Religion... why?

[Eric B]

You It is collectivist because it insists first of all on the welfare of God, secondly on the welfare of others. 'Love thy God and Love thy neighbor as yourself'. Never does it tell you that being a good or a strong person is a virtue in itself.

That's because "good" is not clearly defined within ourselves. People make up their own minds about "good", and end up thinking about themselves only, and then evil spreads as people rob cheat and kill each other for their own gain. So it is observed that none of us are "good", hence, that's not a "virtue" we could successfully strive for in itself; but rather in considering the collective.

In Marxism we do what Mao says. In Christianity we do what the church says under the justification of such actions representing God's will.

Well, it's not supposed to be what "the Church" says, but it's true that the Church (as an institution) has really clouded things, and made itself the center of the Christian life. The original "church" was people meeting in the homes, and overseers watching to make sure the truth of Christ was taught. The later institution people judge "Christianity" on was a great corruption.

The bottom line is, religion is incompatible with critical thinking because it insists on acceptance of instructions by default. Growth of civilization is impossible because of this as such a regime precludes new ideas from being propounded. Religious thinkers who have propounded ideas behaved in a decidedly irreligious fashion.

Again; that's only when all the baggage of the corrupt institution is added. An institution had no [divine] business persecuting people for saying the world was round, or not at the center of the universe, when Christ and other scripture authors never stated such, or made it an underlying principle. (or authorized the sword or power of the state to enforce the truth, for that matter either).

[Sniffles]

You are mistaken my good sir. Spinoza was an observer of Jewish religion until the age of 23. At that age his public criticism of the religion orthodoxy led to excommunication.

The excommunication and anathema of Baruch Spinoza

Spinoza's view of God is different from the Judeo-Christian God. Spinoza's God is not a person, it is his term for the whole universe. He merely used this term to avoid incurring the hostility of theologians.

I was aware of his excommunication and his unconventional religious beliefs.

Secondly, the fact that many great thinkers were Christians is not relevant to the argument of whether or not it is desirable for a thinker to be a Christian.

I was addressing your argument that religion is merely for savages who can't think for themselves. The fact that many brilliant thinkers down the generations and even to the present day were religious alone undermines that assertion.

Where in scripture do you see the support for such a definition of faith?

It's very much implied throughout scriptures. This is especially seen in Psalm 23, among other places.

What is the relationship between rejecting God and rejecting metaphysics?

I pretty much just explained it.

Metaphysics is the study of all non-physical. Materialists maintain that what is material is more fundamental to the essence of reality than what is immaterial, yet they do not reject the existence of the immaterial as by virtue of the immaterial they have the opportunity to express their thoughts in the first place.

Which still makes them atheist in an indirect sense.

Religions are ideologies almost by definition.

No they are not. Ideologies as we know them today didn't even exist untill the French Revolution.

Because an ethical system is fundamental to their creed.

So ethics and ideologies are one and the same? This is a rather odd argument to make.

I doubt I need to even allude to scriptural writings to support this claim as the veracity of this one is nearly indubitable.

Perhaps you could specify what political implications you're talking about here, and what Testament too. I'm well aware that St. Paul calls upon Christians to be good citizens, but nowhere that Im aware does he express belief in a particular form of government.

That's one key difference between Christianity and Islam.

Religious writings are much more concerned with instructing man how to live rather than inspiring him to think about the complex philosophical questions.

Instructions on how to live is only one aspect of religion. How to see the world is another important component. Gk Chesterton once compared religious dogma to a fence around a playground - you can play any number of games, just stay within the fence.

Rarely in the scripture do we see writings like 'here is one way to think about the problem what do you think of it?

That's because the goal of scriptures is to teach salvation. However, let's also take into account that St. Paul makes references to Greek philosophy several times.

Plus let's also take into account that scriptures is not the only religious literature out there. There's a whole canon of writings by the Church fathers, which do go into numerous philosophical issues. The connection between the Christian faith and the Greek philosophical tradition go very deep. In fact Christianity's very understanding of faith and scriptures derived from the Jewish tradition most heavily influenced by Greek philosophy.

So by no stretch of the imagination can you possibly seperate the two.

The essence of Christianity is--forget what you want from life. Do only what your heavenly father wants you to. Dont question this command, just do as it tells you like a child would. Make sure all others do so as well. This is indeed radical collectivism.

It is collectivist because it insists first of all on the welfare of God, secondly on the welfare of others. 'Love thy God and Love thy neighbor as yourself'. Never does it tell you that being a good or a strong person is a virtue in itself.

One may say that it is individualistic in the regard that salvation is a personal journey, or only you will stand before the white throne at the final judgment. Yes, but you individually will be assessed in terms of how well you have fulfilled the radically collectivistic agenda described above.

Dare I ask where you got this assestment from?

I ask again, what is the relationship between atheism and materialism? What is the relationship between theism and spirituality? Or pursuit of a higher purpose such as virtue in its own right irrespectively of the worldly goals.

I had no idea we were playing 20 questions.

Yes. In order to truly be benevolent towards others, you must be content with yourself.

Ok, but that doesn't contradict Christian teachings. In fact I cant count how many times I've heard this from religious speakers.

Insecure people can feign benevolence towards others in order to alleviate their own internal insecurities. When people are internally insecure as a result of having devalued their inner being, they are bound to behave in a fashion problematic to society sooner or later. In summary, self-sacrifice is undesirable because it leads to self-depreciatory thought which is inseparable from pernicious action towards others. This is an inevitable outcome of an insecure individual seeking self-affirmation from others. For this reason we observe many political power struggles within religious organizations and between such organizations.

You seem to be addressing humility more than self-sacrifice. Certainly some people feign humility to cover up their insecurities, this issue has not been ignored by Christians.

Self-sacrifice is about giving up your own well-being in order to serve the cause of others. This is isn't specifically a Christian virtue, it's found in other contexts - namely military service. In fact Oriegin even compared Christ's self-sacrifice on the cross to that of King Leonidas' at Thermopylae.

Explain such a difference in futher detail.

Well an earthly entity is filled with flawed men. While the heavenly entity is not.

In Marxism we do what Mao says.

Technically that's Maoism, which is a variation of Marxism.

??????????

Sorry I forgot to mention it was in another thread:
http://www.typologycentral.com/forum...tml#post248138

Explain the connection between organized religion and spirituality.

What relevance does that have to what I argued? I was talking about the connection between religion and ideologies.

Explain the relationship between philosophy and religion? The two are irreconcilable because the former insists on constructing a worldview based only on one's independent critical thinking and the latter on as scrupulous adherence to an authority as possible.

There is a branch of philosophy called Philosophy of religion. So the argument that the two are irreconcilable is a rather odd one to make considering that the two have been interacting for well over 2000 years now.

Morever, religion and spirituality are incompatible because in order to truly be spiritual one needs to have an ethic that one's internal mindset is compatible with. Something that one truly believes in. Relgion merely insists on conformity to dictates.

At best this a simplistic false dicthomy you've set up here. Religion and spirituality are closely related, and in many ways cannot be seperated.

Is it the thing to do because he said it, or because it makes sense?

Does it even have to make sense if God saids so?

If he said murder is the thing to do, is it now virtuous?

The heart of culture consists in obedience to a set of dictates?

To an extent, yes. Even from a semantical POV, culture derives from cult - which of course means religious belief.

Of course there are certain religious beliefs that are hostile to culture, but that by no means all forms. As far as Christianity is concerned, Niebuhr certainly wrote one of the key studies on this issue, and identified three perspectives on this relationship: Christ against Culture, Christ as culture, and Christ above culture.

You're clearly insisting upon the perspective of Christ against Culture; wheras my perspective is that of Christ above Culture.

What does this have to do with Christianity?

Take a wild guess.

If a mailman invents a new kind of a bicycle, do we praise the mail delivering department for such ingenuity?

Well you certainly cant make the argument that the delivering department somehow retards ingenuity.

Religion is totalitarian by definition because it states this is how it is, and don't you dare question it.

At best you're describing certain forms of religion, but by no means all. Within Catholicism there's a long tradition of questioning of even basic doctrines, so that we can further understand them.

Some intellectuals may be discussing religious ideas, as for example, many secular scholars are fascinated with the sheer philosophical genius of St.Thomas Aquinas and as a result take interest in religious ideas. Yet they are not interested in observing the religious creed as this puts a strain on their inquiry because the religious creed insists on them ceasing to be inquisitive.

If religious creeds insist on ceasing to be inquisitive, then how the heck was it even possible for St. Thomas Aquinas to even write down his thoughts - and even be able to fascinate secular scholars to this very day? Not to mention, become the leading intellectual and theological voice of the Catholic Church for several generations?

And just for your information: many secular intellectuals maybe interested in Aquinas without observing the creed, many intellectuals are interested in observing the creed. Probably the most famous group to do so were the Neo-Thomists, and among them was Jacques Maritain.

Some scholars may falsely claim to be religious, yet their Christianity, Marxism or Islam is incompatible with the scriptural writings. This is because in their attempt to make sense of their creed, they significantly have altered its content.

Yes this is a common version of No true Scotsman atheists use when confronted with evidence of intelligent theists. Yeah they were theists, but they weren't really theists.

As far as being incompatible with scriptural writings is concerned, that heavily depends on what perspective you take towards it. You seem to insist upon a literalist perspective, which goes quite contrary to much of the Christian tradition. Christianity grew out of Hellenic Judaism, which relied upon a more allegorical interpretation of scriptures.

Not to mention within the first century the appearance of texts like the Epistle of Barnabas, which argued that those who take scriptures literally are dupes of the Devil.

The bottom line is, religion is incompatible with critical thinking because it insists on acceptance of instructions by default.

Unless you take the view that critical thinking is key to further understanding God, and that has always been a key component of the Christian tradition.

Growth of civilization is impossible because of this as such a regime precludes new ideas from being propounded.

That's literallyhard to argue considering the historical record, as I just gave some examples above. Let's not forget that the notion of the predominance of logic within philosophical inquiry is a legacy of late Medieval scholasticism.

Religious thinkers who have propounded ideas behaved in a decidedly irreligious fashion.

What exactly do you mean by this? Religious thinkers are actually secretly irreligious?

[SolitaryWalker]

As a religious philosopher, I would amend your definition of religion. I understand your definition and why you give it, but, again, I think your definition is too narrow. I think a more general definition can be given: Religion is an ordered set of beliefs that is used to interpret experience.

Why?

Because... all people give meaning to their experience; theism and atheism are formally paired concepts in that both are used in the same way to interpret experience.

Under this definition, what exactly is not religion? As all of science, mythology, philosophy you name it, try to interpret their experiences.

Essentially my definition of religion is meant to depict what we traditionally refer to as religion, where worldviews such as Islam, Christianity and Buddhism are traditionally regarded as religious. I ask, why such views are the quintissence of religion.

[01011010]

Religion's task is to give one meaning in life by answering the biggest questions of cosmology.

Precisely.

The masses need direction because they are unable to think for themselves.

[SolitaryWalker]

I was aware of his excommunication and his unconventional religious beliefs. ?

His views are not religious because they lack the fourth property, namely that of acceptance of axioms of the view on authority.

I was addressing your argument that religion is merely for savages who can't think for themselves. The fact that many brilliant thinkers down the generations and even to the present day were religious alone undermines that assertion. ?

Savages rely on religion for a worldview. Those thinkers did not, they relied on their own thinking, religion was but an unnecessary burden for them imposed upon them purely incidentally. They were religious as a result of errors of thought they incurred due to the kind of education and culture that was ingrained upon them.

If they were able to extricate themselves from such biases, they would renounce their religion upon the realization of the implausibility of such views.

No they are not. Ideologies as we know them today didn't even exist untill the French Revolution. ?

Ideology need not be complex as they are today, it is merely a guide of political and social behavior for people to abide by. They have existed ever since people functioned in a group, as obviously they always needed to organize their activities.

So ethics and ideologies are one and the same? This is a rather odd argument to make. ?

No. The difference between ideology oriented ethics and non-ideology oriented ethics is as follows.

Ethics of Spinoza for example are primarily concerned with the welfare of the individual. Or the ethics of the individual. The latter kind of ethics are concerned with how the individual is to behave in a political and social context and exhort him to behave in such a fashion, rather than merely informing as is the case with the former.

Perhaps you could specify what political implications you're talking about here, and what Testament too. I'm well aware that St. Paul calls upon Christians to be good citizens, but nowhere that Im aware does he express belief in a particular form of government. ?

All the religious wars that were fought in the name of the holy text?

That's one key difference between Christianity and Islam. ?

No, not really. Modern Christianity is different from Islam because it was heavily influenced by the Western Culture which values independency of thought and action. However, this contradicts the explicit instructions of the holy text. Consider the ruling of John Calvin in Geneva as a Christian parallel to the contemporary Islamic fundamentalists.

Instructions on how to live is only one aspect of religion. How to see the world is another important component. Gk Chesterton once compared religious dogma to a fence around a playground - you can play any number of games, just stay within the fence. ?

Religion in itself offers a very short leash. The fence encompasses a very small area. Philosophers have opposed the teaching of the religion in order to become more inquisitive, yet in order to stay religious they were forced to allow for sanctions to be imposed upon them. The bottom line is religion imposes sanctions on one's thought.

That's because the goal of scriptures is to teach salvation. However, let's also take into account that St. Paul makes references to Greek philosophy several times. ?

Whats salvation? What does making referrences to philosophy have to do with endorsing philosophical thought?

Plus let's also take into account that scriptures is not the only religious literature out there.?

Scripture is the cornerstone of religious literature as it is the description of what a religion is like and how it ought to be observed. All else is irrelevant, unless it is meant to reinforce and clarify the writings within the scripture.

There's a whole canon of writings by the Church fathers, which do go into numerous philosophical issues. The connection between the Christian faith and the Greek philosophical tradition go very deep. In fact Christianity's very understanding of faith and scriptures derived from the Jewish tradition most heavily influenced by Greek philosophy. .?

[]Some idea of Greek thought may be there, yet the most important aspect is missing, namely that of the will to honestly question all things, as opposed to seeking knowledge merely to reaffirm the religious prejudice.

Dare I ask where you got this assestment from? .?

I had no idea we were playing 20 questions.




Ok, but that doesn't contradict Christian teachings. In fact I cant count how many times I've heard this from religious speakers.

You seem to be addressing humility more than self-sacrifice. Certainly some people feign humility to cover up their insecurities, this issue has not been ignored by Christians. .?

Christians preach the message explicitly. You are rotten. Only God is good. Man is dead in his sins. Submit, you wicked sinner. The purpose of this mentality is to teach man to devalue his inner being so he may be more docile to the will of authority.

Self-sacrifice is about giving up your own well-being in order to serve the cause of others. This is isn't specifically a Christian virtue, it's found in other contexts - namely military service. In fact Oriegin even compared Christ's self-sacrifice on the cross to that of King Leonidas' at Thermopylae. .?

Service others, if not preceeded by acquisition of inner psychological soundness entails profoundly deleterious consequences described above, which are to be incurred due to the inner insecurity of the individual.

Well an earthly entity is filled with flawed men. While the heavenly entity is not..?

What is a heavenly entity?

What relevance does that have to what I argued? I was talking about the connection between religion and ideologies. ..?

See the earlier description of an idealogy oriented ethic.

At best this a simplistic false dicthomy you've set up here. Religion and spirituality are closely related, and in many ways cannot be seperated. ..?

Number one, what is a religion? If you do not accept my definition, propound your own.

Number 2 what is spirituality. If you do not accept my definition, propound your own. Explain how they relate.

Does it even have to make sense if God saids so?..?

Yes, because if the argument is only that God said so, it in itself has no ethical worth. The purpose of ethics is to acquire happiness. Otherwise there is simply no use of ethics.

What is 'right'. In ethics one may say, what leads to a good of some kind. In science, what is 'true'. Yet in theology, if it is what God said, what grounds are there for calling it 'right'. It is mere moral nihilism.















Take a wild guess.

Well you certainly cant make the argument that the delivering department somehow retards ingenuity. ?..?

....
Religion insists on obedience to the written laws. Ingenuity requires question what is written freely. The two are irreconcilable.

At best you're describing certain forms of religion, but by no means all. Within Catholicism there's a long tradition of questioning of even basic doctrines, so that we can further understand them. ?..?

Very irreligious. Those are rebels against Conventional religious thought.

If religious creeds insist on ceasing to be inquisitive, then how the heck was it even possible for St. Thomas Aquinas to even write down his thoughts - and even be able to fascinate secular scholars to this very day? Not to mention, become the leading intellectual and theological voice of the Catholic Church for several generations? ?..?

Rebels.

As far as being incompatible with scriptural writings is concerned, that heavily depends on what perspective you take towards it. You seem to insist upon a literalist perspective, which goes quite contrary to much of the Christian tradition. Christianity grew out of Hellenic Judaism, which relied upon a more allegorical interpretation of scriptures. ?..?

Non-literalist perspective is not an accurate interpretation of the word. Which is why we have thousands of incompatible interpretations of what is written.

That's literallyhard to argue considering the historical record, as I just gave some examples above. Let's not forget that the notion of the predominance of logic within philosophical inquiry is a legacy of late Medieval scholasticism. ?

??????

I do not get what relevance all your anecdotes have to this.

What exactly do you mean by this? Religious thinkers are actually secretly irreligious?

Obviously.

[babelfish]

This is the most interesting and radical part of Jaynes' work.

He claims the voice of god was heard literally.

He thinks the brain was literally bicameral so that when one part of the camera spoke, the other part heard this as a literal voice.

It was not an inner voice but an outer voice.

And that when the bicamerality broke down, the voice was no longer heard. Except in pathological cases such as schizophrenia.

"If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic."

Thomas Szaz maintained that while people behave and think in ways that are very disturbing, this does not mean they have a disease. To Szasz, people with mental illness have a "fake disease," and these "scientific categories" are in fact used for power controls. Schizophrenia is "the sacred symbol of psychiatry" and, according to Szasz, simply does not exist. To be a true disease, the entity must somehow be capable of being approached, measured, or tested in scientific fashion. According to Szasz, disease must be found on the autopsy table and meet pathological definition instead of being voted into existence by members of the American Psychiatric Association. Mental illnesses are "like a" disease, argues Szasz, putting mental illness in a semantic metaphorical language arts category. Psychiatry is a pseudo-science that parodies medicine by using medical sounding words invented over the last 100 years. To be clear, heart break and heart attack belong to two completely different categories. Psychiatrists are but "soul doctors", the successors of priests, who deal with the spiritual "problems in living" that have troubled people forever. Psychiatry, through various Mental Health Acts has become the secular state religion. It is a social control system, which disguises itself under the claims of scientificity. The notion that biological psychiatry is a real science or a genuine branch of medicine has been challenged by other critics as well, such as Michel Foucault in "Madness and Civilization."

State government by enforcing the use of shock therapy has abused Psychiatry with impunity according to Szaz. If we accept that "mental illness" is a euphemism for behaviors that are disapproved of, then the state has no right to force psychiatric "treatment" on these individuals. Similarly, the state should not be able to interfere in mental health practices between consenting adults (for example, by legally controlling the supply of psychotropic drugs or psychiatric medication). The medicalization of government produces a "therapeutic state," designating someone as "insane" or as a "drug addict". In "Ceremonial Chemistry" (1973), he argued that the same persecution which has targeted Witches, Jews, Gypsies or homosexuals now targets "drug addicts" and "insane" people. Szasz argued that all these categories of people were taken as scapegoats of the community in ritual ceremonies.

To underscore this continuation of religion through medicine, he even takes as example obesity: instead of concentrating on junk food (ill-nutrition), physicians denounced hypernutrition. According to Szasz, despite their scientific appearance, the diets imposed were a moral substitute to the former fasts, and the social injunction not to be overweight is to be considered as a moral order, not as a scientific advice as it claims to be. As with those thought bad (insane people), those who took the wrong drugs (drug-addicts), medicine created a category for those who had the wrong weight (obeses). Szasz argued that psychiatrics were created in the 17th century to study and control those who erred from the medical norms of social behavior; a new specialization, "drogophobia", was created in the 20th century to study and control those who erred from the medical norms of drug consumption; and then, in the 1960s, another specialization, "bariatrics", was created to deal with those who erred from the medical norms concerning the weight which the body should have. Thus, he underscores that in 1970, the American Society of Bariatic Physicians (from the Greek baros, weight) had 30 members, and already 450 two years later.

Drug addiction is not a "disease" to be cured through legal drugs (Methadone instead of heroin; which forgets that heroin was created in the first place to be a substitute to opium), but a social "habit". Szasz also argues in favor of a drugs free-market. He criticized the "war on drugs", arguing that using drugs was in fact a victimless crime. Prohibition itself constituted the crime. He shows how the "war on drugs" lead states to do things that would have never been considered half a century before, such as prohibiting a person from ingesting certain substances or interfering in other countries to impede the production of certain plants (e.g. coca eradication plans, or the campaigns against opium; both are traditional plants opposed by the Western world). Although Szasz is skeptical about the merits of psychotropic medications, he favors the repeal of drug prohibition. "Because we have a free market in food, we can buy all the bacon, eggs, and ice cream we want and can afford. If we had a free market in drugs, we could similarly buy all the barbiturates, chloral hydrate, and morphine we want and could afford."

Szasz argued that the prohibition and other legal restrictions on drugs are enforced not because of their lethality, but in a ritualistic aim. He also recalls that pharmakos, the Greek root of pharmacology, originally meant "scapegoat." Szasz dubbed pharmacology "pharmacomythology" because of its inclusion of social practices in its studies, in particular through the inclusion of the category of "addictiveness" in its programs. "Addictiveness" is a social category, argued Szasz, and the use of drugs should be apprehended as a social ritual rather than exclusively as the act of ingesting a chemical substance. There are many ways of ingesting a chemical substance, or "drug" (which comes from pharmakos), just as there are many different cultural ways of eating or drinking. Thus, some cultures prohibit certain types of substances, which they call "taboo", while they make use of others in various types of ceremonies.

[babelfish]

Similarly, psychiatrists R. D. Laing, Silvano Arieti, Theodore Lidz and Colin Ross have argued that the symptoms of what is called mental illness are comprehensible reactions to impossible demands that society and particularly family life places on some sensitive individuals. Laing, Arieti, Lidz and Ross were notable in valuing the content of psychotic experience as worthy of interpretation, rather than considering it simply as a secondary and essentially meaningless marker of underlying psychological or neurological distress. Laing described 11 case studies of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and argued that the content of their actions and statements was meaningful and logical in the context of their family and life situations. In 1956, Palo Alto, Gregory Bateson and his colleagues Paul Watzlawick, Donald Jackson, and Jay Haley articulated a theory of schizophrenia, related to Laing's work, as stemming from double bind situations where a person receives different or contradictory messages. Madness was therefore an expression of this distress and should be valued as a cathartic and transformative experience. In the books "Schizophrenia" and the "Family and The Origin and Treatment of Schizophrenic Disorders" Lidz and his colleagues explain their belief that parental behavior can result in mental illness in children. Arieti's "Interpretation of Schizophrenia" won the 1975 scientific National Book Award in the United States.

The concept of schizophrenia as a result of civilization has been developed further by psychologist Julian Jaynes in his 1976 book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"; he proposed that until the beginning of historic times, schizophrenia or a similar condition was the normal state of human consciousness. This would take the form of a "bicameral mind" where a normal state of low affect, suitable for routine activities, would be interrupted in moments of crisis by "mysterious voices" giving instructions, which early people characterized as interventions from the gods. Researchers into shamanism have speculated that in some cultures schizophrenia or related conditions may predispose an individual to becoming a shaman; the experience of having access to multiple realities is not uncommon in schizophrenia, and is a core experience in many shamanic traditions.

Equally, the shaman may have the skill to bring on and direct some of the altered states of consciousness psychiatrists label as illness. Psychohistorians, on the other hand, accept the psychiatric diagnoses. However, unlike the current medical model of mental disorders they argue that poor parenting in tribal societies causes the shaman's schizoid personalities. Speculation regarding primary and important religious figures as having schizophrenia abound. Commentators such as Paul Kurtz and others have endorsed the idea that major religious figures experienced psychosis, heard voices and displayed delusions of grandeur. Psychiatrist Tim Crow has argued that schizophrenia may be the evolutionary price we pay for a left brain hemisphere specialization for language. Since psychosis is associated with greater levels of right brain hemisphere activation and a reduction in the usual left brain hemisphere dominance, our language abilities may have evolved at the cost of causing schizophrenia when this system breaks down.

[Mole]

Similarly, psychiatrists R. D. Laing, Silvano Arieti, Theodore Lidz and Colin Ross have argued that the symptoms of what is called mental illness are comprehensible reactions to impossible demands that society and particularly family life places on some sensitive individuals. Laing, Arieti, Lidz and Ross were notable in valuing the content of psychotic experience as worthy of interpretation, rather than considering it simply as a secondary and essentially meaningless marker of underlying psychological or neurological distress. Laing described 11 case studies of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and argued that the content of their actions and statements was meaningful and logical in the context of their family and life situations. In 1956, Palo Alto, Gregory Bateson and his colleagues Paul Watzlawick, Donald Jackson, and Jay Haley articulated a theory of schizophrenia, related to Laing's work, as stemming from double bind situations where a person receives different or contradictory messages. Madness was therefore an expression of this distress and should be valued as a cathartic and transformative experience. In the books "Schizophrenia" and the "Family and The Origin and Treatment of Schizophrenic Disorders" Lidz and his colleagues explain their belief that parental behavior can result in mental illness in children. Arieti's "Interpretation of Schizophrenia" won the 1975 scientific National Book Award in the United States.

The concept of schizophrenia as a result of civilization has been developed further by psychologist Julian Jaynes in his 1976 book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"; he proposed that until the beginning of historic times, schizophrenia or a similar condition was the normal state of human consciousness. This would take the form of a "bicameral mind" where a normal state of low affect, suitable for routine activities, would be interrupted in moments of crisis by "mysterious voices" giving instructions, which early people characterized as interventions from the gods. Researchers into shamanism have speculated that in some cultures schizophrenia or related conditions may predispose an individual to becoming a shaman; the experience of having access to multiple realities is not uncommon in schizophrenia, and is a core experience in many shamanic traditions.

Equally, the shaman may have the skill to bring on and direct some of the altered states of consciousness psychiatrists label as illness. Psychohistorians, on the other hand, accept the psychiatric diagnoses. However, unlike the current medical model of mental disorders they argue that poor parenting in tribal societies causes the shaman's schizoid personalities. Speculation regarding primary and important religious figures as having schizophrenia abound. Commentators such as Paul Kurtz and others have endorsed the idea that major religious figures experienced psychosis, heard voices and displayed delusions of grandeur. Psychiatrist Tim Crow has argued that schizophrenia may be the evolutionary price we pay for a left brain hemisphere specialization for language. Since psychosis is associated with greater levels of right brain hemisphere activation and a reduction in the usual left brain hemisphere dominance, our language abilities may have evolved at the cost of causing schizophrenia when this system breaks down.

I find it interesting you published this and the previous post on MBTI Central.

But I was wondering whether they are quotations and what is their source?

With thanks.
Victor.

[mlittrell]

holy crap long posts

i might have posted this before

quick summation of why religion according to the temperaments (only from what i noticed, so this may not be valid)

SJs -> like the community aspect and the social structure
SPs -> along for the ride
NTs -> ? lol
NFs -> the spiritual aspect and maybe the community aspect

[m a r r o k]

The concept of schizophrenia as a result of civilization has been developed further by psychologist Julian Jaynes in his 1976 book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"; he proposed that until the beginning of historic times, schizophrenia or a similar condition was the normal state of human consciousness. This would take the form of a "bicameral mind" where a normal state of low affect, suitable for routine activities, would be interrupted in moments of crisis by "mysterious voices" giving instructions, which early people characterized as interventions from the gods. [...]

Can you expand a bit?