In GD a thread exists where a poster shares that he has received word from God: “The democrats will win their election, but then comes the knife”
The moderator ruled this “witnessing” and judged expressing concern about someone hearing the voice of God as a possible sign of a psychotic break to be a slam at the poster.
Not questioning the ruling and not wanting to put here anything that belongs there. But the question of when hearing voices is a religious experience versus is psychosis is one I could use some clarity on.
Is that concern completely unwarranted and an ignorant slam of someone’s deeply spiritual experience? (A position that an atheist can share, merely accepting that deep religious convictions can become manifest as auditory hallucinations without any other hallucinations or delusions present.)
Or is it a reasonable concern to express?
It may even be a GQ answerable one if there is data out there as to how often individuals who hear god literally speaking to them also have, have had, or later develop, other overt signs of psychosis.
Being a believing Christian, of the Catholic variety, I do believe that it is possible that God may speak to someone, or at least communicate in such a way that the recipient of the communication believes that he or she is hearing the voice of God.
That said, I’d be extremely concerned if someone told me that he or she had actually heard God speaking. Especially if the content of that communication appears to be a call to violence. My faith tells me that God simply does not call for us to commit violence against our fellow humans.
I’d also be concerned if a communication from God was perceived as an actual voice. It may be that God chooses to communicate in this way on rare occasions, but skepticism is called for.
Although this has the danger of running into a Great Debate, there are passages in the Bible that appear to this reader to be God advocating violence against other humans. Do you have a different interpretation, or did God stop advocating violence at some point in the past?
To the OP: Lots of people have said that they’ve had a literal communication with God. I’m inclined to say “psychosis, but a pretty common one”.
One person with crazy, psychotic beliefs is a lunatic. One hundred people with crazy, psychotic beliefs is a cult. One million people with crazy, psychotic beliefs is a religion. :smack:
That being said, it’s my personal opinion that anyone who harbors the craziest, silliest beliefs isn’t necessary delusional. TALKING about it, however, is delusional. For example, you could believe that the NSA is secretly reading your thoughts and plastering them on billboards all over town, and as long as you don’t talk about it you’re not crazy, because hey, it might actually be true. But once you start talking about it, people are going to label you “crazy” simply because they don’t share your system of faith. Doesn’t matter if you’re being stalked by the Teenage FBI or if you’re living in the 19th Century and believe that tiny, microscopic germs cause all disease – if people know you’re not kowtowing to the norm, they’re gonna lock you away.
It would be easy to go the GD route with this and posit that “reality” is merely that which some critical mass of others also accept as true while the same are delusions or hallucinations if they are not shared by others.
In that sense if religious hallucinations are isolated, devoid of the other thought process abnormalities characteristic of schizophrenia, and not part of broader delusions such as of the paranoid type, then perhaps they are a normal variant that can be part of (or emergent of) deeply held religious belief systems. Within certain cultural subgroups and societies they may even be beneficial.
What I’d love is some numbers on how often people have isolated auditory hallucinations that are not part of a broader psychosis (either extant or soon to become more florid). I suppose the content of those being of a religious content in someone with a baseline strong religious worldview should not surprise.
I didn’t see the OP claiming he literally heard voices. The Voice of God has different meanings, some of the faithful believe it would not be physically manifest, for all you know he’s talking about John Facenda.
I’ve seen someone descend into schizophrenia, I’d be worried if the OP was showing signs of increasing irrationality but this is pretty mild in terms of religious experiences. The line between religion and psychosis has to be further off that.
The thing I’ve harped on a great many times, is Joseph, who changed his life because of what he was told by an angel. So, okay, if a poster here went on and on about having gotten a message from an angel – well, that’s the OP’s question, right?
But as I understand it, Joseph would explain that he got that message from an angel in a dream. So – what’s the appropriate response, here on the SDMB, if someone followed Joseph’s example by excitedly telling us that he got a message from an angel in a dream, which he thinks is totally worth mentioning?
He is constantly reminding me to be more loving to my fellow people, to be more accepting of others as they are rather than as I would prefer them to be, and He consistently calls on me to examine why I might be acting uncharitably, and to determine how I might be more charitable.
But He doesn’t do this in words, or anything I can describe as words. I “experience” His reminders/admonitions; I don’t hear them.
Devout Catholic though I am, if I woke up one morning, and God said to me, in words, “Go ye to the Jack in the Box on Veteran and Santa Monica, order ye a breakfast platter, and eat ye of it. And when thou hast eaten of it, SHOOT YE UP THE JOINT…”
We have had posters here that have said they literally heard God speak to them, and there seems to be a consensus among the religionists that it is rude to question this, and even ruder to ask what(or who) God sounded like.
It’s not rude to question it. But it is rude (and ignorant) to label it as psychotic when, you know, people with appropriate qualifications and clinical experience don’t consider it to be so.
Illusory perceptions of sensory experiences are not, in themselves, psychotic.
Standing by itself I’d consider it a slam as well. I am pretty much a stone atheist, so I don’t consider hearing the VoG in a literal sense to be a possibility. However…the human mind is wonderfully skilled at fooling itself. It becomes a definitional problem with where harmful psychosis starts and simply fervently believing in something until you imagine it into existence ends.
Or in other words I think someone can sincerely believe they hear God speaking to them in some fashion and in other respects still be reasonably sane and functional. Given that I hold with possibility, I think it is generally rude to publically label someone as mentally ill, if what you consider their delusion seems harmless. I expect polite believers to respect my atheism by not calling me out as a nut, so it really should flow in both directions.
Of course the “seems harmless” part is important, because obviously such things exist on a sliding scale. If God starts telling you to hurt yourself and/or others, you have a whole 'nother situation.
Considering all the illnesses that can cause religious delusions (schizophrenics and other cluster A, bipolars, people who took too many stimulants, postpartum psychosis, etc) I don’t see why it is offensive. What % of people fall into one of these categories? 3-6%?
What % of people who are not psychotic think that not only does god talk to them, god gives them very direct advice and inside track information about how the future and universe works? Maybe 5-10%? It is one thing to say ‘god speaks to me’ as a general concept to be a better human being (more power to you), it is another to say god is giving you very clear inside track information about the secret fate of the universe.
It is a valid question. As someone who suffered from psychosis as a teenager, I wish people had actually asked me if I was ok rather than complimenting me on my newfound interest in spirituality.
Even if we were to accept, from a religious point of view or whatever, that the person in question had, in fact, heard the voice of…, we would be compelled to question who’s voice he/she had actually heard. For clarification on this issue look up d’Arc, Joan. Shaw explains it pretty good.
But on that latter one, ISTM that would end up being rather confusing and the message likely to not get understood. Then again various forms of deity have a reputation for rather opaque messaging.
Nothin’ personal, y’know, but just the same, I think I’ll be skipping that location next I’m in L.A.
Well, depending on how you ask that question (and who asks the question), it could be rude, especially if the prelude to the question does its level best to paint the person having that experience as a loon or somehow “other” and less than the questioner.
The specific of our op is not the subject as is the broader subject but as the thread continues he has gone on to state:
I have a hard time reading that as anything other than literally perceiving himself as hearing the voice of an angel.
Try to do some searches it does seem that isolated auditory hallucinations do occur outside of the context of psychosis. That some, or even many, would include religiosity should not surprise.
FWIW I would take the position that delusions can not only be harmless but can, in certain contexts, even be beneficial to particular individuals’ function.
One article I found tried to make the distinction that benign isolated hallucinations and delusion in otherwise “normal” people are not about the individual as often as they are as part of psychosis.
The other bits I can glean seem to reveal a two-edged sword - Religious hallucinations (that do not include exhortations to cause harms) are more likely to be culturally accepted, especially within certain cultural sub-populations, which leads to less negative social impacts. OTOH one that is part of a serious psychotic illness may be less likely to trigger others to get the individual to help out of the “respect” for the individual’s religious beliefs (as Wesley alluded happened to him).
In any case I for one can see no good to be gained by challenging someone’s delusions or perceived experience.
