you and I were not around during the creation of the universe, so I guess that means that I belive I came form a miracle of GOD and you came form a monkey, which one sounds better? LIke YOU said, if your not there in the beginning, how can you prove it? FAITH!

Answer 6

Whether God exists or not you live among psychologically disturbed people. That’s a given.

OK. So we Christians are delusional, psychologically ill. Then shouldn’t all of you treat us nicer? I mean, if you thought we were physically ill, wouldn’t you show some compassion? So if you really think that our faith makes us mentally ill, treat us with kindness.

I think the very fact that we tend to be treated with hostility by many who don’t believe shows that in their hearts they know that we are not mentally ill. Or maybe the do think we are ill and just enjoy being rude to ill people. Your choice.

Answer 7

Incorrect assumption number 1:

Absense of evidence to prove a negative does not equate to a 1:1 possiblity of the affirmative. The burden of proof is on the affirmative, so if none is provided that means chances of God existing become infinatly small.

Incorrect assumption number 2:

God not existing does not result in psychosis. A mentally disturbed person is incapable of reasoning, and the vast majority of believers are fully capable of reasoning.

I know it sounds frustrating to you, but don't attack a position with illogical arguments, you give your side a bad name.

Answer 8

And if God does exist then all unbelievers are delusional. Is that the logical conclusion. Actually, you are right. We can't prove God's existance using the scientific method. We can however, attempt to prove His existance by examining the evidence like they would in a court case. I think the evidence is pretty compelling, but it still comes down to faith. It is not a blind faith, but a faith based on the sufficiency of the evidence.

Answer 9

Not necessarily. That's like saying that children who believe in Santa are mentally disturbed. These things are learned from other people.

Additional Comment:
To the person that commented above me... Religious people do hurt other people too, not just non-believers. Being religious doesn't automatically make you a good person. There are a lot of non-believers that are good people too.

Answer 10

Are you familiar with Blaise Pascal's wager?

Here's another way of looking at things. Jesus was the only prophet, leader, or teacher to claim to be God incarnate. He lived His life fulfilling all prophecy for the Messiah. He was the only one who claimed, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

So, to put your question in its proper context, we'll look at it like this: if Jesus was lying, He was the nutcase of all nutcases.

But if He was telling the truth while He healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, and raised the dead, He was who He said He was, then all mankind needs to recognize Him as Lord God Almighty who was in the flesh and now presides at the right hand of God the father.