I would argue that is's perfectly harmless to be delusional as long as you aren't spreading your delusion and your delusion isn't causing abuse for yourself or others.
For instance: If you believe there is a god, but he is not going to be sending anyone to hell because you don't believe in hell, by all means.... go ahead. It's not hurting anyone. It might be holding you back in your intelligence a bit in what you might be able to learn, but as ling as you aren't spreading that to other people that might go in to helping our advances as a culture and with our technology, it doesn't really matter.
The belief of karma is something I would define as a moral belief. It isn't really a god, but it is a speculation of how people that do positive things will have positive things happen to them, and people that do negative things have negative things happen to them.
That I would define as harmless.... maybe not moral.... but definitely not immoral. I don't think moral or immoral even applies to that situation. I say just leave it be.
on the other hand: if your belief causes any harm or abuse.... mental or physical... that is immoral. People that tell children if they don't believe in god, they will suffer for eternity, people that suppress sexuality, people that believe that others need to believe so they don't suffer for eternity, people that think they can do whatever they want as long as they pray for forgiveness, people that think faith healing is a good substitute for medicine... holding them off from getting real treatment, people that cockblock technological and cultural advances, etc...... have very harmful and abusive beliefs. It hurts other people and themselves, therefore it is immoral.
I would argue that if you have the tools to at least try to make the difference and stop or slow that spread of hurtful belief, it would be moral to do so. Because it is stopping the harm of others.
It's kind of like watching someone get mugged on the street. Would you try to stop it or at least call the police on them? It would be immoral not to.
Thanks
PickelledEggs for that post.
So the scenario proposed was:
(1) The general consensus was that brainwashing against one's will is immoral.
(2) Your friend was brainwashed against his will to believe in a falsehood.
(3) The only cure is to brainwash your friend against his will so that he no longer believes in that falsehood.
(4) You are moral. Would you do (3)?
In your case, it depends if that falsehood is harmless - in that case, you would do nothing; and if it's harmful, you would do it. So, IOW, it's the old adage: do the lesser of two evils. You presume there is a scale/degree of evilness: some deeds are more evil than others.
There are some who have questioned (1) -
SGOS ,
Moralnihilist ; and to some extent,
Hijiri Byakuren. In that case, one would argue whether morality is objective - exists independent of humans - or is it subjective - humans make up the rules as they go along in their history. In this scenario, the given rules are obviously a general consensus, meaning, society decides its moral scale. Of course this is a matter of debate.
Solitary and
Johan questioned the validity of brainwashing in terms of whether the technique works or not, and not its immoral/moral aspect.
Jmpty and
Stromboli gave a categorical "no". In their case, there are no shades or degrees of evilness. A deed is either all evil or not. They would have to answer such questions as: is it okay to lie (immoral) in order to save a life?
