Religion and insanity

[TaraJo]

There were undoubtedly religious aspects to all of this. I think the biggest one is that the guy's wife stayed with him because the church looks down on divorce, even when he was losing it and becoming increasingly abusive and violent. The marriage only ended when he did/said something that made his wife think he was going to kill one of he kids.

Also, they believed that demon possession actually existed, and if you think someone is possessed by a demon, you don't seek medical help; you look for religious help (which usually comes in the form of prayer).

But the part that upsets Lee the most is his grandparents. You see, before his parents got together, his biological dad had been married previously. During that marriage, he was even more abusive to the point that he was punishing people by tieing them up and just leaving them there. And the crazy guy's parents, instead of addressnig his problems, they just encouraged him to go out there and get married and have that family that good Mormon families are supposed to have. When he found a woman who was willing to marry him, they conveniently forgot to mention any of his history of violence and let her walk right into years of abuse.

And I think there can be some amount of link between delusions and religious beliefs. If you look up his profile on google, he specifically claims to be the "Only member of the Mormon Church alive today who has ever earned the honor of meeting Jesus Christ in person." And it's worth mentioning, if someone told you they were talking to an invisible friend in the sky and he told them to do crazy things, most of us would think he's crazy. Yet religion is filled with stories about prophets getting messages from god telling them to do absurd things and we think that's perfectly normal. I mean, think about it: Jerimiah walked around Jerusalem with a yolk over his shoulders, preaching to the people because god told him to. If I went to downtown Houston today and there was a guy walking around with a yolk over his shoulders, preaching to the people, would you think he's crazy? Would you entertain the thought that his message might be divinely inspired? And if not, why would you believe a previous person who did the same thing was divinely inspired?

Yes, the generosity of the Mormon church did help his family survive. I have to give them credit for that. That generosity doesn't take away from the damage the church has done, though, most notably the church funds a lot of extreme homophobia and they're probably the reason the Boy Scouts are so staunchly homophobic. Also, they only help their own; had this been a Catholic family or a Jewish family or an atheist family, they would have just let them starve. I think the bad outweighs the good.