Sanity in numbers?

[Quiddity]

Does it seem that untenable beliefs are more plausible and more respectable when they're held by large numbers of people? Consider the following, by Sam Harris:

It takes a certain kind of person to believe what no one else believes. To be ruled by ideas for which you have no evidence (and which therefore cannot be justified in conversation with other human beings) is generally a sign that something is seriously wrong with your mind. Clearly, there is sanity in numbers. And yet, it is merely an accident of history that is is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are. ...

Jesus Christ -- who, as it turn out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens -- can now be eaten in the form of a cracker. A few Latin words spoken over your favorite Burgundy, and you can drink his blood as well. Is there any doubt that a lone subscriber to those beliefs would be considered mad? Rather, is there any doubt that he would be mad?

​

What do you think?

As others have said that the consensus establishes the definitions. Certainly that doesn’t stop some from calling the masses delusional either. If the tables were turned as Sam indicates, the definition would be crystal clear to the masses. Numbers makes it clearer. Doesn’t sit right with me, but it’s just how people tend to respond.

Personally, I imagine I would respond to what I see as a natural psychological state. It is part of our nature, as human beings, to form beliefs, desires, and intentions and to act on them, and to learn and use languages with semantic structures to communicate with our fellows. The idea that such familiar phenomena as these need to be explicated in some specially favored patois in order that their credentials as "natural" be vindicated, is one that must strike any fluent speaker of the language who is not corrupted by contemporary philosophical jargon, as bizarre in the extreme.

 

[Random]

It's true that one can't justify a belief by saying "How can 3.5 billion people be wrong?!" 3.5 billion people could be wrong, and insane to boot. That doesn't stop them functioning, mind.

But personal revelation is the catch-all of self-evidenced beliefs. It can bring contentment and change lives. Harris doesn't seem to value this because one can't have a conversation about these beliefs with other human beings, but people who believe without hard proof can and do converse. We're exchanging views right here on this forum, quite sure that no-one is positively insane, right?

All challenging credible ideas start out as unevidenced beliefs. Sam Harris wants what most Atheists want: to control how people see things by referencing points that are quite obvious to them already. Its intellectual reductionism as is his argument in the paragraph of the OP. He doesn't matter much, and his crusade for rationality is boring. Who cares?

 

[lilithu]

Does it seem that untenable beliefs are more plausible and more respectable when they're held by large numbers of people? Consider the following, by Sam Harris:

It takes a certain kind of person to believe what no one else believes. To be ruled by ideas for which you have no evidence (and which therefore cannot be justified in conversation with other human beings) is generally a sign that something is seriously wrong with your mind. Clearly, there is sanity in numbers. And yet, it is merely an accident of history that is is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are. ...

Jesus Christ -- who, as it turn out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens -- can now be eaten in the form of a cracker. A few Latin words spoken over your favorite Burgundy, and you can drink his blood as well. Is there any doubt that a lone subscriber to those beliefs would be considered mad? Rather, is there any doubt that he would be mad?
​

What do you think?

If someone believed these things without context, yes. Within the context from whence these ideas originated, they are reasonable responses to our attempts to explain apparent paradoxes. So the core beliefs of Christianity are not mad. (Why do people keep equating "religious" with "Christian"!!?)

That said, I do think that it's easier for us to be stupider and meaner as a group than we are as individuals. We somehow tend to move towards the lowest common denominator, instead of being raised up by the best of us.

 

[d.]

It's not about the intent, whatever that may have been --it's the fact that it contains valid mythic imagry that not only has been passed down (or "borrowed") from other religions, but is shared with neighbouring countries and religions in a common motif, that points to non-literal meanings.

but the fact that mythical imagery and motifs has, or can be interpreted as having, metaphorical or any non-literal meaning does not exclude a "literary intent" as you admit :

It's not about the intent, whatever that may have been

so i don't see how it would be necessarily 'wrong' (or 'out of context') to interpret our example - the story of the virgin birth - literally.

my guess is that the meaning of this myth - and most, if not all religious myths - is literal and metaphorical. but for the modern, secularized human, it's the metaphorical meaning that's interesting and, to go back to the topic at hand, sane.

As any opinion properly should be.

on this we disagree, but ok.

 

[Willamena]

but the fact that mythical imagery and motifs has, or can be interpreted as having, metaphorical or any non-literal meaning does not exclude a "literary intent" as you admit :

so i don't see how it would be necessarily 'wrong' (or 'out of context') to interpret our example - the story of the virgin birth - literally.

Oh! It's not wrong, per se --sorry, if I made it seem like it was. It makes the stories seemingly insane if taken seriously (i.e. miracles), but there's nothing wrong with reading the myth literally. The literal reading has its uses as entertainment, but it's not spiritually meaningful unless and until you get under its skin --even literalists do this, without realising it.

my guess is that the meaning of this myth - and most, if not all religious myths - is literal and metaphorical. but for the modern, secularized human, it's the metaphorical meaning that's interesting and, to go back to the topic at hand, sane.

on this we disagree, but ok.

See, I don't understand why people who get something spiritually meaningful from the non-literal translation still feel the need to believe in the miracle to make it real --as if the lesson they can draw from the story is also not real unless they include an actual, genuine miracle. But the latter is unnecessary --the miracle is not the lesson. Believing Jesus did miracles doesn't make the fact of his being God or the Son of God symbolically any less real.

But perhaps that's a topic for another thread.

 

[d.]

Oh! It's not wrong, per se --sorry, if I made it seem like it was.

that was the impression i got - perhaps i did not pay enough attention.