Religion as a mental illness

[Cephus]

But that really is the problem, isn't it?  The determination is entirely subjective, something that we don't do with other medical diagnoses.  Either you have cancer or you don't.  What people in that particular area think about cancer is irrelevant.  How many people have cancer in that area is meaningless.  You either have it or  you don't. But psychological diagnoses are subjective.  They depend on what others in the area consider normal.  They depend on a subjective determination of whether they're a danger to themselves of others.  If you live in an area where everyone believes in unicorns, you're not delusional because your delusions are commonplace.  That's utterly stupid. Society doesn't get to set the standards for reality.  Reality exists regardless of what society wants.  That really makes psychology a pretty pointless pursuit.

The point of clinical psychology is to relieve subjective distress or disability.  What causes distress or disability may indeed be relative, not only between societies but within them as well.  There are people who get along fine in society with 'strange beliefs' and people with similar beliefs for whom they are a great dysfunction.  The point of diagnosis of mental disorders is to group people who may respond to a specific treatment together, and it is the response to treatment which forms the basis of diagnosis.  While the vast majority of religious people may have delusional beliefs, the prevalence in society seems to indicate that it is a product of a normally functioning brain.  Treating a normally functioning brain generally has no effect because there is no deficit in the functioning of the brain.  Since treatment doesn't apply to the religious, and they don't suffer distress or disability, it would make no sense to group them as mentally ill.

But that makes no sense whatsoever.  "Normal" and "common" are not synonyms.  If you had a society where chopping off people's arms was commonplace, would you consider that to be normal?  Is it healthy behavior?  Or is that unhealthy?  If the point of psychology is to make everyone just like everyone else, without an objective baseline, then what use is it?

[IATIA]

If you had a society where chopping off people's arms was commonplace, would you consider that to be normal?

I would not consider that 'normal' behavior, but I do not live in that society. In that particular society, that may very well be normal and the 'abnormal' (those that refuse to cut off arms) could be incarcerated for 'abnormality'.

[Cephus]

If you had a society where chopping off people's arms was commonplace, would you consider that to be normal?

I would not consider that 'normal' behavior, but I do not live in that society.  In that particular society, that may very well be normal and the 'abnormal' (those that refuse to cut off arms) could be incarcerated for 'abnormality'.

And this strikes you as useful?

[rexbeccarox]

Moderator Notice
Moved from Life Sciences to Religion.

Moderator Notice
Never mind; I put it back

[Angrboda]

The point of clinical psychology is to relieve subjective distress or disability.  What causes distress or disability may indeed be relative, not only between societies but within them as well.  There are people who get along fine in society with 'strange beliefs' and people with similar beliefs for whom they are a great dysfunction.  The point of diagnosis of mental disorders is to group people who may respond to a specific treatment together, and it is the response to treatment which forms the basis of diagnosis.  While the vast majority of religious people may have delusional beliefs, the prevalence in society seems to indicate that it is a product of a normally functioning brain.  Treating a normally functioning brain generally has no effect because there is no deficit in the functioning of the brain.  Since treatment doesn't apply to the religious, and they don't suffer distress or disability, it would make no sense to group them as mentally ill.

But that makes no sense whatsoever.  "Normal" and "common" are not synonyms.  If you had a society where chopping off people's arms was commonplace, would you consider that to be normal?  Is it healthy behavior?  Or is that unhealthy?  If the point of psychology is to make everyone just like everyone else, without an objective baseline, then what use is it?

The point is what is the underlying brain function that is giving rise to the behavior. While there may be societies where adolescents undergo horrific rites of passage, the commonality seems to imply that there is nothing wrong with the brain that is causing the behavior.

[IATIA]

I would not consider that 'normal' behavior, but I do not live in that society.  In that particular society, that may very well be normal and the 'abnormal' (those that refuse to cut off arms) could be incarcerated for 'abnormality'.

And this strikes you as useful?

"Useful" can become a whole thread on it's own.  I made no inference to "useful" or not, but rather only commenting on the relative term 'normal'.  Normal does does not force right, wrong, useful or whatever, normal is based on a bell curve and 'commonplace' can very well be normal regardless of one's personal judgement.

[AFTT47]

Good point. You can diagnose a physical cause of a delusion and that will be objective. And in the vast majority of people, religion (or any other non-rational belief) has no physical cause as a result of a physiological malfunction but of the general limitations of our species.

But you ought to be able to say that a belief in anything that we cannot demonstrate to be real is, by definition, a delusion.  It doesn't matter whether you're talking to a giant invisible rabbit or a god, we have no reason to think that these things exist, thus they represent a mental aberration.  But the people who believe in Harvey get put away or drugged up, the people who talk to gods do not.  It's hypocritical.

We can objectively say that believing in something without evidence is not logical and perhaps even not rational. I don't believe we can say it is a mental aberration because that implies a malfunction and the evidence points to their being none. The sad fact is that while the human brain has a capacity for logic, it is a secondary function. Emotion is primary. So the brain is functioning normally. It just isn't very good at processing information when there is a lot of emotional attachment.

[drfuzzy]

I would interject though that joining in a ubiquitous, traditional and socially accepted far-out belief is much less a sign of mental illness than being the only believer, because the genesis of the belief is usually very different. You can grow up in catholic society, learn to truly believe in the virgin mary and be a perfectly functioning member of that society. With that, the usual definition of a mental illness is afaik not met. If someone spontaneously starts to believe things of that type, there is usually something not quite right with that person a priori.

Yes, RedRod . . . I have been known to say that I would love to see religious belief categorized as a mental illness sometime before I die. But I agree with Alex . . . this is a function of upbringing (a person almost always has the same religion as their parents unless rebelling . . . or enlightened . . . ) so this is an educational and cultural function.  Religious practice, therefore, is not a mental illness.  The system is working just fine. 

      ALTHOUGH . . . I was raised by individuals so consumed with their religion that they chose to distance themselves from society and distrust anyone who was not in their church. They refused to allow television and newspapers in the house and sent us to Xtian schools. The house radio played the Xtian station from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. They followed extremist preachers with the fervor of cult members.

When a person chooses to live with a truly warped worldview, a "respectable" religion can easily become a cult.  That IS mental illness.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Religion is a pernicious meme deliberately fashioned over centuries to disable critical thinking & demand unconditional obedience.

I see it like an infection myself. An infection with a parasitic meme that changes your behaviour and uses you to spread to other people.

When people talk about mental illness they think about the brain being imbalanced, and not necessarily caused by an infection. But excluding the brain, most illnesses are caused by infections.

[abaris]

If you had a society where chopping off people's arms was commonplace, would you consider that to be normal?

A common mistake to project emotions. There have been societies where human sacrifice was the norm. These people haven't been insane, they only had a different outlook. My emotions say it's unnatural, but my mind asks, why did they do it. As a historian, as I said in another thread, you virtually go blind if you allow your emotions to take the driver's seat. You never will understand what made a society like that tick. And you never will understand why it happened and if it could happen again.

Also, that's usually not what makes or breaks any given society. It's only part of a complicated mix of different influences. So, if you want to learn anything, you better don't make any emotional judgments from your very own perspective, based on what you were brought up to consider the norm.

And by the way, it's the most common mistake theists make when dealing with atheists. Judging by what they call a universal system or morals.