Religion as a mental illness

[robvalue]

Although the comment sections on certain articles occasionally make me consider that religion might actually be a mental illness, I remind myself that commentors are a self-selecting group that often leans toward exeptionall delusional.

My undergraduate degree is in psychology, so I understand how limitied by expertise is on this matter.

It is not a mental illness to believe what you're raised to believe, what almost everyone around you believes, and what most of the people you love believe. It's what evolution has shaped us to do. Even when the belief is incorrect, it is often advantageous to believe what the dominant members of your group believe.

Everyone has beliefs that aren't true, aren't justified, and odd. We often don't bother to reality check them because they don't cause us any trouble. Just being idiosyncratic or eccentric is not a mental illness. You can have a quite bizarre delusion (squirrels are telepathic among each other) and it won't be considered a mental illness if you keep it to yourself. For a delusion to rise to the level of a mental illness, it has to cause you life problems (squirrels are telepathic with each other but I can intercept their messages which involve world domination and in order to thwart them I have to douse everyone I can with mustard immediately).

Religion can reach the level of mental illness in individuals, such as abortion clinic bombers, but we can't define it as mental illness with any credibility.

That's a good point, something I forgot. Religious beliefs don't generally come under scrutiny in every day life because they have no bearing on reality. They're just a bunch of useless extra assumptions, most of the time. It's when someone truly believes something that comes up against reality, such as God will protect them from being hit by cars, that they get tested. And of course, as soon as religion steps outside the realm of unfalsifiability, it fails instantly.

I've heard many people say they literally see supernatural things regularly, such as God, Angels, whatever. How many of these are people with mental illnesses who got drawn to religion? How many are otherwise mentally well people who have convinced themselves they are seeing such things? How do you tell the difference...