TheBigKahoona

Not being able to give away large (uknown) sums of money to random people I meet on the internet is not destitution. Would 100$ suit you?

Lol good point. Maybe I am a hypocrite but there is no hypocrisy in respecting other individuals who aren't. I know people who HAVE given away large sums of money which has hurt them alot financially. You have argued that this is a sign of a mental problem they possess. I have argued that this is a sign that the person is a great guy. If you don't want to argue on the topic anymore with me then fine.

Personally, I have found most of our talk quite intersting. Adios :wave:

Marduk

“I thought atheists were banned from testifying in court because they were supposed to be immoral.�?

That was the early 20th century, my example was much older, 17th century. Anyway it is the whole point!
Religiosity or religion and ‘mental illness’ are all culturally based, created and defined. You could argue religion built culture or did culture build religion? If I were transported back in time a mere 50 years I’d no doubt be put away or at the very least branded an oddball, I would talk and dress funny and my attitude would be confusing to the people of the time, therefore I’d be branded ‘mentally ill’ the further back in time or the more foreign the culture the odder I’d seem, see the discussion over in the political section on “why should cockfighting be illegal in the USA�? Different things are immoral in different cultures.
Do people gravitate to religions and their accompanying dogma based on their personality traits? Maybe, Do people do the same when choosing a career, of course. Some will join the Army some will work in a floral shop. Does the Army cause aggression? Do floral shops create effeminacy? No, these things already exist. If someone has an OCD he would have it with or without religion. Religiosity is not a pathology, it is a creation of society, you can’t say someone is mentally ill for doing what s/he was brought up to do.
Like Christians snake handlers, yes there is a passage that says Christians can do this without being harmed, but it is not a requirement of being a Christian and is practiced by very few Churches, most in Tennessee (I think that is the right state) it is a weird cultural thing in certain areas, not a common practice.

Jagella

I believe some of the same arguments you are making to say that psychopathology isn’t real can also be said to invalidate much of modern chemistry. At one time the forerunners of today’s chemists practiced alchemy. Does such a fact mean that chemistry has no objective truth to it? Science, like anything else, evolves. As a result, some of the older theories will be modified to fit the newer evidence. In some cases the old ideas will be completely discarded. In much the same way, older notions in the study of mental illness will be altered or completely discarded. Such changes do not invalidate psychology and the study of psychopathology: It simply means that the science of psychology is imperfect.

I believe that there is a very real difference between mental health and mental illness. I’ve experienced mental illness myself, and I know just how real it can be and how it can incapacitate a person in much the same way that physical illness can. Moreover, my emotional problems were rooted largely in my religious beliefs. Since I gave up religious belief, I find that I’m far more rational, and although I still experience emotional difficulties as we all do, I can deal with these problems much better than I could before when I was religious.

In any case, if you’d like to go into more detail about why religiosity is not a pathology, then I’m willing to read whatever you may wish to post. It would be very helpful if you would explain how the two are different. I have noted many similarities between religiosity and mental illness such as delusion and hallucinations. If you’d like me to go into these similarities further than I’d be happy to do so.

Jagella

JGL53

I, for one, definitely do see religiosity as a pathology of the mind, albeit on a sliding scale of mild to severe.

Rather than type it all out again, one can read my take on it, Post #60 at http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=117223&page=3

It's a discussion of the stupid "Bright movement" and my suggestion of a better label for the non-religious.

Jagella

Let’s take schizophrenia as an example. The symptoms of schizophrenia are the following:

* Delusions
* Hallucinations
* Disordered thinking

Are religious people deluded? Delusion can be said to be a belief in something that contradicts reality. Although religionists insist that they have evidence for belief in some god or other or life after death, the evidence they offer is very shaky indeed. Not to mention the scant evidence for the existence of angels or demons. Finally, if anything that many religious people believe in contradicts reality, it is the efficacy of prayer. Although many religionists insist that prayer “works,�? just try asking to test prayer and you’ll run into many excuses why it cannot be tested. Religion is largely delusion.

Do religious people hallucinate? I believe that most religious people rarely if ever hallucinate, but the prevalence of “visions�? as a part of the religious experience cannot be denied. Visions of dead people and angels are common in the Bible, and this belief has been carried forward into modern times. Is there any objective reality to these visions, or are they merely hallucinations brought on by psychosis? In the absence of any good evidence to the contrary, I submit that visions are merely hallucinations and that the people that experience them are mentally ill including the people in the Bible that are said to have had such visions.

Are religionists incapable of ordered thinking? Obviously, ordered thinking is apparently in evidence in most religious people most of the time. However, when the religious person thinks “religiously,�? ordered or rational thinking is very often in absence. Just read some of the works of the major Christian apologists to see what I mean. And the Bible—talk about disordered thinking! Its many contradictions and preposterous stories might be said to have been written by mad men. Religious thinking is very much disordered.

I hope that any person responding to this post will carefully read what I’ve said and respond to it point by point whether he or she agrees with me or not. I will fairly evaluate any rebuttals anybody wishes to post.

Jagella

Marduk

“I believe some of the same arguments you are making to say that psychopathology isn’t real can also be said to invalidate much of modern chemistry�?

Sort of, if I mix sodium and chloride I will get salt, if I do it today, tomorrow or back in 1492. If I would go back to 1492, I would appear to be a loon, especially if I told them about chemistry. I’m really not trying to denigrate the field of psychology as much as I am saying it is very dependent on cultural norms. You may peruse the classic “The Myth of Mental Illness�? they made us read in school if you’d like.
I suppose religiosity could be a pathology if it causes problems, but so can anything in excess, some people buy lottery tickets others blow their whole paycheck at the track. Religion is part of society not a pathology in itself. Nuff said.

Jagella

All fields of science are affected by “cultural norms.�? Eugenics, for example, was fueled by the belief that some “races�? or ethnic groups are superior to others. Nevertheless, although much of eugenics has been discredited, we do not forsake biology as a useful and informative science.

Correct me if I’m missing something here, but are the two statements you posted above contradictory?

Jagella

boundlesslife

Isn't this natural selection at work? If fundamentalist parents train their children as fundamentalists but then let them die for lack of treatment, thus removing the children from both the cultural evolution of society and the genetic evolution of the human race, isn't this something Charles Darwin might have seen as "natural selection"? Wouldn't he see the "failed fundamentalists" as more "fit to survive" than the true, "died-in-the-wool" fundamentalists?

If an "immortality pill" (eliminating aging) were developed tomorrow, and if fundamentalists refused it on behalf of both themselves and their children, would this not also be a manifestation of natural selection? And if the children rejected their parents' faith and survived for longer than most of us now think possible, in terms of a "natural lifespan", would this not amount to the same thing (that the children who rejected fundamentalism were more "fit to survive", than their fundamentalist parents)? What might Charles Darwin have said of this? Perhaps, "If this happens, and it goes on for just a few hundred years, fundamentalism could become as 'extinct' as the saurians whose bones we are now piecing together!"

Fundamentalists, especially those of the "creation-science" variety, seem to be more like the "last of the dinosaurs", than the "wave of the future"! If we have something to worry about, isn't there a greater danger that in coming to grips with their extinction, fundamentalists will see a greater good in an end to human civilization, than its continued evolution? Sam Harris's book ("The End of Faith") contains truly remarkable insights, on this point, and what he points to as dangers seem just as real as Carl Sagan's concerns about nuclear proliferation and a global nuclear holocaust, during the Cold War.

Marduk

"I suppose religiosity could be a pathology…

Religion is part of society not a pathology

Correct me if I’m missing something here, but are the two statements you posted above contradictory?"

No
Religion would be like the Catholic Church or Islam. Religiosity would describe the degree of adherence to same, a scale going from a terse “Godblessthisfoodamen�? to flying a plane into a tall building in order to get to heaven. The latter could be considered a pathology, especially by the people in the tall building, the former a simple cultural ritual.
a good book on religion and culture "The Power of Myth" by Campbell.

Jagella

In that case you are saying that religiosity can be a pathology which contradicts your saying it isn’t a pathology. In any event, asking some spirit to bless food sounds like superstition to me, and is superstition not a pathology?

I just wish somebody would explain the difference between a pathology and religiosity. I noted several similarities between the two, and none of the critics of the religion-is-pathology theory have yet explained the difference. Perhaps there are no real differences which mean they are basically the same.

Jagella