The following are quotes from psychologist Peter Freeman, writing in “The Bulletin”(an Australian current affairs magazine).
Matthews also believed the same villains had a scheme to control the government.
Matthews, living at the start of the 19th Century, spent much time in a mental institution, but was often released into the community because:
And then
I’ve been thinking about this and I am unable to think of a satisfactory way of dividing those who report personal experience of the supernatural from those who we would judge as insane.
I am particularly thinking of Christians who report personal interaction with God (as many born again and other Christians do), or who start mouthing gibberish and believe they are speaking with god’s voice (speaking in tongues).
About the best I can come up with is that we do not judge people to be insane if they do, as part of a group, something that would be considered insane if they did it alone.
And yet by this definition, was Matthews insane, given that he is hardly the only person to report that his mind was being controlled by mysterious groups of people using mysterious means?
I’m not sure if we can find any hard-and-fast standard of what constitutes ‘normal’ and what is ‘insane’ - you could extend this to other arenas such as art; for example, I might consider it insanity to find pickled sheep aesthetically pleasing, but it’s been done and it’s been called art.
I suppose that whether or not something can be said to cause harm to others or to the individual concerned might be a start, but even then, we’d have to define harm in a way that inevitably not everybody would find acceptable.
I don’t think there is any way to distinguish religion (or anything else, including atheism) from insanity; it’s all to do with frames of reference.
I’ll be prepared to be persuaded otherwise though.
I’m in favor of who can function in society and who can’t. If your co-worker Bob doesn’t talk about his beliefs and when you finally drag it out of him he belives the Queen of the Universe is his dead grandmother who guides him through dreams well that’s a bit odd but as long as he does his job and doesn’t cause trouble he’s no crazier than anyone else. If your other co-worker Rob is a mainstream protestant who puts blood in Catholic communion wine to mock their beliefs then he’s loopy.
Of course people in general will think strange beliefs are indicative of insanity even if the holder lives a perfectly normal life. For instance if I prattle on about Jesus and how he helps me people might get irked that I talk about my faith but won’t think I’m a nut job. When I start talking about my invisible friends who help me out when I ask, and their master in the sky who controls everything and created the universe and frame it not as explicitely in a Christian manner the odd looks start comming. Try it for yourself, it is fun to see people react to the relatively accepted as sane doctrines of Christianity as if it is schizophrenic delusions just because you stripped away the lexicon.
Objectively speaking some religious people probably exhibit the biological correlates of certain mental disorders and their mental disorder is strongly tied with their religion. Still there are people who have decided based on what they think is good reasoning that a religion is true. They’re no crazier than someone who has made a choice about what climate they like, what sorts of friends they want or who eats peanut butter and salami sandwhiches.
I would say that ‘sanity’ and ‘insanity’ are simply majority points of view in any given culture. If a whole group of people believe something, they are a cult/religion and tend to be accepted, if not especially liked by the rest of the society. If one guy declares that the universe was sneezed out of God’s nose (apologies to Douglas Adams) then he’s a loony (technical psychiatric term…) …
I think this is from Shakespeare’s 12th NIght: (a para-phrase, not a quote…)
“Why is it that when a man acts like an infant, he is locked up, but children are allowed to run around free?”
This links in a way to something I speculated on when I was studying for my confirmation classes: (assuming a] the validity of Christianity and b] proof-denies-faith) if the Second Coming happened, would we recognise the Messiah? Perhaps He (or She) has been returning on a regular basis and being locked up before doing any good/judging etc.
“Insane” is considered a deragoratory term, yet it is a synonym for “irrational”, and most people agree that religion is not rational. Of course, there is the distinction between “irrational” and “nonrational”, but perhaps we discuss what the distinction between religion and sanity is, we should discuss whether there is one.
I think it would be useful if we could start by defining the distinction between insanity and sanity. (in terms other than that one is etymologically the opposite of the other).
This is easy. The people that are insane are the ones that make it up or just think that they are being spoken to. The sane people are the people that actually hear God.
Insanity is easily defined as doing something without reason.
Let’s articulate this a bit further though…
A concrete schizophrenic who scratches their legs because of the ants crawling on them (unobservable to everyone else), is still clearly doing something for a reason. In fact, my personal opinion is that it is impossible for a person to do something without a reason. As mentioned earlier, there does seem to be a majority rule when it comes to insanity. For concrete sensory observations; like visual, tactile and auditory equalities (human taste and smell barely has the ability to map milti-dimensional terrain… although these senses do accomplish that in other animals); the variation of their expression seems almost infinite, but the majority seems keyed into a very narrow set.
For abstract derivations:
(interdimensional; example: n,s,e,w,up,down)
from concrete equalities, the line of insanity gets a bit hazier… (this is where religious ideation would enter the picture).
In general; these distinctions are determined through lack of hypocracy.
No paradox
No infinite regress
This is fundamentally catagorized through determining whether the belief coincides with the desire fulfillment. If you want to live, jumping off a cliff would be a dissonant representation of the desire fulfillment. This person would be considered insane.
Being suicidal, contrary to media input, is not the definition of insanity - insanity is evaluated by the specific conditions found in a given individual based on their exposure to experience and education; and how this coincides with their desires. The final determination of insanity is the degree to which a formulation is acted upon, at which time it becomes evident that such human subject has drawn a conclusive ideation.
The requirements that necessitate belief in certain forms of thought are counter-intuitive/ counter-productive to the laws one would be compelled to obey.
Biblical Theism is an easy target:
1.) You should not kill
Law adopted
1a.) I want to go to heaven
Reason the law is adopted
2.) My life has a meaning greater than that of another being
Belief necessary to elicit a response to kill
Reason why you desire to go to heaven
The reason why a person desires to go to heaven conflicts with the law required to reach heaven. There is a system of corruptability here, that takes a gamble on denial within the basic indentured system, amassed for ‘realist’ survival.
Those who do not believe in the precept of God or heaven cannot possess the ability to kill another being… this belief in God and heaven within the Bible is in fact a requirement necessary to trigger the lofical validation of killing; which is ironically, counter-intuitive to the law necessary to attain the goal prescribed.
This person would have cognitive dementia. They would act upon an irrational belief of a means to an end; or an end to a means.
The best definition that I have heard for insanity is that it is a disease process resulting in dysfunctional behavior and/or thought process.
To the uninitiated, there are some manifestations of religion that may take on the look of this, but as an overall intuition I would argue that it is very functional and indeed can have an overall healthy effect on participants.
From Julian Leff’s book ‘The Unbalanced Mind’
London: Weidenfield and Nicholson 2001
“The term ‘psychosis’ is used for conditions in which the patient loses touch with reality; these include manic-depressive illness and schizophrenia. Up to the end of the nineteenth century these were lumped together under a general category of’madness’. It was the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin who separated off the two entities in I8g6, naming them ‘manic-depressive psychosis’ and ‘dementia praecox’. In I911 Eugen Bleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist, coined the term ‘schizophrenia’, which has displaced Kraepelin’s original label. The symptoms that the two psychotic conditions have in common are delusions and hallucinations. Delusions are defined as false beliefs, which are not shared by others from the person’s cultural background, and which cannot be shaken by argument. The proviso about the cultural background is essential but gives rise to many difficulties in interpretation.
Particular problems arise in relation to religious beliefs. The beliefs of mainstream religions which have millions of adherents create no dilemmas, but small sects can raise the
difficult issue of what constitutes an acceptable belief. Two recent examples are the sect headed by jim Jones in Guyana and the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas, led by David Koresh. Both ended tragically: Jim Jones’ group of more than 70o followers committed suicide at his instigation, while most of Koresh’s group died in a fire when their headquarters were stormed by federal troops. When a large group of people share a set of beliefs, however unusual they may seem to outsiders, they form a subculture which legitimises their convictions and invalidates their being labelled as delusions. An even more extreme example was the suicide of a small group of people in America and Switzerland as the comet Hale-Bopp passed close to the Earth. These people believed that they would be transported by aliens as the comet passed by and that they had to quit their earthly bodies in order to achieve this. This last example raises the question of how large a group has to be before it forms a recognisable subculture. The Hale-Bopp group of about two dozen people was probably close to the lower limit of size.
The complicating factor is that groups holding very unusual beliefs attract people who are deluded and who may find shelter in such a group, at least for a while. There is evidence that Jim Jones believed that he was the new saviour and that he had special powers of healing. He must have been convincing and plausible to have accumulated a large band of followers who accepted his claims, and were willing to die for him. There have been other historical figures who have claimed to be the Messiah: Shabbetai Zvi in Turkey during the seventeenth century persuaded a large number of his fellow Jews that he would lead them to Jerusalem to reestablish the land of Israel. When threatened with death by the sultan he converted to Islam. Since the eighteenth century no more false Messiahs have emerged from among the jews, as western peoples have become increasingly sceptical about the religious claims of individuals. Joan of Arc would not be able to persuade the French army to follow her into battle today on the grounds that she heard angelic voices giving her commands. At the time, the English soldiers who captured her did not dispute that she heard spirit voices, but they identified their source as the Devil rather than God, and burned her as a witch. While we no longer deal with witches so barbarically, they have not disappeared from our culture. There are groups of people practising as witches in Britain today and following satanic rituals. It should be evident that in order to judge the status of a person’s belief, it is necessary to be familiar with the convictions of any subculture to which the patient belongs. In the multicultural societies of today in which many small sects flourish, no individual could be expected to be familiar with all the subcultures likely to be encountered. In the absence of the necessary understanding of a subculture, it is essential to interview a person from the same cultural group as the patient, usually a relative, in order to learn about their shared beliefs.”
Like I said, frame of reference; Context; it could be argued by a religious majority that atheists merely refuse to examine the proof, or that their warped worldview automatically disqualifies the proof that they say they require.
I’m not saying this is a reasonable POV, just a possible one.
IMO, being a competent member of society brings one under suspicion quickly.
I do not trust people who do not swear. I do not trust people who dislike nudity. I do not trust people who drive the speed limit. I do not trust people who follow the law because it is the law.
There is something creepy about them. They remind me of Julia from 1984: follow all the little rules so you may break the big ones. Personally, I’d rather someone ate a rare steak, spilled beer down the front of their shirt after not thoroughly chewing the piece of meat, and belched loudly before getting down to work. You know where a guy like that (or girl, as the case may be) stands. The rest of them are a bureaucratic mystery. You need your forms ready in triplicate to find out who they are.
I don’t agree with everything the punks do, or the anarchists, and especially not the environmentalists, but they are (seemingly) very honest and open people, unashamed of what they do and who they are. The reserved society types really make me edgy.
And I think that that is a kind of insanity, too. Certianly going against the grain is a form of rebellion, and too much of it means you have Anti-social Personality Disorder. You’re supposed to love your fellow man, right? Unless he flies planes into major skyscrapers, then we get to have Hate Week.
If it is a matter of perspective, then from my perspective everyone is a little bit crazy. Why, just the other day I saw a guy talking to a piece of glowing plastic
But if being able to get along in society is a function of sanity, and we know darn well that society rapidly changes, does that mean we are all sane or all crazy? When someone says they were born in the wrong time, I think I must agree with them.
One more vote for the frame of reference - In the movie “The Man in The Glass Booth”, the title character was believed to be a Nazi that ran a camp. He was judged sane for trial even though he was felt to be psychotic. The reason, he lived in a psychotic society, therefore he was sane for the society in which he lived. Justthink is way off. Insanity can be true to its own logic, can be internally consistent; an insane person may do things for reasons, but the reasons may share little with your reality.
gexgex, dem’s fightin words! Atheism is also without proof. But, boy, has that been a subject beaten to death!
