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

[Stanton Moore]

.. 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.

Can you stop masturbating in public? The high pitched whine of your ego inflating is grating on my ears.

 

[EcK]

I believe that there is a great vacuous, omniscient Vagina in the sky, watching us, waiting to suck us in its vortex.

i mentioned loving you, right?

 

[EcK]

Can you stop masturbating in public? The high pitched whine of your ego inflating is grating on my ears.

you're being emotional.

 

[Stanton Moore]

you're being emotional.

I am? Oh. Thank you. I need that from a blowhard like you to keep me straight. I'll try to be more rational (read: condescending asshole) like you.

And you're right. Religion is a mental illness, just as self-aggrandizement. Can you please delineate what exactly you get personally from this thread? Please don't say your looking for the 'truth'...that's getting so tired. try to look at the real motivation...it's in there! I know it is!

(eagerly awaiting your rational reply!~)

Please read the above with all emotion drained from your voice. I'm trying to give you an unemotional response.

 

[SillySapienne]

I believe that Tuesdays are holy days, and that the goat herder's wife with the red scarf should be sacrificed to the Great God Hunan.

*does whirling Dervish dance*

 

[SillySapienne]

The god worshipers are watching you.

 

[Feops]

If you talk to God, you're normal.
If God talks to you, you're crazy.

Right?

 

[Wonkavision]

I knew one person who honestly believed that their poo was pushed out their butt by tiny itallian men with brooms for some reason...

:yim_rolling_on_the_

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Yes! Religious people are nuts!

So are air-breathing people!

Not to mention everyone who walk on two feet!

No further proof is required. They're nuts!

Kidding away, if this were a thread about any other topic, we'd go this way:

"there's this evidence for this and this evidence for this, so I'm inclined to see the whole thing this way."

but then, ahh, mr. Copernicus was harassed by religious people 400 years ago, so now we scientific people have our revenge at those terrible religious people. We know there's only one of the kind of religious people. That is, people who have religion. So, us science-people go against religious nutcases, that is, people who 400 years ago denied sun being the center of the solar system. They and their spiritual descendents.

Us science-people feel we have the right to carry on a grudge 400 years after and "emancipate" ourselves from the evils of religion as of the year 2009.

That's why us science-people can say anything the f*ck we want without consequences, without burden of proof, without the need to conform to usual rules of discussion, because F*CK, those RELIGOUS PEOPLE HARASSED MR. COPERNICUS!! THAT'S WHY US SCIENCE FOLKS ARE WEREY WERY ANGRY! BWAAAH! CRY!!!

Carry on.

This has been a bloody attempt at sarcasm and farce.

 

[paperoceans]

I personally think one does not relate with the other... generally.

 

[Oom]

Relating religion to mental illness is a bit flawed. A person can be immediately cured of religion (falling from grace and whatnot), and fall into religion (finding god!), but some mental illnesses go untreated. Religion is a choice, mental illness is not. There are too many holes in this discussion to count.

 

[EcK]

I personally think one does not relate with the other... generally.

one what ?
as far as religion goes well, it's a text book case of mass delusion. Most arguing is social conditioning etc.

If it's science and the 'metaphysical'. Somehow nobody ever observes any effect, yet people believe their god acts on the universe, so it should obviously be relevant for the physical universe and so science, which is based on the observation of that same universe.
If a god doesn't interact with our physical world, then well, it's just irrelevant, and anyway anybody claiming knowledge of such a being would just be making a random claim that would happen to be 'true' somewhere in the metaverse. And I'm not even sure 'truth' is a term that fits objects that don't interact with us or our universe.

But that's all very obvious.

 

[EcK]

Relating religion to mental illness is a bit flawed. A person can be immediately cured of religion (falling from grace and whatnot), and fall into religion (finding god!), but some mental illnesses go untreated. Religion is a choice, mental illness is not. There are too many holes in this discussion to count.

The definition of illness has nothing to do with the ways to cure it or difficulties to cure it. Take that for a hole, cheese boy. And if you think people easily give up their religions or any hardened belief be it religious or its opposite, well, i'm not sure you've ever seen a 'true believer'.

 

[Argus]

There are just as many religious atheists as there are Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Protestants and "Spiritual" Oprah-ists .

I see the same psychotic lay throughout all of them. Then again, there are also some very sane and thoughtful people in all "religions".

 

[EcK]

Oh and to answer dunno whose question, I hoped to start an interesting discussion + maybe amuse myself some instead of arguing about obvious points and hearing the usual 'but society taught me to respect ppl if they put a 'religion' stamp on whatever they do or say'.

Or 'some religious people are very sane'. Well duh, the issue is the trends of such groups (and groups in general) are heavily influenced by those one hears the most, so the extremists. + seriously, what sort of argument is that. Tell me about memes or something and how information considered as a social norme spreads to different kinds of people. Tell me why ,if 'metaphysical experiences' are supposed to be based in something else than 'the body' all these 'religious facts' are somehow either excessively elusive or testable in a lab and explainable like out of body experiences and others.

Or people who just can't think and are apparently proud of it or think that if somebody dares to use 'complicated words' it means they're bragging, because obviously information always comes in preschool formated packages.

So apparently i didn't get any occasion to start about biological anthropology, the brain/sensory feed back loop role in the biosphere's history. The evolution of the human brain and some of the externalities caused. philosophy, philosophy of science, defining what the scientific method is and why most people only seem to see the 'science' stamp instead of actually trying to understand what its about etc etc etc.

 

[EcK]

Or your tendency for animism and how our consciousness makes the notion of non willed original causality disturbing and its opposite tempting. How if we see somebody slip on the floor when entering a room we'll tend to consider some personnal character to be responsible first (clumsiness etc) rather than checking if the floor hadn't just been waxed.

Paganism, the desire for human beings to control/influence the elements.

 

[EcK]

the Nietzchean will to power(i know it's post mortem and from notes but well) , the emotion of fear, the competitive nature of life and how it related to how an apersonnal inhuman universe is not a view some people want to live with, the alternative views. How people will either consider a godless universe a freeing concept while some will think the opposite. The links with upbringing and family structures.
Freud, erikson and developmental psychology...
the sheer beauty and joy of trying to grasp the complexity of life, the universe and everything ()

 

[EcK]

a kid looking at the sky and wondering what's up there.

The blindfolding of consciousness.

That's what I wanted this thread to be about, my sincerest apologies for assuming those were points worth talking about, instead arguing about the definition of words. Because really, I'm feeling sorry right now. So yes, I'm an entp, I like to argue, sue me.

fuck, let's just make it my blog or something.

 

[LEGERdeMAIN]

When I was working the cash register at a burger joint during hs, we had an on-again/off-again bogo special on chicken sandwiches....after adding a medium drink, the total ended up being $6.66.

I lost count of how many people would buy something extra just so the total wouldn't be equivalent to the "sign of the devil"("number of the beast", "SATAN!"). People seriously bought food that they had originally not wanted in order to pay an amount that was greater or less than 6.66. OH, and the lectures....."You know what that number means, right?" "No" "It means THE DEVIL" "wha-???....Noooooooo"

There were plenty of people who either: ignored it and paid, joked about it and paid, freaked out and paid more. I think this anecdote pretty much sums up the three human religious food groups: Oblivious, Practical, Retardedly Superstitious.

No offense.

 

[Grayscale]

It is not a rational mistake to see everything as coming from divine origins or from chaotic chance

However, it is a rational mistake to speculate about divine possibilities on the basis of human tendencies, lapses in judgement, or [what you perceive to be] ignorance.

I have met lots of people with spiritual beliefs who are not well versed in logic, but I have also met nearly as many people like yourself who cannot see the fallacy caused by their own bias--such people prize intelligence, desire to be viewed as and to view themselves as intelligent, and would not pass up an opportunity to say, "I am intelligent, you are not, you have spiritual beliefs and I do not, therefore spirituality is for the unintelligent".

What is more foolish, to know what is not or cannot be known, or to pretend to know everything?