Calling religion a mental illness

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I did say it is ONE definition. One way of looking at it. Not the ONLY one.

New Guinea tribesmen collect severed heads. If you collected severed heads you would be put in a rubber room ( if you're lucky- given the chair if not).

But that doesnt mean all members of a headhunting tribe are insane as individuals. Nor would Fromme's model of a whole society being insane really work for that either. How could a whole tribe be insane for doing something our own stone age ancestors did? Was the whole human race insane unit a few generations ago? That wouldnt make sense either.

Villagers in New Guinea burn witches, and so did our own ancestors in Salem, and in Europe centuries ago.

So to us outsiders observing either group: both our ancestors, and modern New Guineans would appear "insane". But if you are a member of that society it would be both sane AND rational to buy into the belief for your own survival. So you and your neighbors would be quite sane to believe in the existence of witchcraft.

And besides- Fromme's observation that a whole society can believe in crazy stuff just proves what I said- all culture is delusion. Insanity is just having the wrong delusions for that society. A ratonal individual is one who chooses the right ways of being irrational to fit into society and survive.

So religion might be viewed as a type of agreed upon delusion.

Its not either/or. I can see where Fromme is coming from. One might say that say-Hitler lead Germany into a collective state of insanity. But you could say that only because you have a standard-the standard being that you have other western nations existing at the same time as nazi germany that did not do the same things (genocide, conquest) to compare nazi germany to.

Witch burnings in 15th centurey europe that seem insane to us now occured in pagan africa and in the south sea islands, and all over the world (regardless of religous traditons) at that time. So it cant be classified as either individuals being insane, or even a whole society being insane. The whole human race was into it for most of history.

No, I do not believe it is a mental illness. However, when an individual's belief is leading them to harm themselves or others due to their belief in an all-powerful deity, then I think it could be considered a mental illness since you damaging you and your society under the illusion of something that has no basis in reality(in my opinion). If you began harming yourself on the basis of an elephant made of smoke telling you to do it would be considered mental illness and in my opinion it is no different from that except from the fact that it has become a more socially acceptable belief to hold.

fanaticism is the illness, religion is just the flavor that its "cool" to point at now. athiests are just as prone to this illness as anyone else, but Krishna help the poor bastard that tells them so.

I could never understand religion, but as long as someone doesn't try to use it to beat down others, I am fine with religion existing. I just don't care for the Westboro type.

[opinion=mine]

Religion is not a mental illness ... but it may be a symptom of one.

[/opinion]

Well..if religion is a mental illness so is culture in general as the two cannot be separated..and have been part of human cultures..as per all the archaeological evidence that points this way...

Our complex abstract languages...collective intelligence..and or complex cultures and religion..are great comforters in the battle against the 'unknown' or perceived 'chaos' in life..

But they can and do stifle basic animal freedom..just to be alive and exist..in homeostasis...

If there is any mental illness today as religion per se..culture in general is also even more so responsible..for going against..simple animal nature...

To please the rest of the 'herd'....the illusion of herd..that culture can bring....

The herd is in effect insane..in our modern culture..the maverick just stopped outside to have a 'smoke'...

long enough to figure this out....

It's like this song...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Q9D4dcYng[/youtube]

Deep and all of that....

But just common sense too..that's the hardest part for many folks..as common sense..can become what the herd wants too...

Instead of just living common sense..in the now..like most animals do....

to keep themselves...

Turned on..in the now

( or mindful awareness and all that eastern religion stuff)

to simply escape the illusions of manmade cultures....religion or whatever....

It's ridiculous, in order for something to be a mental illness it has to interfere with your ability to function. I don't think having a religious belief qualifies. I do dislike organized religion for various reasons but its not a mental illness. Some religious people are probably mentally ill just like some non-religious people are.

In 1994 I saw what I thought at the time to be Jesus's face in my net curtains.

He was just staring at me, to this day I can't account for what it was, but it proper freaked me out.

It didn't make me become religious though, but I think I was a bit loopy at the time.

I've never told anyone about that before by the way for fear that I would be carted off.

Two things: It is important to distinguish between religion and theism. Religion is organized spiritual practice that may or may not have anything to do with supernatural, reality-contradicting beliefs. Theism, on the other hand, is the belief in one or more deities, which may or may not compel a person to join a religious organization. A theist is not necessarily religious, and a religious person is not necessarily a theist. They may even be an atheist. Such as a Zen Buddhist or a Unitarian Universalist, for example. And of course Christian churches are also full of atheists and agnostics. I sometimes wonder how many gnostic (as opposed to agnostic) theists there really are. 20% of all professed theists? 10%? 5%? How many Christians don't cry at funerals because they're absolutely convinced that their deceased loved one went to a better place?

5% may be pretty close to the truth, and some of those 5% are sitting in high-security psychiatric institutions. Such as Deanna Laney, who killed her own children on God's orders. When she was ruled both guilty and insane, the judge and jury once and for all answered the question if people who are convinced that God exists and hear his voice are mentally ill. The answer, of course, was a resounding yes. Laney was just as insane as the biblical Abraham. If Abraham tried to sacrifice his son in this day and age and in front of witnesses, he'd also end up in a rubber cell.

Laney was as insane as George W. Bush, who called then-French president Jaques Chirac prior to the invasion of Iraq and rambled something incoherent about God's orders and two biblical demons called Gog and Magog, who were supposedly at large in the Middle East. I'm not making this up. So yes, gnostic theists who think themselves able to communicate with a higher, supernatural power are what mental health specialists commonly refer to as batshit insane, and these people pose a danger to themselves and others. Luckily, only a very small percentage of religious people fall in this category.

The other thing is that Abrahamic religion is a major cause, if not the no.1 cause, of depression, self-hatred and suicidal ideation. I have yet to meet a person who actually finds solace and inner peace in the idea of a judgemental and vengeful God who may or may not decide to throw them into a lake of fire for all eternity. But I know of countless people who went through hell on earth because of their religious upbringing, members of the LGBT community and others, myself being one of them. That's why I think that using depression in defense of Western religion is not only in bad taste, it is absolutely sickening and completely out of line. It's like a feminist defense of Islam or a Jewish advocacy for neo-Nazism.

If you could get carted off for that sort of thing, I would've been carted off a long time ago.

^^ ^^

I can't imagine where They'd be carting us off to.

^^^ People are always seeing things (pareidolia?) - in a slice of toast, for example, and a few months ago there was a case of someone seeing Jesus' figure on a dog's butt - there was a thread about that on here, so you're not alone in this...

Actually, imagination can be a good thing. I often see various objects in the cloud formations, rocks, spots of paiint or dirt, and the like, and it can be quite fun wondering if other people can also see what you can see.

religious faith and practice are not mental illnesses, but they are categorical errors in reason and logic.

ruveyn

It didn't look like the Jesus you see on the telly.

He had thick black curly hair and dark eyes. It took ages for it to disappear. I kept blinking and turning away but it was still there. It was broad daylight too. It was as though someone had drawn a sketch onto my curtains.

That's how vivid it was.

If it was these days I would take a picture on my phone, but back then I didn't have a pot to piss in, let alone a mobile phone with a digital camera.

Just to a google image search for pareidolia. People will believe anything, In Coogee, Sydney there was a peculiarly shaped fence and post which at the right time of day threw an optical illusion that some decided was an apparition of Mary. The fence eventually got knocked down by pissed of locals (their main complaint being all the parking spots were taken) but not before they had painted it in different colours to stop the illusion and guess what the visions stopped, but not the pilgrims, they still come and pray for the apparition to return

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elainelarkin/4057908911/in/photostream/

^The photo in the top right shows the post without the illusion, and the other shows the idiots praying at the altered fence.




is this group insanity, I dunno.

^ the Illusion

I also saw a man wearing a turban. He was on my stripy curtains.

Maybe I should get blinds.