It sucks that anyone has to stick up for them. If they were threads about cancer, even he wouldn't stoop to poking fun at it. Then again, who knows?

(November 13, 2017 at 2:11 pm)MysticKnight Wrote:

(November 13, 2017 at 1:55 pm)Shell B Wrote: I'm 100% positive that having a mental illness does not mean that you have a "miserable personal life." I have exactly the personal life I want. Sure, I'd love to have fewer panic attacks, but that doesn't affect my personal life.

---

You're going to fall off that limb. Depression doesn't make someone permanently unhappy.

Recovery could actually be fun and make you appreciate all sorts of things people take for granted at a much higher level.  If we are cursed with curses, it is only to come out with higher blessings when we persevere and resolve ourselves.

I may have the jack of all curses but I have jack of all blessings as well and blessings that only came as a result of the curses I had to endure and still enduring.

---

Thank you ShellB for sticking up for the mentally ill.

I don't think you buy claims of Voodoo dolls do you? I don't.

There are no such thing as "curses". That is simply the same thing as "Karma". The magical thinking that if someone does bad, they will "get what is coming to them".  If that were the case Stalin and Po Pot would have been stopped long before they committed Genocide on their own populations.

In reality when we survive harm from others, our emotions can lead to concepts of revenge. There is nothing magic about our species behaviors.  Revenge isn't an act of containment, or justice. Revenge is what the fear of being cursed or cursing others in the desire to get even stems from. Revenge is a very destructive, even though natural, still a very destructive human desire which when acted upon simply perpetuates violence between societies and even individuals. 

You are not cursed or blessed. You do however, HAVE the potential to if you chose, to scrap magical thinking, and accept reality. I think if you do, you will find out that a superstition free world is much easier to live in and more mentally healthy.

I didn't mean curses in that sense, I just meant it as in hardships in us.

(November 13, 2017 at 2:03 pm)Shell B Wrote: I mean, seriously, fuck you. I'd go with thoughtful discussion, but you're so far down the rabbit hole, it's pointless, so fuck you.

Do you think that all depression just occurs randomly and is in no way affected by personal choices? If so, I disagree. As I explained, I've been through it, and I know that certain behaviors are likely to bring it on.

Quote:You shouldn't smoke crack for breakfast. These people are talking about coping with a facet of their health, not the entirety of their personal lives.

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/d...ndex.shtml

Depression (major depressive disorder or clinical depression) is a common but serious mood disorder. It causes severe symptoms that affect how you feel, think, and handle daily activities, such as sleeping, eating, or working.

I think my characterization is more reasonable than yours.

Quote:No. Depression doesn't make a person unhappy by definition. Meet people, make friends or just read. You can learn more about the things of which you are ignorant, you know.

I've had it.

---

(November 13, 2017 at 2:11 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Recovery could actually be fun and make you appreciate all sorts of things people take for granted at a much higher level.  If we are cursed with curses, it is only to come out with higher blessings when we persevere and resolve ourselves.

Hell yeah recovery is good. While you're depressed, no, life isn't so great.

Quote:Thank you ShellB for sticking up for the mentally ill.

Sticking up? It's not insulting to note that people with depression aren't very happy.

You've had depression and think it's brought on by personal choices? Ummmmmmmmmm

(November 9, 2017 at 8:43 am)Mathilda Wrote: Religious belief conditions people to literally think and act like children.

I wasn't going to comment on such nonsense, but it seems people think a good point is being made here and some sort of sound reasoning was employed.

Quote:As a child your parents look after your needs, explain how the world works, make decisions about your future and take responsibility for those decisions.

Growing up and maturing isn't just a physical development, but a mental one as well. The child learns to ask questions, not to believe everything they are told, to make their own decisions and moral judgments and to take responsibility for their actions. They slowly become more independent by being safely exposed to a world of danger until they can look after themselves.

Religious conditioning from birth essentially stops the maturation process. [1] Children are taught that the consequence to their actions are irrelevant because only a non-existent god ca truly judge them [1.1]. They are not taught to think through the morality of their actions but to accept the morality without question that some person wearing a pointy hat gives them.  They are conditioned to obey authority and to have faith rather than to ask why. [1.2] This means that they do not have to accept the responsibility of their actions because they were only following orders, which ultimately came from their god and are not to be questioned. [1.3] The child grows up dependent upon a system that tells them how to act, think, believe and what to value or hate. [1.4] Their life is not their own but is instead owned by a church that can control them like some bot in a network to be deployed to exercise power. [1.5] 

1. Ah...your conclusion which you will attempt to support with premises.
1.1 - This sentence makes no sense. The second half does not follow from the first. God's judgement would be a significant consequence and very relevant. However, you made up what children are taught to make your point (classic definition of a strawman argument). See 1.2
1.2 - Who teaches their 2 year old to share or not not to hit because the Bible says so? Who teaches an 8 year old not to cheat on their test because the Church says so? Who teaches a 13 year old not to drink and do drugs because Jesus says so? Your assertion has no basis in reality because 99% of childhood moral guidelines are exactly the same as a non-religious family. Do you imagine that religious parent somehow become incapable to teaching morality without answering "because the 10 commandments forbid it and we don't ask questions"? You are erecting a strawman.
1.3 - Here is where your reasoning goes off the rails. Where in the Bible does it even suggest that we are not responsible for our actions? In fact, personal responsibility is on nearly every page of the Bible. You conclude that following a written moral code leads to not being personally responsible. Your support for this seems to be that morality must be reasoned to rather than be instructed on. That is false and is not how morality is taught to children. 
1.4 - You have simply described every experience of every child ever. 
1.5 - Again, you make things up to support your silly conclusion. Show us where the Bible teaches anything other than personal responsibility. 

Not only does your conclusion NOT follow from the premises, your premises are ALL wrong!!

Quote:Not all theists are conditioned from birth. These are the ones to be pitied because they were not properly raised to begin with. The converts though do not deserve pity so much as contempt because they have essentially outsourced their morality. [2.1] They realise how difficult it is to make moral judgments because life is never black and white but always grey. So they're essentially letting someone else make those moral judgments for them instead. [2.2] Instead of taking responsibility for their actions, instead of suffering the doubt that is necessary to navigate a noisy and uncertain world, they're preferring to feel good about their own lives regardless of what it costs everyone else. [2.3] They are being self-centered. Their own sense of self-ease has a greater priority to them than the effect that they have on the world around them. These are the types who would happily allow their government to sign away their freedom to dispel any kind of evil that they have been warned about. Over time these converts happily become more child-like as they accept the conditioning of their church to not question but to just have faith that it will all turn out well in the end. [2.4]

2.1 - Quite condescending. Shows your character. 
2.2 - HOW could you possibly know what attracted them to say Christianity?!? I have never ever heard anyone's personal testimony say "I couldn't figure out what was right and wrong on my own, so...God". I'm not sure that would even make it on a list of top 100 reasons. Where do you get this nonsense?!?
2.3 - Again with the false belief that religion teaches the opposite of personal responsibility. 
2.4 - Not even a "some people..." in front of your idiotic rambling that does not follow EVEN from your untrue premises. 

Quote:Children play. They fantasise about all kinds of imaginative scenarios because they are not weighed down by plausibility, The hall mark of a child is when they don't think through how heir fantasies would work in practice. Yet this is what the religiously indoctrinated do all the time. Instead of wizard performing magic, or a superhero with unexplainable powers, it's a god performing holy-magic. None of it can be explained, and none of it is meant to be. And these fantasies give people the illusion of control over their lives and their reality. Prayer does not work. There is no way that it could work. Yet it is more fun and nicer to imagine that you are imbued with powerful magic and can influence the world around you than to realise that you cannot. Or that to do so actually takes effort or comes at great cost.

The problem is, how can you tell people to grow up when they literally want to continue holding onto a child-like innocence where everyone else makes the decisions for them?

Having utterly failed to link religious belief with childish thinking or maturity, you end with a series of assertions that center around one main assertion: God does not exist. Now, it is traditional for atheists here to hide behind the "I simply lack belief" nonsense. You, however are not. You are making a clear claim that God does not exists. Please support your assertion with proof.

(November 13, 2017 at 2:35 pm)Shell B Wrote: You've had depression and think it's brought on by personal choices? Ummmmmmmmmm

Of course. Substance abuse, toxic relationships, and self-induced stress are all factors that can contribute to depression. For me personally, I can't hold a grudge. It's like poison to me.

Bravo, Steve. Funny how the self-proclaimed defenders of rationality will give kudos to such obvious drivel. It's almost as if saying stupid bad things about believers is reflexively accepted by many atheists. How can we even begin to have reasoned discussions with people lacking the ability to be selfcritical?

(November 13, 2017 at 2:42 pm)alpha male Wrote:

(November 13, 2017 at 2:35 pm)Shell B Wrote: You've had depression and think it's brought on by personal choices? Ummmmmmmmmm

Of course. Substance abuse, toxic relationships, and self-induced stress are all factors that can contribute to depression. For me personally, I can't hold a grudge. It's like poison to me.

Contributing factors aren't causes. What about people like me who have fantastic lives and everything they want? I don't drink, smoke, do drugs, etc. I exercise, have a steady job, an amazing support system, etc. What personal choice did I make?

(November 13, 2017 at 3:25 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Bravo, Steve.  Funny how the self-proclaimed defenders of rationality will give kudos to such obvious drivel. It's almost as if saying stupid bad things about believers is reflexively accepted by many atheists. How can we even begin to have reasoned discussions with people lacking the ability to be selfcritical?

Or the stupid bad things said about them are constantly being evidenced on this forum.