"It's real to me"

[Nazzer]

Too often in discussions with creationists, they tend to say "It's real to me" or "To me, God is real." Obviously they mean "I believe it" and "I believe in God", but what does "Real to me" even mean?

It seems to imply that reality is relative. If a stick is "real to them" and not to me, then wouldn't that mean that if they picked it up and tried to hit me with it, they could see it, pick it up, feel it's weight and texture, etc., but I would remain unaffected if they tried to hit me with it? After all, it's real to them, but to me it doesn't exist, so it can't effect me.

It seems to me like they're trying to legitimize their belief and avoid criticism, especially since the way they say it is usually "Well, you may believe in Evolution, but, TO ME, God is real", enunciating the words "to me".

[Will]

They don't know what they're saying. What they're intending to communicate is that everyone has their own subjective reality based on their unique understanding of the universe, but that doesn't apply to deductive reasoning in a vacuum of evidence, and anyone that thinks about it for 2 seconds can figure that out. What they're actually saying is, "I'm delusional. My particular understanding of the universe is based on delusion." Please feel free to point that out to them. By saying that god is real to them, they're admitting that their perception is colored by a blind acceptance of information regardless of established logic or science. More than that their perception is based entirely on the idea that their intuition somehow trumps science and logic. That's the very definition of a self-aware delusional state.

[gwyn428]

What they need to understand is that Evolution is not relative.. just like facts. Either the wallpaper is orange or it is not. It can't be blue to anyone. Tough teets.

[SSY]

Whenever I get something like that, you can point out the fact that a mental patient who really, truely beleives he is Napoleon, is not Napoleon.