Quote Originally Posted by mrdevious
I'm pretty much done with this thread, though I have learned something. I never undstood until recently why Richard Dawkins said he refused to engage theists in logical televised debates. Now I understand. Those completely devoted to their faith will indeed claim to have plenty of logical evidence. But once you deconstruct it, they take the easy and entirely irrational road out. They simply throw logic out the window, then claim that logic is unnecessary but their beliefs are still rational. Their justification is that they simply KNOW, deep down, that god exists. That their relationship with him is something only they can see, and therefor exists.
In reality, this is an excuse for the worse symptom brought upon by the virus of faith. What this virus does is convince you thoroughly that you are right. It makes your brain shut out logic and reasoning, and convinces you that because your brain has reached a state congruent with a logically-held conclusion, it must therefor be true. It puts your mind in a state where your beliefs no longer need rationality, no longer need a reason, they simply need to be reinfoced by a powerfull devotion so strong that it supresses everything to the contrary. It convinces you that your devotion is of the highest importance, that everything that threatens such devotion is a threat to be rejected.

And, sadly enough, people convince themselves to forget that the brain is capable of absolutely anything and everything. There is NO LIMIT to what it can convince you of, there is NO LIMIT to how real it can make something seem. The brain's ability to convince you of the authenticity of a belief or perception is so powerfull that it can seem a thousand times more convincing than anything percieved in the real world can be. It is why schizophrenics cannot be convinced that the voices aren't real, it is why terrorists cannot be convinced that god is not a tool of hatred, it is why fellow's like Bong30 in the political forum cannot be convinced their perception can be wrong, no matter what evidence exists to the contrary. Instead people cling to the false belief that if something weren't real, there would be some small SOMETHING that would feel or seem wrong; but it simply isn't so. And so the cycle continues, and people continually justify themselves in whatever belief they hold, that it MUST be true because their mind sees it as so incredibly, convincingly real. Justifiction is no longer needed because the belief is clamped down by iron spikes that will allow no train of reasoning to dislodge it.
theres a psychiatric term for what you have just described, it is called SCHIZOPHRENIA