(August 1, 2017 at 12:20 pm)CeruleanNight Wrote: It is to my belief, and observation, that having actual faith in any sort of deity from religious texts or folklore is a form of psychosis.Mere denial / compartmentalization / delusion / groupthink is not psychosis.
What is psychosis? For those who don't know, psychosis is defined as a severe mental illness where in someone has lost touch with external reality. In other words, they believe in things that simply aren't real. And applying the facts to the topic of religion, with our current era's knowledge: it is indeed a FORM of psychosis.
Now before you lose yourself, I'd like to state something. Religion, is barely often truly believed in. I tried to be a Christian once, and no matter how much I tried I could not believe in something that was utterly nonexistent and lose my touch with reality.
People who do choose to be truly faithful and believe in such deities, are by, factual terms in a state of psychosis. With our current worldly knowledge, the facts stand true: gods and deities are not real. The facts are what we must go by in this debate, beliefs and faith, is by psychosis alone. While being mentally ill with psychosis has different effects, there have been many studies to show that religion in general is psychologically damaging.
Furthermore, many people in our history have believed in deities, so were all of them affected by psychosis? Firstly, I'd like to re-define the meaning behind a mental disorder. A mental disorder is simply a classification for a grouping of conditions to make understanding HUMAN ABNORMALITIES better. In it's primitive state, mental disorders are obsolete. There is no BIOLOGICAL condition, but rather an abnormality of the mind, at least I think. So technically they weren't 'ill', but just mentally abnormal in OUR PERSPECTIVE TIME. However then again psychosis of this form could've been perfectly normal at that time.
Then there are people who are like me, who tried their hardest to believe but couldn't due to the facts. With these people, I think they were merely pretending with religion in order to avoid persecution and whatnot. So with all of that stated, what are you thoughts?
Some questions to think on;
- Is it ethical to consider truly religious people mentally ill with psychosis?
- Should religion be eliminated from society to prevent psychological damage?
- Do you know anyone who went insane over God?
- Any more comments?
I will grant you that the more we know via the scientific method, the more untenable / unjustified religious beliefs are, and the more dysfunction must be ginned up to keep people in religious faith by countering awareness of and trust in objective reality inputs. But this is a self-limiting issue. Fundamentalist religion is crumbling to the extent that education and personal wealth are dominant. The bigger threat right now, in my view, to the ultimate marginalization of religion is not religion itself, but the growth of income and educational inequality and the disappearance of a healthy middle class. Religion will continue to prey on the vulnerable -- the ignorant, uneducated and desperate. For awhile there we were depriving them of their inventory of followers; now, we might be creating a new underclass for them to give false hope to.
To your question about whether religious ideation rises to the level of mental illness, in a particular case I think the litmus test would be whether the adherent can function adequately in everyday life. Most of them hold down jobs, raise families, and are law abiding citizens. Therefore they are not sufficiently impaired to be considered mentally ill. Mental illness is not either / or, it's a continuum, and I think the ability to function as a somewhat useful member of society is the dividing line here.
