(July 16, 2016 at 5:14 pm)Drich Wrote:(July 14, 2016 at 10:56 pm)Jehanne Wrote: I can't reveal any specifics, but based upon first-hand information, I know of a 9-year old girl from a fundamental Christian household who is hearing voices from "the Devil" which are telling her to kill herself.
How pathetic and sad! And, are the parents of this little girl telling her that the Devil is all a bunch of bullshit, and that the "voices" in her head are due to her brain not working right, that is, due to mental illness? No! Instead, they are asking for "prayers".
This just makes me sick to my stomach.
what if.. it were both?
The brain not acting right and is picking up what you can see or hear?
What if it were the most likely, evidenced based, reason? Mental illness.
There are mentally ill people all over the world, in other cultures and religions, that claim that various deities/demons are telling them to kill themselves.
I'll bet you don't believe that Muslims that claim that Iblis is telling them to kill themselves, are actually hearing Iblis. You'd probably mark that up to mental illness.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.