Like they say, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince hundreds of thousands of people that he exists.

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"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was spreading a catchy quote denying all tricks greater than the one about faking nonexistence." - Steven Kaas

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This made me laugh a lot. Thank you!

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I thought he was going to figure it out and become a professional wrationalist. Drat.

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I think I side with Jesus in this one. Preserving one's internal state is more valuable than objective truth, for a human being. Too rapid change is equal to death for the Christ persona, in fact abrupt change = death is mostly true for all living systems.

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"Preserving one's internal state is more valuable than objective truth, for a human being."

That's an excellent short-term strategy, which leads to all sorts of problems in the long-term, as decisions are made based on inaccurate data.

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This is inspired. I'm not saying you are some kind of rationalist prophet, sent by Bayes Himself to redeem us, but I am updating my probability estimates.

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This... is a beautiful thing :)

Favourite bit:
"You know what the number one hallucination reported by psychotic patients is?" Satan asked.
Jesus thought for a moment. "What?"
"The Devil," said the Devil. 
"Oh, that's just unfair," Jesus told him.

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I'm reminded of the Cheapass game _Escape From Elba_, where the players are a bunch of patients who all think they're Napoleon, trying to escape from Elba/the hospital.

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I've never heard of this and I am currently internally debating whether to just read the Wikipedia article or to figure out how to get the game.

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I really liked this, but on further thought I think I can convincingly argue that under certain assumptions maybe!Jesus would consider reasonable his behaviour is rational.

Consider this: How many people's lives are measurably improved by your actions?

Let's assume that if you're a crazy person who thinks he's Jesus the expected answer is going to be no higher than average, even if you're cured. It might be a little higher than average, but probably not much. Let's take a conservative upper bound of the average as 1000 people.

Now let's assume that if you're *actually* Jesus the answer is "Everyone". He comes to redeem all mankind and all that.

Now consider two scenarios:

1) All crazy non-jesuses, including our putative jesus, allow themselves to be cured. He who was once Jesus goes on to live a normal life and affects a normal number of people:

Number of people whose lives are measurably improved: About 1000 * 100000 = about 10 million.

2) All crazy non-jesuses, including our putative jesus, refuse to be cured. Jesus goes on to do the whole redeemer of mankind thing.

Number of people whose lives are measurably improved: Everyone.

Therefore the rational choice, if you genuinely believe yourself to be Jesus, is to at all costs not allow yourself to be convinced otherwise.

(A slightly tongue in cheek argument, but only slightly)

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I like this argument. Unfortunately, it seems kind of contingent. It depends on the real Jesus having an extremely important mission.

But if we decrease the importance of the mission a little, and increase the number of mental patients a lot, the problem comes back. For example, if Napoleon helped a lot of French people, but many many more people believe themselves to be Napoleon, then even with your argument, depending on the values of "a lot" and "many many" it might still be rational for him to assume he's insane.

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Wonderful! It left me feeling great sympathy for the devil :-)

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This is incredibly awesome.

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> "You are an individual with a certain amount of evidence that you are Jesus. Specifically, you believe yourself to be him. You have various experiences which your reason tells you are consistent with being Jesus, like memories of your mother Mary and so on, but these seem like the sort of thing a damaged intellect could create to support a delusion. You previously determined that a randomly selected person with the belief that he is Jesus has a 1/100,000 chance of being Jesus and a 99,999/100,000 chance of being a psychotic. So, Mr. Person With The Belief That He Is Jesus, do you think those numbers apply to you?"

I suppose this is where Jesus goes all Szasz on the Devil's ass, pointing out that the patients all know an inconsistent history in which they didn't live in ancient Galilee but were somewhere else, and can access this knowledge or resume their old roles if they have sufficient reason, and his seamless life history provides the requisite 110 decibels of evidence.

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I guess the question is exactly how flawed Jesus can expect his reasoning to be. "I remember living in ancient Galilee and nowhere else, therefore I am definitely real!Jesus" seems like a knockdown argument, but "I saw a yellow car, therefore I am definitely real!Jesus" seems like a knockdown argument to schizophrenics. If Jesus really worries he is schizophrenic, he has to at least consider the possibility that his unbroken memories of Galilee are actually a terrible argument which only appears reasonable to a fractured mind - although I agree that (no pun intended) that way madness lies.

Also, episodes that didn't make the story but should be included in the Director's Cut:

Devil: Tell me, Jesus, exactly where did you spend the thirty years of your life between being born and right now?
Jesus: ...

Devil: Tell me, Jesus, did you drive the moneychangers from the Temple as a young boy? Or does that event still lie in your future?
Jesus: ...

Removed because although these questions puzzle me as the author, assuming that Jesus only knows what's in the Bible, or gets confused by Biblical contradictions, is assuming the conclusion that he's making it up. I do wonder what he'd say, though.

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The key out of this mess is that the hypothesis the pseudoDevil has set up is unfalsifiable, and thus it can be rejected as an inane conspiracy theory. (And, of course, if it is falsifiable, then pseudoJesus can attempt to fulfill the falsifying condition.)

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But don't real people sometimes end up in situations that are unfalsifiable?

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When Satan calls Jesus "Mr Anderson", is that a Matrix reference? If so, I'm not sure I get it.

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Not exaaaactly, but not completely unrelated.

Basically he was trying to call Jesus a normal-person name to complete the illusion that he was just a psych patient in a hospital. I chose "Mr. Anderson" because Anderson literally translates "Son of Man", which was one of Jesus' titles.

Some people have claimed the Matrix uses sort of the same device - Neo's full name is "Thomas Anderson", which translates "the second Son of Man" eg the Second Coming.

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Wouldn't the real Jesus still believe he's Jesus on antipsychotics? This leaves the problem of whether the treatment just isn't working, but in Jesus's place I'd definitely give it a shot. The analogy seems to be "If you try to wake up while awake, you still know you're awake".

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This seems related to the questions "Why can't Jesus just turn that stone into bread, given that he's hungry?" or "Why can't he just jump off that building, given that God would catch him?" As soon as he admits doubt, he loses his divine authority.

...or, less theologically, haloperidol's side effects (tremor, drooling, odd muscle spasms) would make him less able to be a convincing preacher.

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This is brilliant. Reminds me of the Babelfish as proof of the non-existence of God :)

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Neat.

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Delightful dialogue! It reminded me quite a bit of Chesterton's novel "The Ball and the Cross". It is about an atheist and a Christian have a series of wacky adventures together, interspersed with philosophical discussions. At one point, each of them has a vision in which they are "tempted", in a way suited for their specific ideological prejudices. Both reject the temptation; in the case of the atheist, by calmly reasoning that he must be dreaming!

You should read it if you haven't; it is one of the few occasions in which Chesterton managed to create a sympathetic atheist character, and even give him some non-strawman part in a discussion. Of course, since this is Chesterton, he is a character in a world where Christianity is true and so the deck is stacked against him, but still.

Alejandro1

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That's really interesting (and scary at the end).

I was debating with myself, how can I tell if something which seems obvious to me is actually a hallucination. I felt I needed to ask someone with experience with people who have that sort of problem what they experience and what cues they seem aware of, but discount, so I can try to be aware of them.

Of course, it may be futile if I'm hard wired to believe whatever my hallucination is despite evidence. Like the woman who was sure that she didn't have an arm. But maybe I can prepare myself to accept that even if I DON'T have an arm, if I have a clever fake which seems to work, I should just accept that?

My best guess is that if lots of people tell me something is delusional, and I know the logic is correct but can't reconstruct it, it may be spurious. But I don't know if that's realistic.

I'm thinking of A Beautiful Mind, which was evocative but flawed in both medicine and mathematics, but I was very moved by Nash's commitment to just ignore his hallucinations, even when it meant discounting some of his oldest friends, in order to continue living with some other of his oldest friends.

Of course, that's just an ordinary delusion. If I'm comparing the hypotheses that "I'm Jesus and Satan is creating many illusions" and "I'm hallucinating" both hypotheses can explain so many ideas that either could be true.

If I restrict myself to those two hypotheses, I guess I could try being utterly passive, on the assumption that Satan can't harm me directly, and if I'm hallucinating, eventually I may meet someone who doesn't seem like Satan. But I don't think that would really work.

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We read this aloud at my house.

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I'm not sure I like this; there seems to be a flaw in how you pose the core argument here. Jesus* takes as factual the proposition that he would become so popular in the future that mental patients would believe they were him. This would come naturally to the modern mad pseudo-Jesus, being an established fact in the modern world, but the actual Jesus (assuming there was one, who existed as depicted in the Bible) should find this hard to believe. Not only is there no evidence (as far as I am aware) for this proposition in the actual Jesus' time and place, he would in fact be speaking to the King of Lies and should therefore probably be discounting any evidence he provides.

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According to some traditions the devil never lies at all, and only tempts with the truth or deceives by omission.

If the devil is at all pragmatic, he won't lie so often that his pronouncements can be discounted.

Anyway, we're already dealing with a character who can follow the devil up a mountain, whereupon the devil tells him to behold all the kingdoms of the world, and this experience doesn't ping his implausibility sensors.

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Foolish Christ. As he can see the four dimensional universe in its fullness he can see whether he is the *earliest* person with the conviction that he is Jesus+.

So, if he trusts the observation of the four dimensional universe it is evidence he is sane.

If he does not trust the observation of the four dimensional universe it is no evidence either way.

+Of course it is entirely possible (even likely) there were earlier people who were deranged and had the belief that they were some kind of son of god/messiah but that's rather different to what is posed here.

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That's still the sort of argument a schizophrenic might use to justify their delusions. "My visions showed me that while many people have claimed to be me, I am the first!" Maybe he just thinks that because he's a crazy person having crazy visions because he's crazy.

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