Delusions, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention...

But, of course, I will:

I will always be a child, and my parents will always be my parents.

My country’s leaders are wise and good.

Thunder is caused by the devil beating his wife over the head with a frying pan.

The police only want to help me.

Pretty women are angels with hidden wings.

My country exemplifies bravery, generosity, and every other virtue.

Claw-hammers and Colt .45 revolvers are wise, and wise things don’t want to hurt me.

All airplanes and some women are beautiful, and beautiful things can’t hurt me.

If you have enough money, you can hire experts to do anything. For example, you could throw a very small rock into the middle of the deep woods, and the right experts could easily find that very rock; or you could get your head blown-off by a shotgun, and they could put it on again.

Behind the woods are the backwoods, and people who look like Lil’ Abner live in the backwoods, but you never see them because the backwoods are too far back.

Having sex with enough women will protect me.

Jesus is real, and he loves me.

Jesus’ father is real, and he wants to send me to hell.

The Holy Ghost is a vapor that does whatever Jesus and Jesus’ father tell him to do.

Doctors know too much to make mistakes.

I create reality as I go along, and it stops existing when I’m gone.

Everything is alive and knows what is going on around it.

My belongings appreciate me for taking such good care of them, and they miss me when I go away.

My houseplants enjoy getting a shower.

I am over most of these, but I’m hardly delusion free, and that’s only counting the delusions I know about. What do delusions offer that they keep me enslaved against my will, and how do my delusional beliefs compare with the delusional beliefs of others? For example, how do religious people—once they are grown—hold, not just to isolated delusions but to a thousand interrelated and often contradictory delusions, and not only NOT try to recover from them, but try to cling to them more fiercely; and how is it that I have been able to escape those kinds of delusions, but not others—the last three things on my list, for example—even though I recognize their delusional nature?