OBJECTIONS TO RELIGION
BEING A MENTAL ILLNESS
Atheist Chris Stedman keeps saying religion is not a mental illness. It would
not be as bad if he would say this is true of some religion. But he gives the
impression that there are no cults of religion that are deranged.
He should see if religion is a process of dissociation.
Dissociation is about escape from some trauma or the threat of a trauma.
But the escape is not real. You are dulling yourself and that is not
coming to terms with the pain. You can end up with seriously impaired
ability to find or feel your emotions in your own body. You put yourself
in danger for youto Jewish festivatls for these things need to see threats
clearly. How can you protect yourself otherwise? You feel you
are outside or disconnected with your pain body, your body. To help
yourself you have to get rid of anything that is dulling your sense of the pain
that is there. The harder bit is getting rid of anything that MAY be doing
this which is scary. If it works and you cast it out you will know it
works and you can get it back. Get rid of the faith based and
psychological pain killers or pain hiders. You have to see that you are
your body and the body is your mind and the mind is your body. This is
lonely for you have to abandon God and prayer as they might be traps and
crutches. It's fundamentally using atheism as a method to free yourself or
to aim for freedom. Aim even if you think you will not succeed.
The atheistic mental health advocate Miri Mogilevsky
stated, "“Religion and mental illness are different psychological processes”.
Mir suggests that religious faith will "stem from cognitive processes that are
essentially adaptive, such as looking for patterns and feeling like a part of
something larger than oneself.” So religion is not a mental illness if it helps
you be a functional member of society.
The reasoning is that religious belief helps you
adapt to society. Mental illness blocks adapting. The religious will form
communities but the insane will not integrate in society. They will think and do
things that make such integration impossible.
Dr Ken Pargament stated, “When it comes to
facilitating mental health, empirical data demonstrates that religious people
have more positive emotion, more meaning in life, more life satisfaction, cope
better with trauma, are more physically healthy, are more altruistic and
socially connected, and are not diagnosed with mental illness more than other
people.”
Religion could easily be a foundation for many forms
of mental illness. The believer might not develop the illness but is at risk.
The only answer is to encourage her or him to keep religion at a polite
distance.
SYMPTOM OF A MENTAL ILLNESS?
A mental illness is a medical condition that disrupts
and damages a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and
daily functioning
If religion is not a mental illness, it could
nevertheless be a symptom of a mental illness.
A religion could be a symptom of your own mental
illness or somebody else's.
Abraham was going to kill his son for God.
Moses slaughtered and had people stoned to death
because he thought God wanted it.
Jesus said that it is okay to murder big sinners as
long as you are better than them. He made a woman sweat in front of a mob who
said they were going to stone her though he knew they legally were going to be
stopped anyway. He deliberately sought crucifixion.
Those religious heroes were clearly so insane that a
diagnosis would have been done in seconds.
Christianity only recognises the work of doctors not
because doctors get results but because God allegedly uses doctors to heal you.
That makes them no different from the crank who urges you to keep away form
doctors and trust in prayer. Both see doctors as useless in themselves. Both
agree in principle that if God bans the healing work of doctors then God is
right.
Religious people mostly if not always have delusions
not beliefs.
If a religion is a symptom of mental illness, it is
therefore a facilitator.
Social pressure and "because everybody does it" are
major reasons why religion is so powerful.
Allowing social pressure to make you religious is in
fact maladaptive.
Religious persons give all their love to invisible
friends. They think these friends exist though they have no evidence. If you
have a relationship with a non-existent friend that is a sign that hallucination
of some kind is involved. Religion induces it. It is very extreme when the
relationship is about giving all your love to God. Christ said that you and your
neighbour do not come first for you must love God with all your heart.
Religious persons suffer from delusions - they think
that no matter how terrible things get for them that some invisible friend will
help with magic. They do this in spite of seeing people who are never helped.
The evidence cannot shake their belief so it is a delusion.
The believer never learns. The believer trusts in
prayer even if it never works. Excuses are made for its failure. They think,
"Next time I will get my prayer answered." They might deny they are so confident
that it will be answered exactly but actions speak louder.
Believers suffer from a tendency to accept absurd
myths and the impossible as historically true. Christians believe in Adam and
Eve despite the silly story about them in the Bible and the scientific proof
that they are fiction. Fantasy and reality are mixed together. They cannot
distinguish one from the other.
Believers suffer the paranoid belief that anybody who
does not agree with their religious doctrines is sinful or in league wittingly
or unwittingly with Satan.
Believers condone the emotional abuse inflicted on
them. They feel awful and evil for doing harmless things such as masturbating or
forgetting to pray. They think that some sin that is not that bad will put them
in Hell forever. They have their psyche scarred for life. They will often become
emotional abusers themselves. By supporting a religion of emotional abuse and
passive aggression they are guilty by association.
Believers tend to hate and harass and use violence
against those who will not agree with their religious beliefs.
Believers say God is important for there is no morality unless there is a God. They say you need to believe in God to understand why we must be moral. They say that unbelievers if they can behave in a moral way have no reason why and that even then it is because God overrides their ignorance and gifts them with moral tendencies. If believers are saying here is no difference between feeding a dog or torturing him to death if there is no God then they need psychiatric attention. The need to establish a difference is the first step. Taking this first step is itself moral. Then the next step is applying moral thinking to the difference. Though the difference is seen as assessing and not being moral for an is does not imply an ought it is clear that it is still moral. The error is in thinking that taking a step towards a moral issue is not itself moral. It is. Taking the step is even more important than having a moral system for you cannot have a moral system without it. The idea that God needs to be believed in to be moral is clearly trying to diagnose everybody as psychopaths who need a faith "treatment" to manage or cure the disorder.
Liberals and lefties typically
try to deny that murder is a sin by saying murderers are mentally ill.
Then they hypocritically exempt people like Moses and Muhammad and St Paul who
murdered many.
If hypothetically religion does not do these things,
it should lead to them. It should still be discarded on a point of principle.
FINALLY
Artistic expression can
sometimes disguise mental disorders and religion is a form of artistic
expression. Talking to people who are not there is normalised which means
we have more madness here than in mad painters. Religion is a mental
illness or at least has a lot to do with it and though most members do not need
treatment they do not need their delusion reinforced or celebrated. Great
harm will be done to many.
If self-deception can be helpful then it is only as a
temporary measure. We don't need the supernatural. We all feel we will live for
a long time though we know we will not. Natural self-deception is all we need.
But it is better to get tough and face reality - that makes you your own person,
your own strong person.
We must remember that Christ did encourage religious
delusion as in sickness.
He said you must love God with your mind - believe in
him totally. You must love God with all your heart - all your feelings are
feelings of love for him alone. This centering on God is the greatest
commandment according to the Bible. Everybody agrees that love your neighbour as
yourself is put lower down and refers to how you treat your neighbour not how
you are to feel about him. Hypothetically, if you had to choose love of God or a
person you choose God. Jesus teaching is extremism. Extremism is never satisfied
and to obey Christ is to go on the slippery slope to religious terrorism.
Catholics feel about the communion wafer as they do a
person. That is not right.
Religion is more than just a suspect for being based on mental illness. It clearly shows there is something wrong. Many who are sane believers may not be believers but playing along.