I find this guy's moments of clarity amazing. I'm not very familiar with mental illnesses in any form, but it surprises me how clearly he understands how the rest of the world views him. It makes me think about what the world might be like if we reverse the situation, and the article were about the only man who can't hear the voice of God.
> I'm not very familiar with mental illnesses [...]
:)
Schizophrenics are frequently lucid. Well, a modified sort of lucid... It's as if they are rational folks for whom first principles or axioms have been shaken up, and indeed are malleable all the time.
It doesn't sound like Terry would ever think that his dinner plate would sprout legs and walk across the table. But as he stated in the article, he has thought that some dinners were poisoned.
See, the first one can't happen. The second one could technically happen. Schizophrenics aren't stupid, you know? :) But, their plausibility metrics are broken.
Regarding the plausibility of a dinner plate walking across a table: Well, it could happen if the plate is some Transformers(R) style robot, or something. It could be, if those exist, right? When a schizophrenic tells you something is true but you think it is implausible, remember: it's not implausible to them, because they are rational folks employing a different set of base assumptions than you. Walking plates are normal in a world that has Transformers(R).
Why would a rational person believe in fictional toy robots? Or even that someone wants to poison them? ...Well, once you believe in God, or time travel, or aliens, or that the universe is a simulation, or any number of "crazy ideas"... once you actually believe one crazy idea, it's all down hill from there.
But, it is generally an otherwise sane individual that is running down that hill...
Terry specifically mentioned a feeling or belief that God picks random numbers or events as a way to communicate with folks. "I can sit down with my parents and praise God and open the Bible randomly," he says, "and it will talk." All of those sorts of beliefs are rooted in some form of the following base principle: "The world is fundamentally not what the common man thinks it is." Once you think that some entity which has the power to alter individual atoms or the results of a coin toss (God, aliens, whatever) exists, then the belief that they would use that power to communicate is just a small logical step away.
[EDIT: Indeed, I just found this quote from him: God controls ALL the random numbers in yer life [...]. Every [...] random number from when you awake to sleep [...] So in his world, if you run over a nail in your car and get a flat... Well, you did something to deserve it!]
NOTE: Apparently some schizophrenic folks experience vivid, realistic open-eyed hallucinations sometimes (at the peak of a manic episode) or all the time. I don't have much experience with that. Sometimes those events coincide with seizures and events in which awareness and consciousness is lowered. I am guessing that my "these are rational folks" argument does not apply at those times (or to some people any the time).
I wouldn't classify his belief in God as a "crazy idea" in the purest sense of those words. Scientifically, a God powerful enough to create this universe could easily and rationally be powerful enough to make certain demands of said creation, one of which might rationally be that the created beings need faith in God to achieve their designed capability.
There is a wonderful uniformity to the universe that allows computers to exist. To put that uniformity on a pedastal though and declare there is no God is definitely not a rational belief one can be dogmatic about.
The notion in your first paragraph sounds like a reasonable assertion to me although it does presuppose the rather dogmatic notion that an omnipotent Creator would "demand faith" rather than "grant a gift of free will / gift of being able to forget he exists".
I know three Schizophrenics personally, and this comment hit the nail. Interestingly, they're all really into conspiracy theories, alien documentaries and the like. Though they might not really believe, it is clearly very fascinating to them.
