The worst thing about religion

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course it is, your country is the odd one out.

yeah, I have my interests. But unlike you, it hasn't always been spending the whole day by my computer.

Its sport, ret*d! I've explained why.

lol, and what have you done? where has all this knowledge about a subject that is almost certainly untrue, got you? where is it ever gonna get you? One day you'll die, then your dead, no heavenly gates and all that s**t.

haha, ok. So there is hard evidence that god didn't create the world. Don't you think a lot of christians may become a tiny bit suspicious?

I've a variety of interests, not all of which involve a computer. I enjoy chess, music, and reading for starters.


We've been over this before on this forum, but referring to members here as "ret*ds" is one of the few things that can get you in trouble in PPR. It's rather a sensitive pejorative to use on such a site as this. FWIW, I was almost sent to an MR/DD school when I was younger, and was on an IEP for several years and regarded as "slow." Then I graduated as valedictorian of the largest high school in the state (without putting any effort into my schoolwork) and am starting college next week as a junior off of all my AP tests that I didn't bother to study for.

And if you really want to play grammar-Nazi, I could go back through the thread and point out every spelling and grammatical error you've made. It would take me quite a while, though, since there are so many.

Well, the subject overlaps a philosophy and western culture, in fact, one theologian argued that western culture has promoted the spread of the bible even among the non-religious who seek to understand western culture.

So, there is hard evidence that no possible god that could exist could have any hand in the formation of the current world?

You mean "It's".

And this entire conversation has fallen into nonsense. I love it!!

A part from the examples AG gave, there are some who argue that the flood story would have been written with a flat-earth in mind or at least not an entirely spherical planet, and also, the Tower of Babel story, in which they were trying to reach heaven, those stories would be easier to imagine with a flat-earth idea, by the people who heard and wrote the stories at the time, I would assume, at least to make sense, although there is no clear indication in the Bible to think of a flat-earth, not a spherical-earth either. How ancient Judaism imagined the earth to be, would they accept ideas from other ancient cultures about the shape of the earth or would they reject them, especially because of roman opression, in which they would probably reject any roman belief, because of it? that, I don't know.

Hahaha! You criticize Christianity while not knowing anything about it, you support modern science without understanding it, and now you're insulting my English while grammatically raping your own language. It's "Stupid little American," you capitalize the first letter of a sentence and the first letter of a name.



How would you know? You've shown that you know neither English nor mathematics.



Considering that Americans predominantly speak it, it's my language too. So please don't butcher your queen's royal English.



I speak a particular dialect of the English language appropriate for my country. Let's just say that if I went around saying "bloody twats" I would probably get my ass kicked.

Oh congratulations, you just used a single mistake in the bible as proof there is no such thing as God. What does this mean? It means that you've used a fallacy! It is scary when the side that claims to be rational gets into this sort of mistakes. Ouch?

It was so weird there when the title of the thread mysteriously changed from "The Worst Thing About Religion" to "Let's Focus All Of Our Attention On BenjaminBreeg". That was wondrous. Perhaps even miraculous. Either way.

Psychiatry is governed by science. Schizophrenia is governed by psychiatry.

To refresh our memories (via wikipedia edited for space):

To be diagnosed with schizophrenia, a person must display:

Two or more of the following, each present for much of the time during a one-month period (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment)
delusions
hallucinations
disorganized speech (e.g., frequent derailment or incoherence; speaking in abstracts). See thought disorder.
grossly disorganized behavior (e.g. dressing inappropriately, crying frequently) or catatonic behavior
negative symptoms, i.e., affective flattening (lack or decline in emotional response), alogia (lack or decline in speech), or avolition (lack or decline in motivation).
Note: If delusions are judged to be bizarre, or hallucinations consist of hearing one voice participating in a running commentary of the patient's actions or of hearing two or more voices conversing with each other, only that symptom is required above. The speech disorganization criterion is only met if it is severe enough to substantially impair communication.
Social/occupational dysfunction: For a significant portion of the time since the onset of the disturbance, one or more major areas of functioning such as work, interpersonal relations, or self-care, are markedly below the level achieved prior to the onset.
Duration: Continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least six months. This six-month period must include at least one month of symptoms (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment).


I look see most religious people as somewhere on the 'schizophrenic spectrum'. The symptoms fit. If they're having hallucinations something is off. George Bush and his excuse for the mess in Iraq can be our case study. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/06/bush.shtml If he hears a voice and refers to it as God he's sane, healthy, ready to rid the world of terrorists. If he hears a voice and refers to it as Bumblebee he needs a bit more Thorazine. (OR! In the event he's not the President of the US and hears a voice called telling him to kill people, he needs more Thorazine.)

So, in my world, those of the religious variety get the psychiatric label, which lets me deconstruct their "faith" with my science because their faith isn't actually real, it's all hallucinations and delusions.

Worst thing about religion--Either we're misdiagnosing a lot of sane people as crazy or misdiagnosing a lot of crazy people as sane.
(Let Benjamin be , for my sanity)

See, in talking about what is wrong about religion, we ended up proving religion with a miracle!! For what god though.... hmm.....


A major issue is that psychological disease diagnoses are dependent upon the cultural labels of a society, or upon certain mental structures. The diagnosis of schizophrenia, for example, has very little negativity ascribed to it without the cultural connection to illness, and the fact that the brain is objectively impacted by some abnormality(I believe psychologists are looking for disease agents involved, and schizophrenic brains are known for certain anatomical differences from other brains as well as genetic differences).

Religious people however, do not suffer from the biological issues of schizophrenia, and do not fall within the cultural ideas of schizophrenia, in fact, the experiences of religious people are not that uncommon in the population. In fact, the fact that religious individuals only suffer from hallucinations/delusions is proof that they are not schizophrenic. Not only that, but let us even be less biased against the religious, how do we know which religious individuals are hallucinating or having delusions and which ones aren't? I mean, it is only hallucination or delusion if it is untrue, and a fellow believer will never say that the experience of God is a hallucination.


Right, however, most psychologists would deny that these individuals are schizophrenics and attest that even the fellows that see UFOs are relatively sane. Not only that, but once again, a person of religion will assert the ability of the specific to overcome the general, as you cannot disprove a specific miracle/whatever without a good source of evidence about that specific miracle/whatever.


Actually, I would say that the labels of crazy and sane are social constructs. Psychology limits itself to the study of conditions, and to be honest, I think that a scientific psychology would give up the notion of "illness" to replace it with abnormality due to the various philosophical considerations with determining something to be an illness. I mean, we can debate the philosophy of illness, but illness to me relates to teleology, or purpose. If purpose is a human-construct, then it is subjective, if something is subjective then it is not objective and not based upon science, ergo, illness cannot be scientific.

In the end, I would argue that a "sanity-based" attack against faith is flawed, as faith is still beyond science. You are merely trying to engage in psychological reductionism despite the fact that there is a basic epistemic problem here that psychology can aid in, but not solve thoroughly.

Ladygirl:
In general we distinguish here between religion and science on the basis that religion comprises non-falsifiable propositions. A non-falsifiable is characterized by the impossibility of evidence showing it is wrong; a delusion is characterized by a belief which persists despite evidence to the contrary. The two don't overlap. You *could* label it pathological to believe in non-falsifiables, but note that psychiatric illnesses are constructs, so you're just begging the question about whether we should do that. I mean, it wouldn't be very satisfactory to label people who believe in morality crazy because they have a "delusion" about the existence of a set of mysterious guiding principles which there exists no evidence for nor could there be any evidence against.

I seriously dispute this claim. And by seriously I mean tangentially, flippantly.

Ladygirl, do you actually believe this or are you just regurgitating?

I'm trying to sue god's representatives.

Get in line, buddy.

rofl!! ! sounds like you get out a lot!!

freedom of speech, your a complete twat.

its called English slang. I've got into a habbit, if I really wanted to try, I could make an effort and spell check everything I write, but guess what, I don't give a s**t. I have more important things to worry about.

no, in our language, its either.