Religious belief...a mental illness?

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answers

Registered Senior Member
A mental illness is something that goes against the rational norms within a society.

Believing in little green men stealing all of your potatoes, is attributed to mental illness because it's considered by society not to be a rational/normal belief.

Now if society decides what is rational/normal. Do you think that one day society will become so athiest that they believe that religious belief is a mental illness?

For me it's a nice vision. Just imagine everybody looking at someone like they are totally nuts when they said they believed in their invisible god friend.

Gives me goosebumps just thinking about how awesome that would be.
 
Okay I read a bit of that thread. I see what you are getting at. But just because something has happened in the past doesn't mean it will 100% happen in the future. But I'll leave that debate to the other thread.

This is more so just a little pipe dream I have.

Just imagine it, no more arguments about a person's invisible friend. People will just rationally see the idea of an invisible mystical multi dimentional friend/saviour as the delusion that it is.

Oh what a dream :)
 
answers said:
Do you think that one day society will become so athiest that they believe that religious belief is a mental illness?
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I'd prefer society to become so technologically advanced that we can prove religious belief to be a mental illness. Your vision is based as much on non-provable belief as the nutjobs your future has no place for.
 
Not really. See you don't need to prove someone is wrong to class something as a mental illness.

A person can say 'I have little green men in my head controlling my thoughts, but every time they are observed they disappear'. Now you can't prove that person wrong, because the belief is unfalsifiable. However that belief is still attributed to a mental illness, simply due to the fact that society views it as such.

So it doesn't matter what is proven or not, all that matters is whether or not society forms a social norm that views religious belief as a mental illness.

Well that's all that matters if all you want is the scenario that I wrote about.
 
answers said:
Not really. See you don't need to prove someone is wrong to class something as a mental illness.

A person can say 'I have little green men in my head controlling my thoughts, but every time they are observed they disappear'. Now you can't prove that person wrong, because the belief is unfalsifiable. However that belief is still attributed to a mental illness, simply due to the fact that society views it as such.
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The belief should be attributed to unknown origins, not mental illness. Are we to do the same for ESP, Out of body experiences - consider them as mental delusions because the masses of society do not understand / have not experienced it?

So it doesn't matter what is proven or not, all that matters is whether or not society forms a social norm that views religious belief as a mental illness
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So you're after a world where belief conquers belief? By that reasoning its just as likely that the religious will decide you to be the nutter. What then. No protesting? You're content to have them label you a retard 'caus the masses believe it to be so?
 
glaucon said:
I fail to see how any conception of fitness can include an element of belief in the non-existent...
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Like logic?:p

Since when does fitness require any rational basis? Man is the most irrational creature and also the most "fit" by evolutionary standards.
 
"Are we to do the same for ESP, Out of body experiences - consider them as mental delusions because the masses of society do not understand / have not experienced it?"

Yes. And that's actually already the case.

"So you're after a world where belief conquers belief?"

Yes I believe so.

"By that reasoning its just as likely that the religious will decide you to be the nutter. What then. No protesting? You're content to have them label you a retard 'caus the masses believe it to be so?"

Firstly I think you should watch what you say. People suffering from mental retardation are not nutters. Are you saying all autistic people are crazy? Mental retardation refers to the score people have on an IQ test. I think below an IQ of 70 is classed as mild mental retardation.

Anyway with that aside.

I don't think my reasoning is at fault because an outcome that I do not like may in fact result from the same mechanisms that result in the outcome that I want to come about.

And I never said that the masses believing something to be a mental illness, is the best way to classify mental illnesses. However I did say that a mental illness is by definition what society views to be a mental illness. The masses decide this.

If it were normal to believe that if you thought about Bill O'Rielly naked you would burst into flame, the few people who thought that they wouldn't burst into flame, would be considered the ones with the mental illness.

It doesn't really matter what is logical when diagnosing a mental illness. What matters is what is socially acceptable.

That's the way mental illnesses are diagnosed.

To diagnose a behaviour or cognition based on logic would be diagnosing something other than mental illness.
 
Nesm -
You appear to be conflating "mental retardation" with "mental illness".
The first could well have physical causes, whereas a mental illness is defined a psychological or behavioural "defect".

Similarly NDEs may have a physical (chemical) cause (DMT, a drug which is produced in the brain naturally when under stress).

However, belief in the "veracity" of NDEs and ESP probably is a delusion.
 
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I didn't say mental retardation and mental illness was the same.

I thought I made it clear that they were totally different, based on totally different diagnostic criteria.

What exactly are you trying to say?
 
answers said:
Firstly I think you should watch what you say. People suffering from mental retardation are not nutters. Are you saying all autistic people are crazy? Mental retardation refers to the score people have on an IQ test. I think below an IQ of 70 is classed as mild mental retardation.
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Sorry. I used the word 'retard' to mean something along the same lines as nutter, or a crazy person. Derogatory slang.
 
Ah okay, not a problem, just misunderstood and thought you were referring to what I said, which was why I was confused.

Thanks for clearing that up.
 
No worries Nesm. Wasn't a major point of contention, but just thought I'd mention that they were different.
 
answers said:
"Are we to do the same for ESP, Out of body experiences - consider them as mental delusions because the masses of society do not understand / have not experienced it?"

Yes. And that's actually already the case.
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won't speak for ESP, but o.b.e.s, described as such, occur all the time amongst epileptics and people with various neurological conditions--and many, self included, recognize such at the time (typically), as aberrant: no delusion.

"So you're after a world where belief conquers belief?"

Yes I believe so.
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not sure what this means.

"By that reasoning its just as likely that the religious will decide you to be the nutter. What then. No protesting? You're content to have them label you a retard 'caus the masses believe it to be so?"

Firstly I think you should watch what you say. People suffering from mental retardation are not nutters. Are you saying all autistic people are crazy? Mental retardation refers to the score people have on an IQ test. I think below an IQ of 70 is classed as mild mental retardation.
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i'm autistic, and at my peak my i.q. was 158 (stanford-binet), though i seem a hell of a lot stupider. learn the difference between autism and mental retardation.

Anyway with that aside.

I don't think my reasoning is at fault because an outcome that I do not like may in fact result from the same mechanisms that result in the outcome that I want to come about.

And I never said that the masses believing something to be a mental illness, is the best way to classify mental illnesses. However I did say that a mental illness is by definition what society views to be a mental illness. The masses decide this.
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actually, the authors and editors of the dsm--or whatever the volume of diagnostic criterion for such happens to be in your particular country--decide what is "mental illness."

If it were normal to believe that if you thought about Bill O'Rielly naked you would burst into flame, the few people who thought that they wouldn't burst into flame, would be considered the ones with the mental illness.

It doesn't really matter what is logical when diagnosing a mental illness. What matters is what is socially acceptable.

That's the way mental illnesses are diagnosed.

To diagnose a behaviour or cognition based on logic would be diagnosing something other than mental illness.
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well, as we are all--each and everyone of us--deluded about ohhh so many things--and i'm fairly confident that all of us would not be diagnosed with mental illness-- i'm not sure what that diagnosis we be.

review some definitions of "mental illness"--there's gotta be some stuff in their about "functionality" and whatnots.
 
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I suspect we will have to question our understanding of "mental illness", before we make any more additions.

The evolution of religious belief as well as its place in human brain is already being examined(1). What people once called a mental illness appears as the difference that makes the research possible.

Is epilepsy a mental illness or a "chronic neurological disorder"(2)?

If a physical difference of temporal lobes result as a strong religious belief, what do we call billions of people believing in religion without having a different temporal lobe?

I guess new knowledge problematises the older classifications, it is difficult to know what we will call illness in the future.

(1)http://health.howstuffworks.com/brain-religion.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbrain.shtml

(2)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epilepsy
 
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