Should we ever foster delusion?

[shadow]

I'm of the mind that someone's delusions resulting from indoctrination can result in that sort of mental illness that wouldn't otherwise materialize if not for the massive cognitive dissonance they're juggling in their heads. I mean, if the guy was so firmly of the belief that god would provide everything he was asking for, and was continually disappointed by that throughout his teens and twenties, and had to keep coming up with ways to rationalize how a good god could just so callously ignore a devout believer, then of course he's going to drive himself fucking nuts.

This was the impression that I got and I found it highly disturbing. I wonder how much of a role religion has in driving people mad.

But if they are 'too far gone' as you say, I have no idea. I mean, yeah, they can be institutionalized for the remainder of their sad, empty lives, so what's the harm if the delusion is maintained by their caregivers as long as they don't interact with the general populace in any way? But only if those caregivers don't genuinely believe and are doing it out of pity, otherwise it would probably tend to get a little too weird.

I was thinking about this kind of place for Alzheimer's patients, where they basically live in a fake world because they are incapable of understanding the real one. I feel like it's a slippery slope to delude people selectively based on their capability. It seems easy, and it seems compassionate, but I don't think I would ever want to live that kind of life.

But the idea should be not to instill those delusions in the fucking first place. It's a goddamn human rights violation. Parents should get to name you, and that's it. The rest should be determined by the professionals; vaccinations, education, etc. Parents have proven time and again that they're incapable of doing things properly.

Well, some parents manage to botch naming their kids by spelling normal names in ridiculous ways and such.  
Seriously, though, in your view you think the solution to indoctrination is to standardize the ideologies under which children are raised? Who, then, is setting these standards? For example, look at the current state of the USA. Would you really want the US government setting the standards for what children are learning? With the number of interests from religions and corporations (I consider them similar entities) basically owning governments, I don't think the standard they would set would be of rationality. More likely of consumerism.

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It's terrible theology. If the Christian God is real, he doesn't tabulate the number of prayers you get or how much sympathy you can arouse. If the person sincerely prays for God's help, that's enough, and if God doesn't come through, sometimes the answer is 'no'. In fact, going around asking for prayers is the last thing the person should be doing, as a believing Christian, they should be on their knees begging God for mercy, and then get to work in faith that God will come through for them, not soliciting telepathic shout-outs.  

Nodding and acceding (or pretending to accede) to the guy's request isn't helping, it's polite apathy.

I know. It's just madness that people think that 'soliciting telepathic shout-outs' is a way to solve a problem. It actually pisses me off that the church indoctrinated this guy and so many others to think that is effective. It's plainly misleading, and if you are relying on prayer to do a damn thing for you, you are going to make worse decisions than someone who is looking at all the real factors influencing their situation. This may seem innocuous at the level I saw here, but that same complacency becomes dangerous when you have people making life and death decisions based on the hope that prayer is going to be effective. It manifests as everything from people using prayer over medicine, to politicians who send 'thoughts and prayers.'