It would help us a lot if you could define the line at which religion becomes mental illness, because it’s not all that clear. I’m guessing you think Kanicbird is nuts, what is it about your religious beliefs that make them sane and his not?
To Trekkies and Trekkers, I’m sure it looks as though there is a huge gulf between them but to the rest of us not so much.
Maybe he thinks he lives in a country that doesn’t try and impose religion on its citizens; he’s wrong of course.
The DSM-V would be a good place to start. It goes into it quite deeply.
What irks me is insisting that all others that don’t have your point of view are delusional, and that you are thankful that you are free from the delusions of the masses. You people sound like a bunch of fucking Scientologists.
I’m not going to get into it any further, other than to reiterate that it is dishonest to claim you can’t see the difference between schizophrenia and religion. You know damn well you can. Anybody who pretends they can’t and uses a discussion about a particular person’s schizophrenia as a place to launch unwarranted attacks on religion is a complete asshole, and playing the “who me?” card after that is being a disingenuous douchebag.
I’m done here.
I wasn’t aware that U.S. Presidents have the authority to define religious practices. So hypothetically if Barack Obama declares, on the first Tuesday of every month, everyone will eat Twinkies to praise “our father in heaven,” this would become a semi-religious holiday for you and we would all have to be on our best behavior on these days to avoid offending you?
Too true. If enough people around you share roughly similar beliefs to yours, so that they nod politely or agree enthusiastically to your counterfactual ideas, that’s religion. If not enough people do, that’s schizophrenia. God, atheists who don’t admit that they know damn well what the difference between religion and schizophrenia is (market share) really make my blood boil.
[QUOTEMonkey With A Gun]
Shit like this is why so many people think atheists are assholes.
[/QUOTE]
Er, um, except I’m not an atheist, so sorry to disappoint.
Nor am I an asshole, for that matter.
Lincoln’s words don’t ‘codify’ this day of Thanksgiving into a religious event, your delusions notwithstanding. And your delusion, that is does, is exactly why people are so quick to connect mental illness and religion. Way to make their point for them.
Keep up the good work!
Do you think Kanicbird is delusional? How about people who don’t seek medical attention for children because they think God will take care of it, or give more money than they can afford to the church, or justify a war because God provided them guidance, or just live a lifetime in guilt and shame while closeted? Citing the DSM just shows that there is not a clear line separating religious belief from mental illness. Also, not everyone who is mentally ill is schizophrenic.
By sheer numbers it is not justifiable to say that all religious people are mentally ill, but as an outsider (and former insider) it is difficult to say where that line is.
The bird is the Word!
“Delusional” strikes me as a reasonable characterization of someone who believes that the reason he was not arrested for drunk driving (despite ample evidence pointing to this) was divine intercession.
Of course there are plenty of religious people who justify sinful and malignant behavior on the grounds that they are following or protected by the Will Of God (Warren Jeffs and the breakaway Amish leader in Ohio who allegedly had sex with numerous married women to “purify” them, come to mind), so it is hard to separate “devout” and “delusional” in such folks. At least I’m reasonably sure Warren Jeffs and the Amish dude (Mr. Mullet :)) are not trolls, not so sure about kanicbird.
Whatever. I resolve to endeavor to persevere in not throwing further evidence and reason into the black hole that is kanicbird.*
*Can’t promise there won’t be a cutting jest now and again. 
This is a lofty and admirably goal.
The problem is equivocating on the meaning of “delusional.” People may have false beliefs, and perhaps religious beliefs are among them. That’s one thing. It’s quite another to actually see and hear divine beings, with the same level of perception you experience with other people, objects etc.
I’m guessing a lot of people posting hear have not had a lot of experience with schizophrenic people. It is way way beyond having a few odd beliefs.
Serious question: how about people who speak in tongues or heal people? Is that delusional, or just a religious “belief”. It seems stronger than the latter, but not necessarily require one to actually see someone/thing that isn’t there.
There is not a clear line separating any form of belief or enthusiasm from mental illness. Believing in omnipotent deities, being devotedly attached to your spouse or child, suspecting the government of nefarious intentions, liking to play Minecraft—all of these (along with pretty much everything else) are normal and unremarkable tendencies in sane people when they don’t interfere with normal functioning or prevent rational interactions with people of a different mindset.
Carried to extremes, however, all of them can easily qualify you as loony bin bait.
The DSM-V would be a good place to start. It goes into it quite deeply.
[/QUOTE]
Meaningless; the people writing that would never dare specify religious beliefs as insane, no matter how blatantly lunatic they are. Religion is far too politically powerful; if the world was run by schizophrenics who regarded schizophrenia as the one true way and non-schizophrenics as evil incarnate, they’d never dare label schizophrenia a mental illness either.
To a schizophrenic, it isn’t a matter of ‘belief’ or ‘unbelief’, as it would be to anyone else. A religious person, no matter how devout, knows that they ‘believe’ certain things, and that those things cannot be proven, which is why it’s called “faith”. A schizophrenic person does not need faith, because in that person’s experience, those things ARE ACTUALLY HAPPENING.
IE, a devout christian may believe that Jesus saved them from bodily injury in a wreck, a schizophrenic literally, for real, saw it happen. That’s a big jump from one to the other.
This is becoming a pretty good GD
You do realize by criticizing the DSM-V you are criticizing the science it is based on, right?
As I said before, it’s the same thing as scientologists denying that whole branch of scientific investigation. You can’t throw out the accepted science just because it doesn’t agree with your position. I thought you liked science.
I have got to start hanging out in GD more often. I’m missing all the crazy!
There are some entertaining arguments going on here, but it all dances around the subject.
kanicbird, have you see a mental health professional? There is no shame in going to one. Your posts on this board make people wonder if you might need medical help. Go to a licensed professional and view it as a “check up” the same way as anybody goes to any doc. It won’t hurt you, and he or she might help you to be healthy.
I know a lot of religious people (perhaps the majority) who say that ultimately their faith depends on personal revelation ie that they have direct contact with their god. I can recall a number of arguments here and in life outside the boards where I and others have argued religious people to a standstill when they have tried to suggest they have some external or objective evidence for their god, but their final (and unarguable) position is: “my evidence is the direct personal presence of my god, which I have experienced.”
However, I think the line between ordinary religion and religious insanity (while exceedingly vague) can be rationally drawn.
As others (including myself) in the past have said, the insanity/religion boundary could be viewed as just a totally irrational numbers game ie how can it be that merely because enough other people propound the same irrational belief it is no longer insane to believe it?
A more sympathetic approach though is to consider that all of us rely on others to report what is true. If enough people report a highly improbable phenomenon to you as true, belief in that phenomenon probably isn’t completely irrational. Even if healthy scepticism would lead you to a far more rational view that the people who report the phenomenon are mistaken. The fewer people tell you something improbable is true and the more contrary views you hear, the less rational it is to believe it.
Read my last post in the GQ thread, and thank you for your concern 