At what point does faith become insanity?

[Mister Agenda]

It's not unreasonable to believe what you were raised to believe, which every adult important to you believes. I'm not an atheist because i'm smarter or saner than most theists, I'm an atheist because I got lucky. If everyone in my family had been of the same fundamentalist faith, if I had been raised in a less literalist religion, if I hadn't decided to read the Bible on my own; cover-to-cover, if I hadn't been exposed to diversity of belief in the military, if I hadn't started becoming skeptical of aliens, cryptids, and the paranormal...heck, if I hadn't taken some science and Logic and Intro to Religon in the same semester while finally finishing college in my thirties; I might still be a theist, maybe even a fundamentalist.

It might be easier now in the internet age to get there, but it took me about 20 years from first doubt to 'hey, I think I'm an atheist'. It could well have gone differently.

[Angrboda]

I'm always struck by how accidental life can be. I was waiting at the bus stop yesterday, and there was a woman, likely homeless, who had just arrived with a sign begging for food. I didn't have anything to give her, so I didn't. But she became agitated at the lack of response she was getting from people and gave up after about 10 minutes. I and another person remarked about feeling sad for her, but as I remarked at the time, there are plenty of places about town where you can get a free meal. And I was thinking afterward that if you go to any hospital or government center you can talk to someone, usually a social worker, who can help you with information about the resources that you can access. And I thought about the mission in St. Paul that I go past once a week on my way to Maplewood, and how like the mission in St. Paul, there are multiple centers about the city where you can get sorted, at least temporarily. But I only know about the one in St. Paul and a homeless shelter downtown. And this woman probably doesn't know about getting help from hospitals, or government centers, and community drop-in centers. It's just an accident of birth and life that she wasn't born with the mental resources that I have, and that she doesn't know about the resources that she could be drawing upon, likely due to never having been exposed to them. So, just by poor, shit luck, she is facing a situation which feels overwhelming and out of control, not because of anything she did or omitted act, but just because she hasn't had the advantages that I have had and the knowledge that I have, which, if she had, would make her situation something she could likely navigate and manage. Instead, by sheer shitty luck, she finds herself on the street, in crisis, trying to manage a situation she has no idea of how to manage.

[The Grand Nudger]

If we find ourselves asking whether it's unreasonable to believe unreasonable things, and that the answer is no..I think we've pretty much abandoned the stated criteria. Meanwhile, the answer to the opq remains. At what point does faith become insanity? Alot - but it's a socially accepted kind, and immune to categorization on precisely those..and no other, grounds. Not even self harm or communal celebrations of self harm tip that intentionally frozen scale. If a person were to attach heavy objects to their bodies with meathooks and needles and dance through the subway they'd end up on a gurney in seconds..but if a bunch of people get together and do it they call it valid religious expression that would be inappropriate to comment on from a mental health standpoint.

It's hard to see it as anything other than a way for mental health to coexist as a profession (and the professionals as people) with an aggressive and aggressively unreasonable collection of contemporary faiths that...not for nothing, would've killed many more medical professionals if they'd objected more often or more strenuously to such behaviors. It's a shallow cover, at any rate, as mental health may be unwilling to poke that bear and call a religion disordered, but it has absolutely no problem treating disordered individuals with distinctly religious themes as, essentially, a big ole pack of lone wolves. Roll that around for a minute to truly wallow in the irony. We can't call a thing unwell because a bunch of people are doing it as a part of their valid cultural expression..but when they do the unwell thing that their faiths strongly compell them to do and it horrifies us..suddenly.....they're individuals again.

Personally, I think all of this, including peoples own perceptions about the issue, are a lingering effect of religious cultural framing. We're allowed, both culturally and professionally, to say that religions are untrue or unreasonable - but we are not allowed to say they are unwell..or..perish the thought..bad. This arrangement can only benefit the bad actors, and that's why it exists. These religions themselves..otoh, after having crafted such a negotiated settlement, do not respect it when apprehending and commenting on each other.

[The End of Atheism]

At what point does faith become insanity?

Both the terms "faith" and "insanity" are extremely contentious and vague. There can't possibly be a precise answer to your question.

Also the term insanity is no longer used by health professionals to define any mental illness

[no one]

People do not choose to be mentally ill. They do however, choose to believe the obvious nonsense, that is faith!

[The End of Atheism]

People do not choose to be mentally ill. They do however, choose to believe the obvious nonsense, that is faith!

Faith isn't nonsense. We all have faith in something, without any faith in anything it's truly hard to go on living

[Fake Messiah]

People do not choose to be mentally ill. They do however, choose to believe the obvious nonsense, that is faith!

Faith isn't nonsense. We all have faith in something, without any faith in anything it's truly hard to go on living

I don't have any faith.

[Angrboda]

People do not choose to be mentally ill. They do however, choose to believe the obvious nonsense, that is faith!

Faith isn't nonsense. We all have faith in something, without any faith in anything it's truly hard to go on living

Are you familiar with the fallacy of equivocation?

[The Grand Nudger]

People do not choose to be mentally ill. They do however, choose to believe the obvious nonsense, that is faith!

I doubt they do.  Just like the situation in Angrbodas comments, I suspect that a great deal of what people do or don't believe is ultimately accidental.

[Belacqua]

People do not choose to be mentally ill. They do however, choose to believe the obvious nonsense, that is faith!

Faith isn't nonsense. We all have faith in something, without any faith in anything it's truly hard to go on living

People here use the word "faith" to mean "things that other people hold to be true according to standards which I don't approve of." 

They use the word "knowledge" to mean "things which I hold to be true according to standards which I approve of."