• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Religious belief as a mental illness (with your hosts, Erm & Eck!)

EcK

The Memes Justify the End
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
7,708
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
738
You can prove a negative. It's obvious how. It should also be obvious I don't mean 100% proof, which can never be provided. (though that's not 100% proven :D)

Then it's not proven. Your statement is ridiculous. When you deal with limited observation of the system (the universe of whatever else exists and related to the universe) you cannot prove or disprove anything, you can simply give a likelyhood, based on a model which is itself only accurate relatively to the test subjects provided by the environnement and the developing team.

Proof is only possible in a closed and fully determined system. as a part of the universe we can never experiment in 'the whole universe' as the proof would had to be run in a bigger system than the actual perfectly observed universe. Our latest theories also seem to show that the universe isn't absolutly deterministic but has a degree of randomness to it.
 

erm

Permabanned
Joined
Jun 19, 2007
Messages
1,652
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
5
Then it's not proven. Your statement is ridiculous. When you deal with limited observation of the system (the universe of whatever else exists and related to the universe) you cannot prove or disprove anything, you can simply give a likelyhood, based on a model which is itself only accurate relatively to the test subjects provided by the environnement and the developing team.

And here I thought you would understand proof = very high probability, by my terms. By most people's terms, in fact.

You statement applies to anything. Religious beliefs can't be disproven by your terms, but nothing else can either. So your point does not discriminate against religious belief, even slightly.

Well, i'm glad for most people, maybe you'd care to illuminate me with your wisdom?

Can't you work it out?

"The train driver fell asleep and accidently hit the brakes! So the child wasn't run over!"
"It's a miracle!"

Here you go, the two most common definitions:-

•any amazing or wonderful occurrence
•a marvellous event manifesting a supernatural act of a divine agent

Note how the second definition does not actually imply a break in the laws of nature. (though it does suggest it)
 

Kangirl

I'm a star.
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
1,470
MBTI Type
ENTJ
Hasn't there been some research indicating that religious faith leads to a longer life and higher happiness levels than the non-religious? I'm sure I've read about this in a few different places. Not really making a point with that, except maybe to say that there might be a practical reason to have religious faith, which could, possibly, impact on whether or not it's a 'mental illness'.

(for the record, I'm agnostic and do not think religious faith is a mental illness)
 

EcK

The Memes Justify the End
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
7,708
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
738
And here I thought you would understand proof = very high probability, by my terms. By most people's terms, in fact.
Most people can't repair a car or build a rocket engine. Your point being ... "the poor state of culture" or ..?
You statement applies to anything. Religious beliefs can't be disproven by your terms, but nothing else can either. So your point does not discriminate against religious belief, even slightly.
I'll remind you that you were the one introducing that whole disproving thing, so you're arguing against yourself right now.

Just saying
:coffee:

"It's a miracle!"

Here you go, the two most common definitions:-

•any amazing or wonderful occurrence
•a marvellous event manifesting a supernatural act of a divine agent

Note how the second definition does not actually imply a break in the laws of nature. (though it does suggest it)
Supernatural: adj.

1. Of or relating to existence outside the natural world.
2. Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces.

no comment :doh:
 

ilovetrannies

New member
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
83
MBTI Type
ISFP
No, I think it may be the opposite. Truly mentally ill people attach on religion as a way to rationalize their delusions of grandeur. Some naive people are religious or there are alot of stupid people in the world sadly. I am in atheist, I'm tired of trying to figure out people anymore. Plus, I'm a misanthropist. I hate people with deep and furious passion.:steam:
 

erm

Permabanned
Joined
Jun 19, 2007
Messages
1,652
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
5
I'll remind you that you were the one introducing that whole disproving thing, so you're arguing against yourself right now.

Your terms. My terms. Reading comprehension.

Supernatural: adj.

1. Of or relating to existence outside the natural world.
2. Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces.

no comment :doh:

Philosophy 101: How can something violate the laws of nature?

Laws of nature = A description of what happens.

If god exists, he is part of them.

Point being, "breaks in the laws of nature", could be happening around you right now. You wouldn't know because they resemble the laws of nature. AKA, they are the laws of nature.

No, I think it may be the opposite. Truly mentally ill people attach on religion as a way to rationalize their delusions of grandeur.

That doesn't contradict the OP. Either way, by that reasoning, religious people are mentally ill.

EDIT: "Erm & Eck" actually sounds pretty good.

Maybe at some point I will call to witness, a religious person who is not mentally ill.
 

EcK

The Memes Justify the End
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
7,708
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
738
Your terms. My terms. Reading comprehension.



Philosophy 101: How can something violate the laws of nature?

Laws of nature = A description of what happens.

If god exists, he is part of them.

Point being, "breaks in the laws of nature", could be happening around you right now. You wouldn't know because they resemble the laws of nature. AKA, they are the laws of nature.
RAH, you've been completely irrational since the begining of this thread, you say you use 'common definition of terms' which make me wonder if you live in a coal mine, then you deny used definitions of natural vs supernatural AFTER I told you that I agree with an all natural world but use the PARAnormal term because it's the one actually used in every study ever made about what's usually called the 'paranormal'. And since miracles and so on have never actually been proven to be anything else than people going raving mad over statistically unsignificant details I don't think they're part of the DESCRIPTION of the natural world, hence, the use of the term paranormal. Yet if they were actually real, they'd be of course part of the natural world.

If i have a dream about unicorns and don't realise it was a dream, then the experience happened for me in the natural world, yet it doesn't actually occure anywhere outside of my head as far as the perception of the rest of humanity goes. So a definition of the natural world can be paranormal to the rest of observations of the natural world.
 

Helios

Member
Joined
Dec 28, 2008
Messages
273
MBTI Type
INTP
I do by the way, truly consider most religious people to be mentally ill, this isn't some attempt at provocation and I'm not trying to insult anybody or force my own beliefs onto others.

Do you have any recommended treatments?
 

EcK

The Memes Justify the End
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
7,708
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
738
So my point so far,
I think religious belief could be classified as a delusion, a belief in natural laws not supported by general experience seem to develop and be substained even in the absence of evidence supporting said statements and presence of evidence supporting other theories.

And while the non existence of a fact in an incompletly and imperfectly observed universe cannot be proven, the claim that so called 'supernatural' events religious beliefs and superstitions are based upon are part of the natural/experienced and not purely the result of 'wishful thinking' to say the least haven't been supported by scientific evidence so far.

Past the passive support of the religious belief, there also seem to be a clear pattern of active denial concerning the implausibility or incongruence of different dogmas.
For example: Every religion I've heard of has a cosmogenic theory that seem to be extremely unlikely and generally use extreme complexity -gods etc.- to explain lesser complexity -Universe-.
The vision of the movement and nature of the planets and stars also never seemed to be the sort of answers an actual god like creature would have to know about[especially in habrahamic religions].
Actually, the theories were exactly those a human society would have developped at that period, yet, the knowledge is claimed to be of divine origin.

Now to continue with mental illnesses, what has often been noticed is that most mental illnesses seem to be coming from normal mechanisms of the brain that either run 'too slow' or are on overdrive.

OCD disfunction of behavioral positive reinforcement mechanism.
Excessive stress/phobia: disfunctional fight or flight response
...

I can complement that part if somebody feel it doesn't convey the idea. My point being that mental illnesses don't seem to be emergent new traits but rather malfunctioning characters or socially anormal traits.

Religion and the brain:
Apparently, Epilepsy of the temporal lobe can give people extreme religious experience, people would go as far as puting religion as a higher source of pleasure than sex.
By recreating artificially, using magnetic fields, this abnormal electric activity in the temporal lobe, michael persinger had 80% of the participants declare feeling an unobservable presence in the room with them.
There's a strong religious belief in the presence of a god, spirits, or ancesters that can be felt.

There are also plenty of studies explaining superstitions or OCDs using behavioral reinforcements. Example, chickens are left in a box and fed at random intervals, after a while, it'll happen that some chick gets fed after performing a particular action more than once and will start associating this action with feeding until the experimenters are left with a set of chicks each doing a specific action all the time because they came to associate those specific actions with 'getting fed'.

Brain and evolution:
So now one asks 'what if the answer is in 'who put god in our brain'.
Evolution theories seem self sufficient and the initial abiogenesis needed to start the whole process has been shown to be plausible in the primordial earth, such as the synthesis of amino acids and their assemblage into growingly complex constructs.
For more information
Abiogenesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The god idea:
The issue here is always the same, introducing a god is equal to explaining what seems to be unlikely or complex with something EVEN more complex. Explaining the apparition of simple life by making an extremely unprobable god like conscience/intelligence create it isn't an answer, it just pushes back the 'origins' question one step backward and orders of magnitude further away in term of likelihood.
 

Katsuni

Priestess Of Syrinx
Joined
Aug 22, 2009
Messages
1,238
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
3w4?
After going through the first two pages I kind of got sick of the bickering >.>;;

For referance though, most people who "follow a religion" have no clue whot it is they actually follow. They don't understand their beliefs, they don't even try to grasp why whot they believe is the way it is. They just assume it's infalliable (delusional at best), or go along with whotever they're told (inferiority complex?), while some use it as an excuse to 'prove' that they are 'better' than everything else as they are a 'child of god' (pseudo-god complexes whee!), or do so because they fear hell/afterlife/retribution for sins, etc, despite that these 'punishments' are intangible and can't be proven.

Are 'most' religious people little more than suffering from mental illness? Probably.

Does that mean ALL are? Not at all, religion in and of itself isn't BAD or anything, it's just that the structured organizations ARE. If yeu take a look at things from a very pragmatic and rational viewpoint, and try to learn religion as a science, rather than a myth, I don't think that can be considered mental illness anymore, merely an expression of attempting to identify, quantify and understand one's surroundings in more depth. Which's perfect normal, to be honest.

It's when yeu don't want to understand yeur surroundings and are happy with just making up silly things (thunder is angels bowling? wth? Could be worse... I knew one person who honestly believed that their poo was pushed out their butt by tiny itallian men with brooms for some reason... don't ask, I didn't) to explain away stuff without actually trying to figure it out on purpose. If yeu stop caring about trying to understand things, and just accept them as they are, that immediately tells me that yeu have stopped learning and have no intention of continuing to broaden yeur horizons. Sometimes yeu have to just accept things as they are, but it doesn't mean yeu shouldn't question them as well. It's possible to enjoy something just 'as it is', yet still want to learn more about it too. Some people just don't get that and figure questioning the nature of god or the universe is somehow 'wrong'. That, is something I shall never understand, especially when their own holy books, torah, qoran (I can't spell it), bible, etc, tell them to question things and they will one day become godlike in their own way.
 
G

garbage

Guest
Can you give me an example of a religion that doesn't make statements about a creation myth, morality and an unobservable beyond/realm of godlike creatures?

I doubt I can give you one that doesn't cover morality. Why is morality an issue?
 

ajblaise

Minister of Propagandhi
Joined
Aug 3, 2008
Messages
7,914
MBTI Type
INTP
These days, there is a very wide spectrum of religious belief, ranging from 'practically nonreligious' to 'insane'. As the years progress, the crazy end of the spectrum will continue to slowly phase itself out.

The tactic of "Is [insert an ideology you don't like] a mental illness?" is a kind of weak, but on the fundamentalist end of the religious spectrum, it's clear that their beliefs are causing distress in some of their adherents in how they relate to the modern world. It's especially damaging when a child grows up and doesn't fit their religions narrow view of how one should be. This internal/external conflict and pressure isn't mentally healthy.
 

Take Five

Supreme Allied Commander
Joined
Aug 26, 2008
Messages
925
MBTI Type
ISTJ
Enneagram
1w9
There are several unproved hypotheses used in science and mathematics which people use every day, and which are taught in school. Are all the people that use mathematics with these theorems mentally ill?
 

Totenkindly

@.~*virinaĉo*~.@
Joined
Apr 19, 2007
Messages
50,187
MBTI Type
BELF
Enneagram
594
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
These days, there is a very wide spectrum of religious belief, ranging from 'practically nonreligious' to 'insane'. As the years progress, the crazy end of the spectrum will continue to slowly phase itself out.

The tactic of "Is [insert an ideology you don't like] a mental illness?" is a kind of weak, but on the fundamentalist end of the religious spectrum, it's clear that their beliefs are causing distress in some of their adherents in how they relate to the modern world. It's especially damaging when a child grows up and doesn't fit their religions narrow view of how one should be. This internal/external conflict and pressure isn't mentally healthy.

I agree with all this.

I think the endpoints definitely show themselves to be unbalanced (as the scale approaches infinity), and they also end up making their position and cultural involvement obsolete eventually.

I think general religion, on the other hand, ends up being productive in practical ways in people's lives in SOME way, which is why it thrives regardless of its degree of veracity or any con's that come with it. And to label the general practice of any unempirical belief as evidence of mental insanity? It seems like trying to make too much of too little; I don't know if this could ever be shown adequately, or what might have to be damned as insanity along with it to keep the logic consistent, or even what practical value this has in living life and building community and reaching one's own fulfillment as a person.
 

EcK

The Memes Justify the End
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
7,708
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
738
I doubt I can give you one that doesn't cover morality. Why is morality an issue?

Don't ask me what happened but somehow i found that thread by googling myself and 'growing up is for kid' (no particular reason).

To answer your question in a few words, morality is an issue because the attachement one has to a moral system has priority over the reasons for that moral system to exist, creating numerous issues such as keeping a moral rule that isn't adapted to the current state of modern societies etc.

More rational ethical systems are far superior than what is usually defined as morals.
Of course one could argue definitions since that term has been used in many different contexts but I guess most people would agree that morals implies emotional attachement to a value code as a dominant trait rather than a support for something less self referent. While ethics imply a reasoned systematical study of the justifications for and implications of behavioral codes.
And I'm not implying cold reasoning either, btw, one can reason with emotions. It's when the emotions define what FACT is true or what SYSTEM is better that things go seriously wrong. It's a bit like defining the experience "green" with an equation, not a good move.
 

Laurie

Was E.laur
Joined
Jan 3, 2009
Messages
6,072
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
7w6
Mental illness is serious. You don't just get to label something like "religion" as mental illness because it sounds cute that way.

Pick a more appropriate, equally as offensive term that might fit better, please.
 

EcK

The Memes Justify the End
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
7,708
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
738
What can I say - pseudo-intellectual bullshit. :rolli:
was that one of these games where you answer your own questions?

Buy yourself a friend or something.

Mental illness is serious. You don't just get to label something like "religion" as mental illness because it sounds cute that way.

Pick a more appropriate, equally as offensive term that might fit better, please.

naah, it sorts of fit.
 

SillySapienne

`~~Philosoflying~~`
Joined
Jan 14, 2008
Messages
9,801
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
4w5
I believe that there is a great vacuous, omniscient Vagina in the sky, watching us, waiting to suck us in its vortex.

:)
 
Top