Is locking yourself in your house in the dark until you run out of food because a vision or voice in your head tells you to also wishful thinking?
And when that child grows up and carries the frying pan every where he goes while warning people about the bed-monsters that are on their way … can we then have him committed?
Nobody would defend kanicbird’s sanity if his delusions were about Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. And that simple fact is part of why moderate religious people are more dangerous than extremists like him.
That’s just not fair.
Look, I don’t like kanicbird all that much; I think his faith makes him intellectually lazy, arrogant, and supercilious. But I’ve read a good number of his posts, and he hasn’t written a damn thing that implies that he’s even slightly violent, or delusional. My take on his saying God speaks to him is that he believes that, through prayer, he can commune with God spiritually; that’s not a uncommon belief. Show me where he’s said that he HEARS the voice of Yahweh with his EARS and you’ll have a point about him being delusional.
Are you even reading this thread? Do you honestly think that someone who thinks God and/or demons have instructed him to lock himself up in the dark in his house for an indefinite period of many days, long enough that during this time he may run out of food, and that he is COMPELLED to obey these orders if he thinks God is giving them, is sane? He has also admitted that he has “visions” and “prophetic messages” in addition to normal prayer and Bible study.
And of course I happen to think that believing in God is no less ridiculous than believing in Darth Vader, no matter how many people think they’re Jedis, but even leaving aside that standard, kanicbird is clearly not well. He thinks he is literally a prophet.
I seem to have missed the post in which he made that claim; I’m looking for it.
But look. Many people believe things I consider to be illogical or stupid. I just had a conversation with a woman who is passionate about astrology. My older brother thinks the Pieretti novel referred to upthread is pretty much a documentary. Almost my entire family believes in literal demons waging war against literal angels while King Yahwh & Grand Marshal Satan oversee things from the sidelines. The fact that they believe these things doesn’t mean they fit the DSM definition of schizophrenia, for reasons Qadgop has explained far better than I.
Why am I defending kanicbird? How did this come to pass? I’m supposed to be mocking him, baiting him, manipulating him into saying stupid things so I can point & laugh. This kind of thing never happened when I was all evil & stuff.
I didn’t say he is schizophrenic, I said he’s nuts, and Qadop also agreed that his symptoms may very well fit other diagnostic criteria. Why do you keep ignoring the fact that none of the people you name do stuff like lock themselves in their houses with the windows blocked because God tells them to? Do they have visions and make prophecies?
I have just read the post in which he made the remark about locking himself inside his house. I will concede that that is odd and not at all healthy. But I’d say there’s a difference between being deluded–that is, holding beliefs with little or no factual/logical basis–and being delusional–believing that one is receiving sensory input that do not in fact have a physical basis, and moreover prone to act destructively to himself or others based on the supposed sensory input. I think kanicbird has a belief system that requires him to accept the Bible as literally true. This requires some mental contortions on his part, because there are so many self-contradictory passages in the Bible, and I think it’s led him to rationalize evil acts recounted in the Bible. But he seems overall calm to me, and polite as well; I don’t think I’d be afraid of him in person, though I’d probably hurt my eyes from rolling them if I had to listen to him talk.
Speaking as someone who has been delusional (and of course occasionally deluded as well), it’s possible to reach that state without having tangible hallucinations. When you begin to filter every incoming signal through a particular delusion, and then begin to perceive signals where none exist, and then begin to act upon them in bizarre and potentially dangerous ways, I believe you have crossed the line into delusional. However, I agree that he probably seems quite normal and nice in person. Being nuts doesn’t mean running around gibbering and looking like Christopher Lloyd all the time. It means being so fundamentally disconnected from reality that you can’t be trusted to act or think rationally. You might be capable of both at times, but you have a fault line and it’s always earthquake weather.
Wishful thinking to the extreme.
If he would grow up emotionally then he would know there are no monsters under his bed. At this time in his life he seems to need to believe as he does because it seems he still puts a lot of time with monsters and demons. Such a person could use some counseling but cannot see they need it.
This. I don’t think this has been addressed properly. There probably millions of people out there that truly believe that their god talks to them, and we all go ‘that’s OK, it’s a god’. But if you believe Darth Vader talks to you, there’d be no hesitation in condemming you as a nutter. How do believers - or anyone else - reconcile that discrepancy?
No, no. To the X-TREEM!!
From your lips to kanicbird’s ears.
I honestly kinda liked it–and Pilates, for that matter.
I’ve got a very religious Christian pal who does yoga on a regular basis. Apparently she doesn’t know what she’s messing with!
…and now he’s fucking up this thread as well. It started out as a fairly interesting topic for debate, but as soon as kanicbird posted it turned into a he said-she said.
That’s a weird assessment given that Der Trihs had already derailed it in the 4th post of the thread with his usual infantile diatribe against faith and the faithful.
Are you sure you’ve linked to the right thread? I can’t see a post by Kanicbird.
I’m confused…I don’t see any posts by kanicbird in the thread [b[Claptree** linked to. But I did note Der Trihs riding his “if you do anything right or intelligent it’s in spite of your religious faith” hobbyhorse as if he were in the Kentucky Derby.