(April 14, 2015 at 4:09 am)Aoi Magi Wrote: One primary difference: Mental disorders are recognized as actual disabilities and people are trying to cure it. Religious indoctrination is not recognized as a disability nor acknowledged as wilful-ignorance.
On a somewhat related note: a guy made a role-playing game, and one of the parts of it is you can choose advantages offset by disadvantages. I loved his treatment of the "delusional" disadvantage:
"Delusional: The character is absolutely certain of something that does not appear to be true and will not be swayed by any evidence to the contrary. This would include most religious beliefs, but the character is not awarded Disadvantages for believing ridiculous things that are believed by a large portion of the population, because such delusions do not negatively impact the character. So if you believe that there are important messages from aliens coded in dog howls, that's a disadvantage; but if you believe that there are important messages from Jesus coded in cheese sandwiches, this is not a disadvantage. Not because it isn't counter-factual and immune to contrary evidence, but because society at large has accepted people with such delusions and made accommodations for them."
I particularly like that last line. Society does go out of it's way to protect the crazy things people believe, even if they go against what the vast majority of society believes.
