So irrational. With a little sprikling of crazy (demons out to get you?).
I stand by my vote.
No workable definition of “crazy” can include 90% of humans. You might as well say that 90% of humans aren’t human.
Are people who ask questions like,“Are religous people crazy”, crazy?
Oh please.
Again, this is the hypocrisy. If it’s demons out to get your soul!! It’s a belief that should be respected and in no way is any indication of the crazies.
If it’s the same thing, but from another religion or simply some other wacky belief it’s, “Wow, look at those nut jobs”.
Who are you to say that crazy isn’t part of the human condition?
Maybe crazy is the norm and rationality is the deviation.
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense (maybe I’m crazy too!?).
We have evolved to be extremely susceptible to “indoctrination” at a young age. Along with important concepts and ideas (evolutionary advantage) we also pick up the crazies from our parents/peer group/society.
And our brains have also evolved to make patters out of random events. This helped keep us alive, but also allowed the crazies in.
The OP needs to get out more. Meet some real, live religious people, and not just the loonies on TV.
Some religious people are, indeed, crazy, to greater or lesser degrees. Or maybe we should say, some crazy people are religious.
But some religious people are among the sanest, most grounded, most level-headed people I know.
If you judge craziness vs. sanity based on competence at dealing with those facets of life that theists and atheists both agree fall under the heading of Reality, I don’t see any evidence that the religious people are any worse off.
[QUOTE=brocks]
Either they are crazy, or I am crazy.
[/QUOTE]
Why can’t it be both? 
Nonsense. If aliens filled the atmosphere of the planet with schizophrenia inducing gas, 100 percent of us would be insane. Numbers have nothing to do with whether or not someone or something is sane.
No.
Yes.
In what way? There is no evidence for any religion being true. Why is not believing in something with no evidence stupid?
That’s crazy talk 
Actually, I heard somewhere that the population usually divided about 50:50 on support for the inferiority of women.
The consensus among scholars who study religion, both believers and non-believers, is that crazy and/or stupid are not useful words to describe religious people or their religious experiences. A book I can recommend is:
by Ann Taves, former President of the American Academy of Religion.
There’s a lot of research going on in the field of religion, including how people come to deem experiences they have as religious (what the above book is mostly about), how religious communities and doctrines function in day to day life, and basically just how that whole religion thing works, being done by reputable scholars firmly committed to the ideals of modern academia. If you were to look into it, I doubt you would change your beliefs about the truth of any religious claims, but hopefully you would come to feel more at ease with the religious people around you, and raise your opinion of humanity in general.
I can’t guarantee you will change your judgment about certain politicians, but hey, a start is a start.
If we’re going to consider scenarios involving aliens, then I guess you’re right. So let me rephrase: No workable definition of “crazy” can include 90% of humans in their natural state, who are perfectly able to function, reproduce and otherwise thrive every bit as well as the other 10%.
“Crazy”, in order to mean anything, needs to be a pathological condition that sets one apart from the population in such as way as to be unable to fully function in a society. Once the majority of the population naturally adopts a given behavior, that is, by definition, the norm. If we all suddenly evolved to be serial killers, that would be the normal human condition.
“Crazy” doesn’t mean “thinks differently than DT dose”.
No, for whatever reason there’s been a lot of historical support for the alleged inferiority of women by women. Woman hating and woman oppressing groups tend to have an awful lot of female supporters. It’s a major reason why men have typically been in charge, in my opinion; while they exist, men who support the idea that they are inferior and should be subjugated are very rare.
“Atheists, not believing in a God who is the source of morality, are all inherently immoral, or at best amoral.”
The reason that proposition is incorrect is the same reason the OP is incorrect --regardless of your beliefs or lack thereof.
It’s a tough one, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this without ever coming to a satisfactory conclusion. The things that many religious people say, think, and do could, as Der Trihs says, be classified as crazy. If instead of God they were talking about Zeus then we’d think they were crazy or at least stupid, and I suspect many Christians, for example, would think someone talking about Zeus as if he were real would be tempted to think just the same as atheists do when people talk about the Christian God.
However as others have said most religious people are patently not crazy, at least in the sense that they can educate themselves about all kinds of things, hold down difficult jobs that many of us wouldn’t be able to do, converse with everyone about all manners of things, solve logic puzzles, get high IQ scores etc.
There does seem to be some ability of the brain to hold two opposing thoughts at the same time, and to apply logic differently depending on the subject. I’m not sure I can do this and perhaps that’s why I’m a non-believer. I can’t even say this makes me a better person, but there does seem to be some kind of difference.
I’m also very interested in suggestibility, some people just believe whatever the majority around them believes, and do whatever is expected of them in a given situation rather than using what some of us would call rational thinking. I’m not sure how many people fit into this group but I’m starting to think it’s lots, and for those of us who are not as suggestible they are really difficult to understand. I went to a stage hypnotist show last year, he told everyone to shut their eyes, think that their hands were rising without their control - when I opened my eyes I was surrounded by people with raised hands, it was a little shocking. I know hypnosis is not understood and some people think it’s all fake, but I knew some of these people and they couldn’t explain what was happening to them.
On an aside, if anyone knows of any books or any websites that deal with suggestibility in terms of what it is, how many people are suggestible, theories behind it etc. then please let me know. I want to learn more, but have found little.
Care to state succinctly what precisely that “reason” is, Poly? Thanks very much.
Nonsense. Again, insane is insane regardless of what the percentages are. And the believers don’t function as well, and even if they did that wouldn’t make them any saner, it would just mean they live in a world designed to cater to their insantiy.
And I noticed you dodged a basic point I was making; are you going to try to claim that if everyone on Earth was schizophrenic that schizophrenia is no longer a mental illness?
Using thefollowing definition:
Using the bolded definition, is it impractical to spend time worshipping and believing in something that doesn’t exist? Is it senseless to do the same? I mean, what’s the likelihood that of the numerous gods and goddesses mankind has worshipped since we have documented such things, that you-the religionist-have stumbled on the correct one?
The reason that’s incorrect is because religion is a source of corruption, not morality. Obeying what God supposedly says is mindless obedience, not morality. And obeying what you think God wants you to do is self indulgence since God is imaginary, so you are just doing whatever you like and putting a divine seal of approval on it. It’s the believers who are " inherently immoral, or at best amoral", at least to the extent they base their behavior and attitudes on their religion. Moral behavior requires as a first step that the corruption and insanity of religion be ignored.