Believing in Deities is a Form of Psychosis

[Little Rik]

I completely disagree.

Delusion is a form of psychosis, believing in that which is not real.

It is not human to believe in something so unnatural that it projects imagination into reality to the point where that imagination is accepted as reality.

Yes, when it comes to religion, there is someone to blame.  It is those who continue to believe in the delusion and continue to perpetuate it.

You're disagreement is misplaced. A delusion is an idiosyncratic belief held in the face of generally accepted reality, argument, or evidence. It only rises to the level of mental disorder if it substantially interferes with one's life or causes you to pose a threat to yourself or others. It only rises to psychosis if the mental disorder is severe. Minus those elements, a delusion is merely an opinion held stubbornly regardless of contradictory evidence. Arguably, holding a delusion that the majority of your community holds is an advantage in daily life, and not particularly idiosyncratic, which is a key component of the definition, that your belief is eccentric as well as stubbornly resistant to evidence and argument. Religious fixation and ideation can be a symptom of schizophrenia, but you certainly don't have to be a schizophrenic to prioritize your religion and think about it a lot. Calling ordinary religious belief a psychosis is a disservice both to them and to people suffering from severe mental illness.

It's perfectly human to project imagination onto reality. It might even be uniquely human. You can't throw a rock without it landing near a human who has been taught a story that likely isn't true that they yet maintain and project onto reality.

Those who are still trapped in theistic and other superstitious belief are victims. If you're naturally too skeptical to swallow myths, good for you, but if it came naturally to you, you didn't earn it by definition. Even if you struggled to throw off those kinds of beliefs, you had the right kind of exposures or the right kind of brain, or whatever it is that made it possible for you to do so while others languish in indoctrinated beliefs or mild to severe delusion.

The good news is, that unlike real delusion or psychosis, both very hard to treat and permanently cure, the cure to superstitious beliefs among those who hold them because of indoctrination and social reinforcement is as close as changing their minds.

Does that means that all those who fall in love should change their minds?  











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