A well written and original post, my answer to it is as follows below.
Quote:
Originally Posted by crimsontactics (25-02-2012, 09:49 PM)  Topic: Is religion a mental illness? Firstly, just a short disclaimer. I'm not trying to insult or degrade any specific racial or religious group or religion as a whole. Just as it's their rights to believe in and promote their chosen divine entitles or beliefs, I feel that it's my rights to be able to believe in my own opinions and to at least share my views. I'm Catholic btw, although I'm starting to doubt my own faith. Is religion a mental illness? What caused me to spawn such a thought? Around a decade back, I paid a visit to IMH with my grandmother to visit another family member who was suffering from dementia. During the visit, I happened to overhear a conversation between two nurses. Although the exact details are no longer clear, I'm certain that they were talking about a new patient who claimed that she had an imaginary friend. I later learned that she was diagnosed with an advanced stage of hallucination, or adulthood paracosm. This is a condition where a person conceive in his mind an imaginary entity and believes that it is actually a part of his environment. This incident had sparked my curiosity about the possible relationship between religion and mental illness. I thought of trying to debate about this issue back in the past, but a series of crackdowns on "racism" back then had instilled enough fear in me to keep my mouth shut. Around two weeks back, I was having a conversation with a friend back in my army camp. Our conversation turned to the topic of religion and my friend, being a staunch atheist, was finding every possible way to demote religion. Out of the blue, he said a sentence which re-sparked my initial curiosity and promoted me to create this thread. The sentence was, " Ben, seriously, what's the difference between a religious person and a mental patient?" Is there a difference? This is a very sensitive question. However, if you were to just close your eyes for a minute, disregard the government's propaganda that racism and religious-discrimination is bad and to just consider this very question, you'll realize that there is actually only one difference. Both believes in imaginary entitles, both thinks that these entitles are a part of the world, be it physical, emotional or spiritual, and both will condemn, or at least view negative, others who do not share their similar imagination. The only difference is that religion is believed by a large group of people while an imaginary friend is only believed by one person, the patient himself. Does an entity or belief exists simply because a large group of people says so? Yes. If a large enough group of people believes in something, it exists due to social pressure. Humans are social creatures. We fear prejudice and shame more than we fear death. Since our social norms are determined by the views of the majority, something can actually exists if enough people believe in it. The minority have no choice but to conform to it for the fear of rejection. They then educate their children, who have no clue as to what's going on, the ways of which they conform to. Most of their children will treat these as facts as children will imitate their parents during their adolescent stage. Thus, religion is a form of mental illness, since both share similar characteristics, made acceptable by society due to social pressure. Religion is a mental illness. Just like a virus, it slowly fester within it's host, hoping one day to consume and control it. And fester it did. Left untreated for generations, religion had found ways to counter human's main source of immunity, logic, and had created defenses for itself. Firstly, there is the legislation. Laws protecting religions are the first line of defense this illness had made, punishing those who do not conform while protecting those who spread it. Many people who criticize religion face legal consequences while there is virtually no punishment against those who criticize free thinkers or atheists. What's worst is that religion should be separated from the state. Secondly, there is social conditioning. As of now, many religious people view free-thinkers and atheists as bigoted and arrogant, a "malfunctioning product" of the civilized world. Even free-thinkers and atheists themselves had been infected, conforming to social norms that criticizing religion is wrong although instinctively we know that there is something amiss about religion. Lastly, there is religious tension. Currently, we've religious conflicts in many parts of the world and everyone is somewhat concern about it. As we focus on the conflict of individual religions, we fail to realize that the root of all these problems may be religion itself, the mental illness that had infested many of us, myself including. Religion is very adaptive and capable. It's willing to sacrifice a portion of itself, for instance pitting specific religions against one another, to preserve the rest, just to ensure it's survival. Just like a mental illness, there is nothing good or bad about religion. There is nothing right or wrong about it either. Religion is just an illness that had reach its terminal stage at an epidemic scale. No treatment is needed now. All we can do is just pray for a painless end. |
Me thinks that U have committed a mistake of vague terminology thus causing your argument to be unreliable and misleading.
1) Definitions:
- 'Religion' is defined as: Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe; A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.[dict.]
- 'Mental-illness' however is defined as: Any of various conditions characterized by impairment of an individual's normal cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning, and caused by social, psychological, biochemical, genetic, or other factors, such as infection or head trauma. (Also called emotional illness, mental disease, mental disorder.) [dict.]
Whilst both the terms 'Religion' and 'Mental-illness' seem to arise from a person's cognition (defn. cognition= the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning"), an 'impairment' is necessary before an individual holding such belief (religion/ otherwise) can be classified as 'mentally ill'.
Whilst the experiences of many mainstream religion followers might not be scientifically provable nor reproducible, many nevertheless report great comfort and consolation from the practice of their customs and beliefs. These widespread personal and social benefits however do not negate the multiple instances of religion being misused throughout history to mislead by ruling classes to poorer and less literate subordinates to serve their own personal ulterior motives (other social illnesses: illiteracy, drug addiction, poverty, pollution and poor health- usually the toxic mix for the teaching of such false religion to the impoverished for the manipulative to achieve ulterior gain). A motorcar i the right hands is a tool for transport but in the wrong hands can commit murder or even mass destruction (read: bomb).
Nothing in life can be 100% certain- to buy shares with 100% certainty of profit would either be insanity or a case for investigation of corruption. Opinions amongst men differ just as intentions and their subsequent experiences differ and we all know that science cannot prove everything- or even most things. To some drug consumption is perceived to be valid 'recreation' which is of the case, at least until one gets caught. The universe is just too big for science to determine/ prescribe everything.
It is thus presumptuous and prejudiced in the absence of context to simply compare religion to be a mental illness as there are undisputed belief trends within legitimate mainstream religion that only the mentally ill might condemn: loving your neighbor as you love yourself [Mark12:31 (NIV)] and what differentiates human society from other lesser animal species.
An example of the fallacy of 'Hasty Generalization' [wiki] may be as such "A person travels through a town for the first time. He sees 10 people, all of them children. The person then concludes that there are no adult residents in the town."
Merely being a cultural Christian for x period of time does not qualify one to compare "religion" to a "mental illness" in one fall swoop. More attention to the cognition of religion, especially their text as read contextually and in totality is necessary before the flotation of such comment which if allowed to degenerate into an accusation/ mud-slinging blame game- is ought to create social chaos as you have rightly taken precaution against.
PS:
From my personal assimilation of various ideas from mainstream religions, especially Christianity (Holy Bible): I currently consider the true followers of any mainstream religion to be at least in compliance with "Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these." [Mark12:31 (NIV)]- with a strong sense of eternal justice as administered by God- if not in this life, then in the next; that the soul is in some way immortal and eternally accountable for both its sins and its good deeds. Any less a believer is just a mere club-member or a lonely crumb seeker- neither of these being favorable for the creation of a robust and productive model society founded on the teaching of any religion for that matter.
In any case, as humans, the following picture about the ability of man to describe God, the following poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant" by John G. Saxe (poetry reading) might prove instructive, enjoy:
Rgds
B.C.
1) Definitions:
- 'Religion' is defined as: Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe; A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.[dict.]
- 'Mental-illness' however is defined as: Any of various conditions characterized by impairment of an individual's normal cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning, and caused by social, psychological, biochemical, genetic, or other factors, such as infection or head trauma. (Also called emotional illness, mental disease, mental disorder.) [dict.]
Whilst both the terms 'Religion' and 'Mental-illness' seem to arise from a person's cognition (defn. cognition= the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning"), an 'impairment' is necessary before an individual holding such belief (religion/ otherwise) can be classified as 'mentally ill'.
Whilst the experiences of many mainstream religion followers might not be scientifically provable nor reproducible, many nevertheless report great comfort and consolation from the practice of their customs and beliefs. These widespread personal and social benefits however do not negate the multiple instances of religion being misused throughout history to mislead by ruling classes to poorer and less literate subordinates to serve their own personal ulterior motives (other social illnesses: illiteracy, drug addiction, poverty, pollution and poor health- usually the toxic mix for the teaching of such false religion to the impoverished for the manipulative to achieve ulterior gain). A motorcar i the right hands is a tool for transport but in the wrong hands can commit murder or even mass destruction (read: bomb).
Nothing in life can be 100% certain- to buy shares with 100% certainty of profit would either be insanity or a case for investigation of corruption. Opinions amongst men differ just as intentions and their subsequent experiences differ and we all know that science cannot prove everything- or even most things. To some drug consumption is perceived to be valid 'recreation' which is of the case, at least until one gets caught. The universe is just too big for science to determine/ prescribe everything.
It is thus presumptuous and prejudiced in the absence of context to simply compare religion to be a mental illness as there are undisputed belief trends within legitimate mainstream religion that only the mentally ill might condemn: loving your neighbor as you love yourself [Mark12:31 (NIV)] and what differentiates human society from other lesser animal species.
An example of the fallacy of 'Hasty Generalization' [wiki] may be as such "A person travels through a town for the first time. He sees 10 people, all of them children. The person then concludes that there are no adult residents in the town."
Merely being a cultural Christian for x period of time does not qualify one to compare "religion" to a "mental illness" in one fall swoop. More attention to the cognition of religion, especially their text as read contextually and in totality is necessary before the flotation of such comment which if allowed to degenerate into an accusation/ mud-slinging blame game- is ought to create social chaos as you have rightly taken precaution against.
PS:
From my personal assimilation of various ideas from mainstream religions, especially Christianity (Holy Bible): I currently consider the true followers of any mainstream religion to be at least in compliance with "Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these." [Mark12:31 (NIV)]- with a strong sense of eternal justice as administered by God- if not in this life, then in the next; that the soul is in some way immortal and eternally accountable for both its sins and its good deeds. Any less a believer is just a mere club-member or a lonely crumb seeker- neither of these being favorable for the creation of a robust and productive model society founded on the teaching of any religion for that matter.
In any case, as humans, the following picture about the ability of man to describe God, the following poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant" by John G. Saxe (poetry reading) might prove instructive, enjoy:
Rgds
B.C.
=========================
At/ related:
SGC:
26Mar2012: Is religion a mental illness?
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