Are You Delusional? Take the Atheists' Test on How Delusional You Are

[Pogo]

There is no right or wrong answer. We all have some delusions. If you scored very high delusional, then it says you jump to conclusions on inadequate evidence and more intuitive. Sometimes your intuition is good to listen to. It can protect us and help us make good decisions.

"Delusion is not an oddity—it’s the norm. Almost all of us can slip into delusional thinking and it’s easy to see why. We all have a tendency to be confounded by cognitive biases. These are thinking errors that seem to be hard-wired into us. An example is the bandwagon effect which makes us feel an opinion that is widely held is probably true. Another example is the gambler’s fallacy which makes us feel the probabilities of a future event are influenced by past events (I’ve seen six heads in a row so the next toss is more likely to be a tail.) Confirm bias is very destructive of good thinking—it makes us pay attention to evidence that seems to support our beliefs and ignore contrary evidence. Psychologists have identified well over 100 such biases, and more are being discovered.

You can think of delusional disorders as sitting on a continuum. At one end are the clinically ill (the 0.2% of people who believe they are deceased, or who believe a loved one has been replaced by an alien or a robot). In the middle are those who too readily accept unlikely things as true, and are reluctant to revise their beliefs even when shown contrary facts. At the extreme opposite end to those who are clinically ill are about 9% of the population who are free from delusional thinking and will readily change an opinion once presented with validated counter-facts.

There is no doubt that religious people will be scattered along this scale—the strongly fundamentalists closer to the 0.2% of clinically ill people and the more liberal around the middle. But atheists are not blameless here. With only 9% of people free from from delusional thinking, atheists are bound to be scattered across the continuum too.

Research has shown that intuitive people, who have a tendency to jump to conclusions on inadequate evidence, are likely to have more delusional thinking than analytical people who take their time before coming to a conclusion."

I got a 4. Sometimes, I think I am too analytical and it isn't always good for creativity and being artistic.

Not everything on the list is a delusion though.
For example 1 #1 - people speaking with double meanings (double entendre). That's a normal part of everyday speech. Irony? Satire? We ALL do it.

For example 2, #10, electrical devices: I've always found fluorescent lights depressing. That's not a "delusion" it's the overly blue spectrum of light they put out.

For example 3, #12 "witchcraft, voodoo or the occult" is wildly broad and vague. For someone who's actually studied Voudoun/Santería/Candomblé there's very quantifiable evidence.

 

[james bond]

Not everything on the list is a delusion though.
For example 1 #1 - people speaking with double meanings (double entendre). That's a normal part of everyday speech. Irony? Satire? We ALL do it.

For example 2, #10, electrical devices: I've always found fluorescent lights depressing. That's not a "delusion" it's the overly blue spectrum of light they put out.

For example 3, #12 "witchcraft, voodoo or the occult" is wildly broad and vague. For someone who's actually studied Voudoun/Santería/Candomblé there's very quantifiable evidence.

I think it's how one interprets the question and that's what the questions are asking. If you interpreted the way you did, then would you say no to them?

I don't think we know everything about ourselves, so there may be things we are delusional about. I think these types of questions bring it out.

 

[Pogo]

Not everything on the list is a delusion though.
For example 1 #1 - people speaking with double meanings (double entendre). That's a normal part of everyday speech. Irony? Satire? We ALL do it.

For example 2, #10, electrical devices: I've always found fluorescent lights depressing. That's not a "delusion" it's the overly blue spectrum of light they put out.

For example 3, #12 "witchcraft, voodoo or the occult" is wildly broad and vague. For someone who's actually studied Voudoun/Santería/Candomblé there's very quantifiable evidence.

I think it's how one interprets the question and that's what the questions are asking. If you interpreted the way you did, then would you say no to them?

I don't think we know everything about ourselves, so there may be things we are delusional about. I think these types of questions bring it out.

If one is honest one has to answer yes. But that adds up a score toward "delusional", and that characterization is without merit.