joedad

I know it is a bit of a digression but I’m confused by your response.

Are you or are you not asserting that lack of religious belief leads to the atrocities you mention?

fjripit

My observations of religious people, and of people generally as well, is that healthy skepticism, intellectual curiosity, and critical thinking are skills and traits that are not used, or developed, as much as they should be. Rather, it seems that there is sort of a path of least resistance that many people take as they are buffeted by the events and cultural dictates that they happen to be involved with, indoctrinated to, or grew up with.

In other words, is seems that it is easier, or more convenient, for most people to simply go along to get along - i.e. sheeple as someone else on this forum calls them.

The afore mentioned traits that thinking people actively employ to advance their understanding of the world is hard work that, for most, appears not to be worth the effort.

Oxymoron

No. Mental illness is characterised not by having odd dreams, but by being unable to distinguish these dreams from reality.

An "abnormality" in the brain or the mind. Of course, what is normal? Most well-adjusted people get depressed from time to time. Sometimes it's chemical; sometimes it's because the way they represent the world in their heads conflicts with the way the world actually is; sometimes it's a natural reaction to events beyond our control.

I suggest that religion is indeed a mental illness: a reaction to a world in which the death of ourselves and those we care for is utterly certain, in which (apparent) cruelty is commonplace, and in which our place is unclear. There seems little difference between the faith that (say) Jesus Is Alive, and that a child's Invisible Friend is real. And just as the latter does an individual no favours if persisted over several years, so does the former.

Is a tendency of certain people. It's certainly true that the majority of people on the planet have some kind of religious belief. This is no way stops it from being a disease. If 51% of the population had a cold, would a cold cease to be an illness? How about 91%? Nope, still a condition better to not have than to have. Sheer force of numbers does not change the deal.

Jagella

OK, fine. Can you now make a case that irreligion led to the social problems these nations may have experienced?

I don’t remember mentioning “the state�? in my theories regarding religion. However, when people like Charles Manson read the Bible and interpret it to mean that a race war will soon ensue and to commit murder to start this war, or people like Andrea Yates murder children to keep them from being damned to hell, then religion is indeed a mental illness that that needs to be treated.

Jagella

jdlongmire

...exactly...

Jagella

I believe it is more appropriate to refer to these regimes as communist or Marxist-Leninist. Atheism is merely a peripheral issue in these governments. Of all the theists I’m familiar with who try to make the case that atheism somehow leads to the abuses of these dictatorships, I have yet to see one example of a good case. Could it be that theists are hoping for a cheap rhetorical victory?

Nevertheless, Stalin is often brought up as an example of a cruel, genocidal atheist, and his actions are very similar to the genocidal tendencies of the Christian kings and popes of the past. How can this similarity be explained? Did Stalin’s atheism lead him to these crimes? According to what I read in Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, Stalin’s mind may very well been set while he attended a Christian seminary!

Jagella

joedad

I think they are hoping for a cheap rhetorical victory.

Be it Russia or Germany or some other example, how exactly did this alleged morphing from theism to atheism occur? If religion is the supposed fix, and superior, and stronger, and in place, how does it get unfixed and displaced? What exactly is the theistic point of the argument?

If you blame Satan, you’re blaming theism for its own demise. If you somehow blame atheism, you’re calling theism weak. These examples of atheism causing genocide are just plain silly and at best poorly conceived. They just don’t hold up.

Marduk

“Can you explain then why many theists get so angry when the opinion as to God’s nonexistence is expressed by an atheist? Is that anger a result of painful doubt or is it because the theist thinks that the atheist is lying or wrong?�?

I never encountered anyone who was angered by someone expressing their opinion that they did not believe in God, I can see someone getting angry when being ‘told’ there is no God by someone not in any position to actually know. This anger would not be from doubt or even from
the theist thinking the atheist is lying, but rather being annoyingly presumptuous.

The whole point of bringing up the Soviet Union is not because anyone is saying atheism causes atrocities but that trying to suppress an idea, in this case religion, causes atrocities. I wouldn’t want to live under a religious Taliban any more than an atheist thought control police state.

IvanJames

I couldn't agree more. The real problems occur when a government tries to force everyone to believe the same thing. This works for theists (think Plymouth Colony, nazi Germany ["God With Us" was actually stamped on the army's belt buckles], the English Civil War) as well as for the atheistic examples written above. When the motive is uniformity of thought, you're just plain in for trouble.

As to weather religion is a "mental illness" or not, i think we're overlooking a very important distinction: choice. Someone who is mentally ill has no choice in their distorted thought process. A religious person might actually get "better" through simple reasoning rather than through actual cognitive therapy. Just my 2 cents.

---Ivan James

Jagella

The “morphing from theism to atheism�? occurs because people become fed up with the abuses of Christian and other dictatorships—a fact that theists invariably leave out of their arguments.

Blaming Satan portrays the Christian god as a fool for creating his own enemy. To blame atheism is admitting that atheism sometimes beats theism.

Jagella