SPIRITUAL/ RELIGIOUS IS A PERSONALITY DISORDER

THE ROLE OF FAITH AS PLACEBO

Faith can be a placebo for those who wish to do bad things and downplay them. It may be used to deal with the bad things your co-religionists do. It can be used as a tool to make you think your mental or physical or psychological health is better than what it is. The evidence is that religious faith is always a placebo. When faith is a placebo then it should be challenged for another placebo should be as good if not better. But it is wiser to get the guts to face the truth. That will work like a placebo without being a placebo. You see your own strength. The danger with placebo is that the person ends up thinking that it does not matter what the belief is as long as the placebo works. The person who is leaning on a placebo needs you to affirm the placebo for no placebo works if the friends are negative about it. So have the right not to lie. You have to be honest and challenge the placebo. You have to challenge the crutch for the sake of your own integrity. Lack of integrity in you will be perceived and that will destroy their placebo anyway so you have to challenge it. It is a good placebo when you challenge for you are saying, "I believe you can come out of this better than before."

A placebo is a lie and it seeks to pollute others and get them on board with lies. Lies lead to lies so your placebo will hurt somebody else.

Interestingly, the idea that human nature can choose the misery of Hell forever instead of being happy with God suggests that the sinner is staying under some kind of illusion. There must be some kind of placebo in Hell to keep you there.

THE NOTION THAT FAITH WILL NEVER FAIL YOU

Saying faith never fails is just telling people to turn it into a placebo.  It contradicts the religious view that faith is a commitment not a feel good trick.  And religion says faith is a gift from God and its insulting to call it a placebo.  To say your birthday present is about making you feel better about life rather than something that tells you you are special no matter how you respond is patronising.  It is a present in name only.

The idea that faith will never fail is in need of translation, “I think this faith came from God and God is bigger than humankind. Nobody can defeat God. So my faith is my eternal rock for it is how God is being with me as my eternal rock. God uses the faith to tell me he will never let me down. But what if I am wrong and my faith comes from natural causes? Or from human nature? Whatever! I am going to take a chance and make sure it persists forever. I am comforted now by how my faith will be that reliable.”

If there is no God supporting the religion then you are just being stubborn. Obstinacy is what you stand for. Keeping it up may make the cure worse than the disease. And reality will bite and bite hard.

Your seeing faith as a gift from God threatens those who realise that what you are loyal to is not the truth or completely true. The perception you have is that your brand of faith or religion is persistence and has a rocklike quality – Jesus said Christianity was the immovable rock. To say that of faith suggests magic. Or it suggests you as the creator of the faith and the owner are the rock so what do you need the faith for? It is you making the rock of faith so it is you not faith.

The rock of your faith then is you boasting that you have faith and make faith but as this is embarrassing you backtrack and treat faith as if it is doing the work not you.

GOD AS PROJECTION AND SYMPTOM OF A PERSONALITY DISORDER

We may fear some traits that are inside us

We may be shocked at some bad temptations we have.

We fear how we do not know as much as we want to think for we know errors risk bringing harm on ourselves and others we love.

This is about us.  We may deal with the pain of these things by distraction and trying to act and see as if they are in others not us.

We can feel that God or somebody we love has a bad side and deal with that by projecting it unto an innocent person too.  If we don't like theft of a certain kind, say robbing the elderly, we may project that easily unto somebody who steals but who draws the line at that.

The view that God inspires us and prompts us to see the good in ourselves and others has a dark side.  It cuts both ways.  You have to see the bad to see the good.  So the idea that God communicates with us is a catalyst for projection.  It fast-tracks.  It is harder to fix a projection that is bolstered up by the feeling that God is sending you messages in your heart.

Freud said that we have a sense of being helpless in life and that is why we need a father God to look after us. We need the feeling that we are going to be okay. Christians say that if that is true it does not show that God is merely something that is not real but is just in our heads. But it does show we are abusing God. We only want him for us not for himself. This God is abused. If so that explains why believers can be so vicious and hate atheists. Those who exploit God will soon start using everybody else too!

So if we are abusing God then we need to be corrected firmly. Why? Surely we do not become a threat to others through thinking an angel guards us or Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy! But it is only believers in a God that become such a threat. We as believers are a threat and also a potential threat.

God leads to a temptation to persecute. Why do you not want to persecute the person who steals your rabbit's foot charm? Why do you want to persecute the person who rejects God or your version of God? The answer is that in thinking something loves you infinitely and knows all things and has all power, only God is like that, inherently makes you selfish. The other entities are not as involved and so not as useful to you.

If you become atheist, the bad trait put in you by God belief may remain or you may believe in God or programmed by ideas about him more than you realise. Some atheists persecute believers and that could be down to them seeing, or learning from experience - perhaps their own as a former believer - that there is something about belief in God that is obnoxious and a threat.

If faith in God is motivated not by love of truth but by the wish for a father figure then it is a placebo for loneliness. We have no right to advocate that specific placebo - a placebo by definition may not be the best for your children even if it is for you. Only the placebo matters not God.

MINIMALIST ATHEISM

Do atheists who say atheism essentially is the absence of belief in God rather than outright denial think that we need the belief to be absent or lacked? If they do then their lack of faith is in a sense also a denial. It is not the same thing as the absence of belief/faith in the existence of the fairy in the pond. To need there to be no evidence for God so that you need not believe is a rejection of God. It is not an outright one but a rejection all the same.

This kind of atheism however is not a projection. Hard atheism where you deny God outright and call God a lie can be a projection. Maybe you hated your father and this hate has got caught up in the God idea making you turn against it.

If there was a scale, atheism as in lack of belief would be zero in terms of being suspected of projection. Atheism as in denial sounds like a far-fetched candidate for projection. It is difficult and the atheist has no pipe-dreams. Faith in God is the biggest candidate for projection.

IT IS NOT IN A BOX!

There is more to faith than religion. There is more to faith than religious faith. Religious faith and non-religious faith can be in the same cooking pot.

It is by faith that you trust your car not to fall apart and leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere.

It is by faith that you think other cars will not crash into you.

It is by faith that you think a tree or something won't fall on you when you go out for a drive.

There are hundreds of other faiths, many that you don't realise you have - eg faith that lightning will not blow up your car with you in it. It is not faith but faiths. It is plural. Thus you cannot say that somebody's religious faith may not impact you. You cannot say that faith is fine as long as it is not religious for the religious person's faith in God is intertwined with other faiths that the person has. You cannot box it off.

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