Religion is a Delusion/Mental Illness

[Razzle]

From a psychiatrist's perspective, religion can be considered a delusion or illness (The God Delusion). This is why many religions are anti-psychiatry (Scientology is very anti-psychiatry). Hearing voices (God, angels, or demons) is a symptom of psychosis in mental illness. Speaking in tongues? Exorcisms? Religious delusions are common among the mentally ill and as we know the "sane" too. There is a book called the Three Christs of Ypsilanti about three schizophrenic patients that thought they were Jesus. Prayer is trying to talk to "God." Anyone that talks to God needs an antipsychotic and a mood stabilizer. I should know, part of my bipolar when I am manic is religiosity and obsession over existence of God, religion, the meaning of life and death. When I am stable, I am more rational and atheist in my thinking.

http://www.bible.ca/psychiatry/psychiatr...hrenic.htm

If that were true, antipsychotics would stop religious people being religious. They don't. If you give a psychotic person an antipsychotic and it works, they only stop holding any religious beliefs that started after the onset of the episode, as you did. They don't suddenly stop believing the stuff they grew up with or converted to before the episode. The neurological causes, the mechanisms are completely different in what psychiatry defines as 'delusions' to what they are in most religious people's false beliefs.

Because indoctrination, experiences induced by the power of suggestion, and logical fallacies that lead to misattribution of natural phenomena are not the same neurologically as organic delusions, you can only cure the former by education or deprogramming, and the latter by drugs, electroshock or brain surgery.