Religious belief...a mental illness?

decons said:
Hating religion and hating believers are not the same thing.
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this statement i concur with..you have seperated the believer from the religion..
It might be argued that religions promote discrimination and therefore promote hatred.
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this also i can agree with..

In a similar vein, one might be anti-nationality, and argue the necessity to get rid of all national boundaries. It is difficult to identify this view with hating everybody living inside national boundaries all over the world.
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redundant..
An anti-religion person also lives a life influenced by the religions, and a person has every right to discuss about the factors influencing one's own life.
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yes,the factors..but not a generic criticism of believers..

and yes OP is user specific..it adressess the individual believer not the practice of various religions..
maybe if the OP stated something to the effect of seperating belief in god from organized religion, there would be some justification..but as it sits it is refering to the individual not the orginazation..

attack the orginazation if you like..(get specific) as there are things i would agree with if you were to focus on the orginazation,but do not focus on the individual as being delusional or mentaly insuficient just because they believe in god.

granted there are ppl involved with the various religions that say they represent god,when in fact they themselves do not follow the teachings of their own religion,IOW there are ppl who are mentally deficiant involved with religion, that anti-god ppl tend to use as examples of why god is a bad thing..
these ppl are not gods representitives..
just cause a person claims he speaks for god (red flag alert for me) does not mean he does..

there are just as many messed up ppl in religion as there are outside of it..to stereotype a person just cause they believe in god is erroneous, not very scientific and just plain WRONG!

instead of slamming the ppl who do believe in god,why don't you share your story of why you are so anti-religion..scratch that...anti-god..
 
answers said:
Come on mate. Don't play dumb.

You know one person doesn't create a social norm. It is the majority.
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still doesn't make it right or true..it just establishes a common definition currently agreed on..which could change with each generation..so to quote from the DSM is not a justification for an arguement..IMO

answers said:
because it is simply just the way it is, regardless of what you think.
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ok now them thar are fighting words you know..
i have never been able to accept that answer as an argument for anything!
even if it is true...
 
I'm just stating the current process of classification for mental illness. I am not saying that it is the best way to classify mental illness.

I think the faults in the way the classification works could one day result in religious belief being classed as a mental illness.

However I'm not talking about whether or not the process is at fault, I'm talking about what the result would be.

What would it actually be like if one day society agreed that the concept of God was so crazy that it would label it a mental illness?

Also I have posted previously my story of why I am no longer Christian. That was a while ago. If you look at my very old posts, you will actually see that I argued on here as a Christian in the beginning. And since going to bible college and studying at university, I have learned how rediculous religious belief is.
 
answers said:
I think the faults in the way the classification works could one day result in religious belief being classed as a mental illness.
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so would masterbating in a public bathroom..(trying for the milk out the nose effect..):D

What would it actually be like if one day society agreed that the concept of God was so crazy that it would label it a mental illness?
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don't think that would happen..some ppl use god as an excuse to do what is right..(the opposite is also true..)

Also I have posted previously my story of why I am no longer Christian. That was a while ago. If you look at my very old posts, you will actually see that I argued on here as a Christian in the beginning. And since going to bible college and studying at university, I have learned how rediculous religious belief is.
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could you summerize it for us ppl who don't wanna search...(or just forgot)
 
Which of the following is reason to believe someone is mentally ill?

A mother believes:

1. God punishes wicked deeds
2. her severely brain damaged newborn is punishment from God
3. God has told her that the child was vegetative because the father was an atheist
4. she can kill the atheist in God's name
5. in a god.
 
Good example of how some faulty beliefs can escalate with just minimal steps in a bad direction.
 
You know where the ideology is that science is better than religion? And people are just collateral damages in the righteous pursuit of democracy communism the aryan state?
 
You might consider looking up the Miller experiment. The banality of evil is tragic. Self defined atheist states are no utopia.
 
I don't really think the result of truth detracts from the truth of it all.

Just because kids are happy believing the lie that Santa clause is real, doesn't mean that one day they shouldn't learn the truth just because it may result in temporary unhappiness.

Humans adapt to new truth when it is revealed.

The 'apparant' religious peace that we have currently in the western world didn't happen instantly. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect an athiestic society to take time to evolve into a more acceptable society either.
 
I think results count. If Santa Claus makes people happy every December, its more relevant than some athiest fuming at his version of truth all by himself.
 
answers said:
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.
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I would love to see your sense of how this judgment would be worded. For a DSMIV entry or a more slack simplification for the general public. Could you give short description of how one determines mental illness as determined by belief?
 
answers said:
What would it actually be like if one day society agreed that the concept of God was so crazy that it would label it a mental illness?
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to answer that question i found this..
God is most often conceived of as the supernatural creator and overseer of the universe. Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the many different conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence. God has also been conceived as being incorporeal, a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the "greatest conceivable existent".[1] These attributes were all supported to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologian philosophers, including Maimonides,[2] Augustine of Hippo,[2] and Al-Ghazali,[3] respectively. Many notable medieval philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God.[3] Many notable philosophers and intellectuals have, by contrast, developed arguments against the existence of God.

the bold is my point..(the source of all moral obligation)
if god were to be deleted from society,where would that obligation come from? would that be deleted as well?who would hold us responsible for any morality?
 
We could all depend on the biological imperative, essentially it would free us from all socially imposed moral obligations.
 
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