Is faith a Mental Disease?

[Joel]

I'm not sure I would call it a mental disease.
Some people are definitely more susceptible to trying to use faith as a legitimate form of evidence, though.

[Creed of Heresy]

Well, I think "faith" in the religious sense is a coping mechanism for when our species was young and didn't know any better. Our reasoning processes were just beginning to develop. We had questions, but no answers, so we had to come up with our own. But our reasoning processes have continued to develop. They're getting more advanced, and they're starting to yield answers to our questions. Faith is obsolete, and only continues to exist because there's still way too many human beings on this planet that are either idiots or they want everything to be simple and easy and lacking complexity. Shallow-minded fools, essentially.

[Psykhronic]

I am hesitant to call faith a mental disease or disorder or illness or *semantics*. Although as someone who has both had faith at a younger age and had actual delusions older as an atheist, I may be biased.

[paulpablo]

[/b]I've been reading a few links on the web concerning the subject matter.

I'm not sure if I can agree 100% but I would think faith to be somewhat of an ignorant laziness or something like that.

Your feelings/thoughts please.

It depends which type of faith you mean.

[Something completely different]

I really dont like asking that question.

Cause if it were, it would give you the right to treat those who have faith as if they were suffering from a mental disease.

Which is a pritty scary thing to think about, considering how some regimes like the soviet union, communist china and nazi germany simply declared those who disagreed with regime policy to suffer from a "mental disease" and locked them away.

[Dionysius]

I think it can become a disease but it can also be a tremendous tool to help an individual develop a sense of self-worth in a world where self-assertion has its own standard of fitness.

As Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players."

Faith at its core inspires individual conduct to a higher measure where the fruits of such effort can be sociologically gauged. It can also be used to gauge its own ineffectuality and in a past age it worked its wonderful magic forcibly dragging those dregs of vestigial animality; human impostors out of their dungeons and cellars and into the light of day.

Now, however, that faith is rapidly, if not already, a deteriorating sickness that must needs be elevated or transformed into an image more becoming of modernity and brotherly cooperation. Good Orderly Direction is beckoning.

[arewethereyet]

I think many hold onto faith because that's what you do. Their parents' do, grandparents, neighbors, etc. I don't think a lot of people really examine if they believe what they claim or if they just keep it up because it's expected in their world.

[thesummerqueen]

Define mental disease first.

Some people have fantasy prone personalities. Those people I think are in more danger. Others don't, but have faith anyway. Nothing's black and white.

[Rahul]

I can't have any sympathy for a guy who is such a complete imbecile that he would sign all of the papers over before he got his money.

I also wouldn't have any sympathy if the used car dealer was found in an alley with a cut throat soon.

[Magnum]

I can't have any sympathy for a guy who is such a complete imbecile that he would sign all of the papers over before he got his money.

I also wouldn't have any sympathy if the used car dealer was found in an alley with a cut throat soon.

From my understanding it seemed the guy really trusted the dealer as if good business friends and even visited each other. He had faith in the guy. I can imagine him being furious and deeply disappointed.

That's why I ask the question; Do faith and trust go together with stupidity?

Even in my own life I was very religious when I was young. If I look back I can only see that faith caused more damage than help with anything at all.

Practically it mostly takes a few seconds longer to really think things through, I mean to make sure rather than just blindly believing things. Other things take time and work on your nerves. Not all is under our direct control all the time.

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Define mental disease first.

Some people have fantasy prone personalities. Those people I think are in more danger. Others don't, but have faith anyway. Nothing's black and white.

Defining mental disease is a job for the psychologists etc. but its believed that many famous psychologists defined religious faith as a sickness or something like that. Then again atheist psychologists differ radically from their believing brothers in crime so to speak.

It's a settled certainty that robbing a bank is unacceptable. That's quite black and white.

I like the idea that faith is an excuse not to think.