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

[EcK]

Well, I don't know, it just seems, pretty obvious.

The fact that so much people seem to be striken with worrying delusions which seem not to fit with the observable universe, resistance to negative evidence such as the lack of any observable effect of prayers...

Actually, "Temporal Lobe Epilepsy disorder" can turn people extremely religious and practice of religious chants or prayer reduces the frontal lob activity, which in turn augments temporal lobe activity.

Well there's much to tell, but i'm a bit lazy right now.

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.
I don't understand the apparent immunity religious beliefs get when they after all fit all the basic symptoms of a pathological illness using our brains architecture to spread through cultural endoctrination in the form of a complex Meme.

 

[erm]

It really depends on the religion.

 

[EcK]

It really depends on the religion.

Well, not if they all use common brain structures and specific wirings as a mean to propagate.

 

[erm]

Well, not if they all use common brain structures as a mean to propagate.

The truth does that too.

It'll have to be specifics. Filtering the crazy from the sane. I don't think generalisations work here.

 

[EcK]

The truth does that too.

So, you argue that a guy saying that he knows there's a blue elephant drinking a soda on mars and called bob even though he never saw it would be the same thing than a guy observing that there's a cloud in the sky and having everybody else agree because both information are processed by the brain?

 

[Haphazard]

Doesn't the fact that people have been like this for a very very long time and that we've only recently begun to change it suggest that this is a more natural state for people to be in than a 'rational' one?

 

[erm]

So, you argue that a guy saying that he knows there's a blue elephant drinking a soda on mars and called bob even though he never saw it would be the same thing than a guy observing that there's a cloud in the sky and having everybody else agree because both information are processed by the brain?

Both use common brain structures to propagate. They are both memes.

Besides, religious and non-religious alike are part of the cloud example you write. What many religious people are guilty of, non-religious are as well. Obvious, but it shows how it's just the same old debate.

 

[EcK]

It'll have to be specifics. Filtering the crazy from the sane. I don't think generalisations work here.

It's cheating if you add text after I answered.
Well, all you've been using are generalisations.

On the one hand, nobody ever could satisfyingly prove any supernatural phenomena and every serious study realised in controlled environnements have failed.
On the other hand scientists can make people feel like there's a 'presence', and live strong religious revelations by applying electric current to the temporal lobe. Some genes can also make people more susceptible to religious belief, there's an iq correlation, and higher iq is correlated with healthy brain developpement in children and foetuses, atheists have a higher average iq than believers. and so on

 

[EcK]

Both use common brain structures to propagate. They are both memes.

Besides, religious and non-religious alike are part of the cloud example you write. What many religious people are guilty of, non-religious are as well. Obvious, but it shows how it's just the same old debate.

.. COULD YOU STOP USING VAGUE AND BARELY DEFENDABLE GENERALISATIONS

thank you
I gave a few specific examples, all you did was to use supervenience and say that 'both are ideas'. Well, a fly and a man are both animals, yet we don't usually consider them to be the same just because they are both dna based multicellular systems.

Everything always has commonalities since we seem to live in a UNIVERSE, it doesn't mean they're relevant without some sort of explanation.

 

[erm]

It's cheating if you add text after I answered.
Well, all you've been using are generalisations.

I didn't add it after you had answered. It was an edit though.

You too have used generalisations.

On the one hand, nobody ever could satisfyingly prove any supernatural phenomena and every serious study realised in controlled environnements have failed.

Not true. "Supernatural" is a silly term to use, as anything that happens is natural.

Gravity was "supernatural" at one point in time. A force with infinite range was seen as absurd. It has been proven, to a degree at least.

Yes, a lot of religious beliefs have been disproven. Most have not, however. A lot of atheistic beliefs have been disproven, also.

On the other hand scientists can make people feel like there's a 'presence', and live strong religious revelations by applying electric current to the temporal lobe. Some genes can also make people more susceptible to religious belief, there's an iq correlation, and higher iq is correlated with healthy brain developpement in children and foetuses, atheists have a higher average iq than believers. and so on

What do those experiments prove, do you think?

Healthy, High IQ. All vague things. I'm sure I don't need to state some of the absurdities with IQ, nor with many atheistic beliefs.

Keep in mind most religions are not like the Abrahamic ones, which are what the majority of these experiments are performed on.

I gave a few specific examples, all you did was to use supervenience and say that 'both are ideas'. Well, a fly and a man are both animals, yet we don't usually consider them to be the same just because they are both dna based multicellular systems.

All I said was that both are memes. All you said was that one was a meme. I was trying to show how useless that point was. Since the truth is a meme as well, it doesn't differentiate between the true and the false.

 

[Totenkindly]

Why do you guys have to both have 3-letter usernames that begin with E?
...I'm feeling like I'm watching a dissociative personality argue with itself, ugh.

Tests (like IQ) test for a particular type of rationality, which is arbitrarily chosen based on the preferences of the designer. All you can say is that atheists think in a way that is more aligned with the priorities of the IQ test, not that they are "more sane" and others less.

.. COULD YOU STOP USING VAGUE AND BARELY DEFENDABLE GENERALISATIONS

uh, isn't that what you've done so far too in this particular thread?

I'm sure you've got more specific guns to bring out.

 

[EcK]

You too have used generalisations.

There's a qualitative difference between generalization and convenient use of far far fetched supervenient categorization.

Not true. "Supernatural" is a silly term to use, as anything that happens is natural.

Gravity was "supernatural" at one point in time. A force with infinite range was seen as absurd. It has been proven.

I used the term as it is used in the actual studies, I do not use the term myself except when I'm pretty sure the rethorical natural/supernatural schism can convey a basic idea of an unobserved set of rules in the universe that seem to be the focus of religious beliefs. The term is well accepted.

Healthy, High IQ. All vague things. I'm sure I don't need to state some of the absurdities with IQ, nor with many atheistic beliefs.

I stated factual correlations, not my undying love of iq tests. While you gave, again, a very vague opinion with no actual argument.

Keep in mind most religions are not like the Abrahamic ones, which are what the majority of these experiments are performed on.

I think that with nearly 4 billions followers, abrahamic religions could be considered as a good example of the actual world religions. :rolli:

 

[erm]

Obvious, but it shows how it's just the same old debate.

I'll clarify this to hopefully get my point across.

Dealing with brain chemistry and insanity is AD HOMINEM. It doesn't matter how someone came to get an idea, you still have to disprove the idea.

This is done through the "old debate". AKA, stating what you think is true and why.

This is why I asked you what you think Temporal Lobe experiments actually proved.

I think that with nearly 4 billions followers, abrahamic religions could be considered as a good example of the actual world religions. :rolli:

That simply isn't true. Stats may put Catholicism at 1.4 billion, but a lot of them are just from conformity on the consensus.

Try talking to a lot of Christians. You'll find some of them are so liberal about their beliefs, it becomes closer to Atheism than Fundamentalism.

I stated factual correlations, not my undying love of iq tests. While you gave, again, a very vague opinion with no actual argument.

And I refuted the significance of those correlations.

Healthy is nothing but a preferential term, and IQ simply refers to a certain kind of abstract thinking.

 

[EcK]

All I said was that both are memes. All you said was that one was a meme. I was trying to show how useless that point was. Since the truth is a meme as well, it doesn't differentiate between the true and the false.

Notions of true and false are for children, It's about what can be demonstrated to be congruent with the observable universe and what cannot. Religious beliefs certainly cannot. Yet alot of people seem to hold religious beliefs that are incompatible with the observed universe.
Such as the belief of exceptions in physical laws, called miracles, which were never actually observed by a 1st degree witness.
Do you call it sane when people believe prayer helps to cure people when no actual effected has been observed and that there's no significant change in the average amount of survivors. Actually, prayers tended to have a negative effect on heart patient apparently due to too high expectations.
So, basically, the only way to support prayer as helping to cure people, is to say that the divinity or force helping will kill a human for every saved one to keep the statistics in check.
That's just, pure madness

 

[garbage]

I think that with nearly 4 billions followers, abrahamic religions could be considered as a good example of the actual world religions. :rolli:

Any good test that claims to use the scientific method and to represent all religion would likely include other religions because of the nature of random sampling.

 

[EcK]

Any good test that claims to use the scientific method and to represent all religion would likely include other religions because of the nature of random sampling.

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?

 

[erm]

Notions of true and false are for children, It's about what can be demonstrated to be congruent with the observable universe and what cannot. Religious beliefs certainly cannot. Yet alot of people seem to hold religious beliefs that are incompatible with the observed universe.
Such as the belief of exceptions in physical laws, called miracles, which were never actually observed by a 1st degree witness.
Do you call it sane when people believe prayer helps to cure people when no actual effected has been observed and that there's no significant change in the average amount of survivors. Actually, prayers tended to have a negative effect on heart patient apparently due to too high expectations.
So, basically, the only way to support prayer as helping to cure people, is to say that the divinity or force helping will kill a human for every saved one to keep the statistics in check.
That's just, pure madness

The first two sentences are almost a contradiction.

The three bolded points:-

1. Generalisation. Not true of most religions, though maybe not most religious people.

2. Generalisation. That is not a lot/most people's definition of miracle.

3. How does that matter? Change in the number of survivors simply cannot be proven, as you would need the same scenario without prayer.

 

[EcK]

I'll clarify this to hopefully get my point across.

Dealing with brain chemistry and insanity is AD HOMINEM. It doesn't matter how someone came to get an idea, you still have to disprove the

This is done through the "old debate". AKA, stating what you think is true and why.

I'll explain to get my point accross, if you knew anything about rethorics you'd realise that one cannot disprove a religious belief, one can only say that in the lack of any observable evidence such a belief seems not to be based in the realm of likely explanations.

This is why I asked you what you think Temporal Lobe experiments actually proved.

The brain gets outputs from the environnement and if nothing in the environnement seem to be god like or tell them that for example the world was made in 7 days, or that the holy book is more real than Tolkien's Lord of the Rings THEN one has to wonder if it didn't come from the inner workings of the brain. And Indeed, apparently one can create religious experience/revelations with simple electric stimulations. Now what do we know about what created the brain, it seems to be a process of evolution of lifeforms in an environnement with limited ressources, and again, in this scenario, a good is never seem to be needed to explain anything.

 

[EcK]

The first two sentences are almost a contradiction.

The three bolded points:-

1. Generalisation. Not true of most religions, though maybe not most religious people.

You'll find that there's always variation in everything. Welcome in the real world.
And give your own definition, all you do is deny. I'm glad for most people if that's not how they see miracles, please, share your wisdom.

2. Generalisation. That is not a lot/most people's definition of miracle.

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

3. How does that matter? Change in the number of survivors simply cannot be proven, as you would need the same scenario without prayer.

Actually there's a multi million dollar study that weren't paid for by the church, i'll link later. Showed no significant different between people who were prayed for and people who weren't.

 

[erm]

I'll explain to get my point accross, if you knew anything about rethorics you'd realise that one cannot disprove a religious belief, one can only say that in the lack of any observable evidence such a belief seems not to be based in the realm of likely explanations.

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 )

Is there a giant pink unicorn infront of me now? No. Therefore it does not exist.

The same goes for many religions. Young earth creationism is one example of a disproven belief.

Belief that cannot be proven or disproven to any degree is neither true nor false. Like Taoism, most forms of Buddhism, lots of Hinduism, they are ways of viewing the Universe. The actual concrete statements they make, can and have been backed up. E.g. Meditation makes you peaceful. Gods and such that they speak of, aren't taken as literally as Fundamentalist Christianity.

The brain gets outputs from the environnement and if nothing in the environnement seem to be god like or tell them that for example the world was made in 7 days, or that the holy book is more real than Tolkien's Lord of the Rings THEN one has to wonder if it didn't come from the inner workings of the brain. And Indeed, apparently one can create religious experience/revelations with simple electric stimulations. Now what do we know about what created the brain, it seems to be a process of evolution of lifeforms in an environnement with limited ressources, and again, in this scenario, a good is never seem to be needed to explain anything.

You see? In the old debate that would be dismissed as a strawman. If you want to talk about young earth creationism, it would make a lot more sense.