Delusions
Gullibility and delusions are both based upon the belief in a claim, that is not based upon evidence or is in contradiction to evidence, and both are immune to rational communication including all attempts to point out evidence. Both seem to be a crutch to cope with needs.
But gullibility is a general tendency. Who buys homeopathic water, may also read horoscopes and use dowsing to find water.
Delusions are limited to a specific topic, while many other topics are dealt with rationally. Delusions are also limited to premises and assumptions, while the logical execution of acting upon it is not disturbed. People with delusions often appear contradictory to rational people. A palaeontologist, who also believes in creation as written in the bible, has two areas of his brain in contradiction.
In real life, independent of the same degree of absurdity, it makes a big difference, if someone has an individual delusions or if the majority of a society shares it. When people reinforce each other in a delusion, then this makes delusions more detrimental to those, who do not share them.
If someone would claim to have an invisible pink dragon in his garage, whom he has to feed every day, else the dragon would burn down his house, this would be called a delusion and he would be considered a nut case.
But if someone claims, that there is an invisible god, who needs to be served, pacified, obeyed, who punishes and who fulfills wishes expressed by prayers, this is not considered a delusion, because so many people share the belief. It is part of culture and is often even protected by the law. This is the deity delusion.
I used the expression 'deity delusion' as far back as March 2000, I have not stolen it from Dawkins. By googling 'deity delusion', I found that it is used also with a very different meaning. I am using this expression for the delusion to believe in the existence of a deity.
Some people use it for the delusion to be a deity. I call this the entitlement and grandiosity delusion.
Between men, the entitlement and grandiosity delusions are often considered as pathological. But when men limit that delusion to women, when they agree with each other to consider it acceptable to dominate women, to treat them as inferior, then it again is a shared delusion, that in some parts of the world is even not only culture but law.
Somehow it seems that such delusions are similar to instincts, that are stronger than rationality as urges compelling to act in a specific way, when rationality serves as a tool in the execution of the instinctive behavior but is not strong enough to impede the urge.
I even wonder, if all collectively shared delusions are not somehow related to some instincts. Maybe collective delusions are the conscious representations of instincts.
The deity delusion could be somehow related to the procreation instinct. All the religions have their origin long before anybody had the slightest clue about the existence of genes. That weird impulse to submit to something above and beyond the individual, the compulsion to procreate, the provision of resources for the progeny beyond the individual death, it needed an explanation to the self.
The deity is eternal, as is the chain of genes, the continuation of the genes is seen as reincarnations, the individual is nothing compared with the survival of the genes, and all religions demand procreation.
The entitlement delusion and grandiosity delusion could be connected with the instinct for competition and fighting for a place on a hierarchy. It could even be also connected again to the procreation instinct. Control of women is a method of attempting to sire offspring and to assure to only provide for the own genes.
The racism as a delusion could be related to the ingroup-outgroup instinct.
Considered from the point of rationality, all delusions are the same absurd and a hazard for a partner, who is effected by them.
My quest is for a partner, who has no delusions, neither individual nor shared with others.
