Does This Make You Wonder?

Signal said:
My point is that the people who went to Jerusalem or some other traditional place of religious pilgrimage, and then manifested the "Jerusalem Syndrome", most likely were not indifferent, religiously neutral tourists.

I am quite sure they went there with some more or less clear religious motive already, so that when they manifested the "Jerusalem Syndrome", I suspect this wasn't something that befell them right there, but was a continuation of something that started already back at their home.
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If you go seeking a miracle (or ghost) you may find one. :D
 
PsychoticEpisode said:
Not that I'm trying to be funny but this is one of my favorites and I do promise this is my last foray into religious mentality. I was going to add this to my growing list of psychoses in Parapsychology but I think it belongs here. Could this have befallen Christ or any number of famous religious figures?

It isn't new by the looks of things. Were the prophets, messiahs, scribes, etc, all afflicted? Is there a possibility that much of current religion owes its existence to the mentally ill?

Wiki
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Is there anyone here truly qualified to answer this...

I'll rephrase...is there anyone in the world truly qualified to answer this...
 
Is there a possibility that much of current religion owes its existence to the mentally ill?
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Jozen-Bo said:
Is there anyone here truly qualified to answer this...

I'll rephrase...is there anyone in the world truly qualified to answer this...
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Who is qualified to answer the possibility of God? Well, all of us are. The question is about a possibility, not a confirmation.
 
I've met a Schizophrenic before, his episodes manifested as him believing he was super human, that he could see spiritual signs that no one else could see, etc... etc...

Today we call him Schizophrenic and give him medications, 2000 years ago he gets followers and people call him a prophet.

BTW after he was treated with medications and his delusions left, he became a Christian. It seems that because he no longer had his own delusions he had to now follow those of someone else.

Of course I'm not saying that your religious prophet or savior had mental illnesses. All I'm saying is that there are people out there that act like religious saviors and prophets and they have proven mental illnesses. You cannot argue against that as it is completely 100% observably true.

But I'm sure whoever your religious icon was, they were completely 100% sane... just because they share the exact same characteristics of the mentally ill that we observe today, doesn't mean they were themselves mentally ill.

If I've learned anything from religion, I know that the simplest explanation is wrong. So therefore I am lead to believe that the Devil created mental illnesses that would manifest themselves with the same characteristics of the ancient prophets and saviors, in order to fool those non-believers into thinking that what the religions claim are the product of the mentally ill, so that only those with enough spiritual insight and who knew the truth through a personal relationship with an invisible divine being could possibly know the difference between the characteristics of mental illness and those characteristics of a prophet or savior. That Devil sure is crafty.
 
PsychoticEpisode said:
It isn't new by the looks of things. Were the prophets, messiahs, scribes, etc, all afflicted? Is there a possibility that much of current religion owes its existence to the mentally ill?
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I had a run-in today with a college professor over vegetarianism. She maintained that eating meat and what goes on in slaughterhouses are not the same as plain old violence against animals, and that meat eating is not violence against animals. I disagreed.

Later on, it struck me how out of place my disagreement was. The professor and the other people present had, by my best estimation, no knowledge, nor willingness to actually discuss the issue - so it all came down to a battle of wills.
And battles of will are useless, and they make at least one of the parties (usually the minority) look mentally ill.

I suspect similar occurs with some religious people, or people who have genuine religious vision: they do not know how to effectively, productively present their religious claims to the people whom they are with, this is why those claims seem so outlandish.
 
Kennyc said:
Does it for you?
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Well, there is an implicit generalization about the mechanism that leads to the experience of miracles. I am not willing to grant the generalization of that mechanism, nor the implicit judgment of what the essence of a miracle must be. That said, yes. But on other occasions, there was no prior seeking I was aware of.
 
Signal said:
Later on, it struck me how out of place my disagreement was. The professor and the other people present had, by my best estimation, no knowledge, nor willingness to actually discuss the issue - so it all came down to a battle of wills.
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In ancient times, if Pharaoh or the Emperor were sick in the head, not a cultural blend but true honest to goodness mental illness, and then once either one of them said I want everyone to eat only veggies, well that's what you did. Their will won. Perhaps the profs believed they already settled the issue. If that's the case I'm not sure what it makes you in their eyes.
 
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