Calling religion a mental illness

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All I had to do once I was on the Board of Elders was to take a good long look at the accounting ledgers. There is a lot of truth in the maxim that "Whatever you spend the most money on is where your heart shall be."

They spent most of their money on programs, carpeting, furnishings, remodeling, and other cosmetic features, when three blocks over is a shelter for the homeless that had to turn people away due to lack of funding.

I tried to get them to meet people - especially the locals and newcomers - at their point of greatest need, but the elders were (and still are) of the mindset that remodeling the church is all it takes to attract the "right kind" of people and keep them coming back.

And by "right kind", I mean people of the same ethnicity in the upper economic brackets.

The Gospel? Oh, that's the Pastor's job ... and if he hopes to keep his job, he should not preach the Gospel that speaks against hypocrisy and the Pharisaic leadership.

THAT is Religion!

Last edited by Fnord on 11 Dec 2013, 1:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Is your evidence two thousand years old? And why the romans and other non romans wanted him to die was of course political, how does this mean he wasn't the son of God? Not everyone who believes is a fundie. If you keep calling me the others on wp who believe fundies, in a condacending tone, I'm going to call all of you atheists playdoughs. How do you like that?
And by the way how do you believe in something with as little physical evidence as neutrinos if you don't believe something like the bible at least even happened or even appeared to, when it has more evidence than neutrinos will ever show in any of our lifetimes?

Do you realize your former church is not the only one that exists?

It depends on what you call physical evidence. Neutrinos cannot be "seen," but they were predicted using mathematical models of physics and then found in a way that can be reproduced. There is plenty of evidence for their existence, unless by physical evidence you mean that someone has visually seen one.

A reproduction of fake neutrinos doesn't mean they exist. We don't go around telling people if you believe in God you are free to claim to be his son to prove it do we? Those are cults by the way...

Flimsy scorching marks from fake neutrinos that are not even exact as they have been predicted is way more evidence than more than 2000 years of history! Of course!

Do you realize that my experience with this one church is shared with many other people in their churches, as well? One need only look at the Bob Schuller's "Crystal Cathedral", the Crouch family's "Trinity Network", Chuck Smith's "Calvary Chapel" and the entire Roman Catholic Church to see that religion is all a grand scheme to extract money from gullible believers and used it to construct grand monuments to the churches' grandiose leaders.

Meh, *shrugs shoulders*

I didnt attack anyone, I didnt specifically call anyone anything, I'm not an athiest, I'll take playdough well enough as i am a tad pudgy around the middle. I never said the bible didnt exist or was a work of fiction, I never even as much as implied jesus didnt exist and i certainly never said that anyone and everyone that practices christianity is a "fundie". That being said, that hostile backlash for a conflicting opinon simply and completely validates the point some of us are making and is the very definition of hubris.

Jesus of nazareth most certainly existed. This is confirmed by historical texts from as far away as india and china making references to him.
My issue isnt with religion, never has been. Its with ORGANIZED religion, its manipulative tactics and control mechanisms. Any ideology which claims to espouse "free will" yet shuns inquisition and analytical thought is fundamentally flawed and flies in the face of common sense.

Moving on...
Regarding the OP,

Practicing religion a mental disorder. I dont think so, not directly anyway. Statistical numbers alone would indicate there are a number of those that indeed have delusions and obsessions which religion is how their pathologies manifest themselves but to apply that blanket statement to all "religious" people is a bit much. IMHO. I once saw a guy I knew lay hands on a car engine and cast out the demon that was preventing him from getting to church on time. His car still didnt start.

Mass delusion? To some degree I suppose this argument could be made. Believing there is a demon living inside the carburetor of your car's engine block is delusional enough, believing this little monster has a personal stake in keeping you from driving your car is even more of a stretch and believing you can channel mystic powers into the car to banish said demon is a special kind of crazy.

A lot of those in jonestown were delusional enough to voluntarily drink the kool-aid, or the church that worshiped that comet years back and all committed suicide expecting the mother ship to take them home, or the Buddhist monks that set themselves on fire to make political statements. To say that every follower of every religion is suffering the same mental illness I do not buy but there are those that take it to extremes.

Phucket. Alright, I was a tad hostile. People calling me a fundie, delusional, fanatic, usually makes me mad, even if you weren't exactly referring to me. If you want to blame religion, the church structure is responsible. The followers can use a little grace. I wouldn't like to find out I'm going to hell because some idiot lied to me about what Jesus really meant, and that is why I got mad. I have my ifs about certain things, am a loner, and prefer to worship God, and his son without the bias myself. The thing again that gets me, is the evil stupid fanatic name calling just because people follow those hippocrits blindly, thinking they are doing nothing wrong. It isn't right to assume they are bad people because someone taught them to be that way. I feel bad for those people, that is what I just get so bothered by. If you aren't gonna tell those people they are wrong, what is the point? You fnord, why didn't you tell the people what they were doing? That is the kind of stuff I'm talking about, I'm sorry if I attacked you.

Indeed.

Academics and theologians delight in intellectual theological discussion and debate. You can have a group of wildly different denominations and even religions spend many a happy hour lost in discussion. The "fundy" perhaps the only one not welcome. They dont discuss, they dont debate, they have nothing to offer conversationally beyond personal attacks and contradictions. Christian fundamentalists take the bible as fact on a literal word for word level, and thats fine, the "fundies" are those that take this to ridiculous extremes. What's really funny with them is their obsessive literal take is based mostly on what they have been told the bible says, not what they have read for themselves. If you want to watch ones head explode explain to them how their concept of hell is wrong. *Ill footnote this when im done typing here.

If you can, I would suggest you follow your faith and educate yourself about what it is you really believe. Take a few theology courses at your local secular college. The lowest level ones are a little boring, populated mostly with those satisfying a philosophy credit requirement but beyond that things get a lot more interesting. One of my favs was a whole semester just on MML and J and taught from texts in the bibles original Koine and Old Aramaic. The way these were put into english with the king james is laughable. *which wasnt translated directly but from another translation. I dont speak those dead languages but the Prof did, an Episcopal priest with a doctorate in new testament theology. anyway... when you look at what was originally written AND have a grasp of the history and culture of the time it was written in it gives you a whole new perspective on things. I had this same prof for a class on revelations, wow, that was an awesome class. 666 has nothing to do with anything, the mark isnt a number at all, its ceasar's name. 666 is how it sort of looked in the original and got translated that way.

I would suggest also, (and heres where some book-learnin' will help) That you investigate a field of theology called Apologetics. A very simple explanation of this is a defense of christianity. At its absolute most basic form a type of this would be how you would witness to a non-believer to get them to join your cause. You will find that being able to mount a deep and meaningful discussion in support of your beliefs will attract vastly more opinions to your side than by simply beating them over the head with John 3:16 and repeating that they will inhabit hell forever if they dont buy it.

*here's the footnote.
The modern concept of hell is a philosophical construct based on the church of the middle ages use of fear as a control agent, these ideas furthered by the artwork of Hieronymus Bosch, most notably a triptych painting called The Garden of Earthly Delights. (*** very very cool, i had a poster of this on my wall in high school, every minute detail in each little part of the image is wrapped in metaphor and allegory) Almost no one could read back then so artwork was used as religious propaganda. Even the term "hell" meant nothing till it was translated/replaced from the real term which the church did for whatever reasons. They define hell in its simplest form as meaning "without god".
What the word hell replaces is Gehenna.
This Gehenna is an actual place, you can go there if you like.
Gehenna lies outside ancient jerusalem. at first it was the site of pagan child sacrifice rituals and later became the city dump of jerusalem where huge piles of garbage and debris were burned in fires that pretty much never went out since more trash kept being added.
If there were ever to be an example of a godless place of eternal fire and misery this is it.

Ok, I will consider this.

Ah, the corruption of the churches are very frequent nowadays, as they're sadly making ''merchandise'' out of the people.

You wanna know how to draw out the fundies? Just mention evolution and they go apeshit!

Or mention homosexuals in church ... or that homosexual preachers are the next step in church evolution ... or ...

Applying logic works as well they hate that! They dont like Genetic data and physical proof of the fossil record as well either! Science and logic are the devil to them!