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Desrtopa comments on How to deal with non-realism? - Less Wrong
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If she's arguing from a position of separate magisteria which have to be reasoned about differently, I would probably try this tactic. Point out that we do not automatically gravitate to reasoning correctly about mundane things; you can use examples from Greek philosophers and alchemists and so on. Correct processes of mundane reasoning are something we've had to develop over time by refining our methods in situations where would could tell if our conclusions were wrong.
That being the case, how does she know that her different procedure for reasoning about non-mundane things is one that works? If it were simply wrong, how would she be able to tell? If her procedure for reasoning about non-mundane things can be used to draw contradictory conclusions (it almost certainly can,) point out that you have on the one hand a set of confusing apparent contradictions that must somehow all be true, and on the other hand the possibility that the reasoning procedure simply doesn't work.
From what I read, the procedure for reasoning about non-mundane things is used to avoid drawing any conclusions whatsoever, much less contradictory ones. It's intellectual cowardice masquerading as deep wisdom. (Sorry for dissing your mom, loup-vaillant.)
I largely agree with Cyan, but with a little more empathy for your mom's viewpoint. For example, you write:
So you throw out a description and a quantifier, and slap a label on the result. Doesn't that sound a little similar to naive set theory? Maybe it's not as straightforward as it looks.
I'm not actually resistant to defining "reality" your way; I think it's not actually a step toward sets that don't contain themselves. But it takes some sophistication to see that, and your mom might lack the formal skills to discriminate innocent-looking "logic" that leads to paradox from innocent-looking logic that doesn't. Note that she needn't have studied set theory to have run into similar exercises in labeling and deductive argument that subtly lead to insane results.
If that's the case, she should see a god which really does hate homosexuality, eating pork, and considers working on the sabbath worthy of death, or wants the whole world to live under Sharia law, as equiprobable with one that loves everyone. She most likely behaves as if she had some means of discriminating between supernatural hypotheses even if she disavows being able to.
Have you read What the Tortoise Said to Achilles? It's reprinted in Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.