on this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UdCNLVFRPE
What is your opnion (religion mental illness)
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Pride The Solo King
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: What is your opnion
What is it?
Can you describe it a little, for people who can't watch the video but may have seen it before?
Also, please add a description in the title if you can. It's hard to tell what the post is about.
Can you describe it a little, for people who can't watch the video but may have seen it before?
Also, please add a description in the title if you can. It's hard to tell what the post is about.
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Pride The Solo King
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Re: What is your opnion
The youtube video on the link. That man talks about religion and claims it is a mental illness. A sort of schizophrenia.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: What is your opnion (religion mental illness)
It's hard to clinically qualify mental illness, but religion is considered typical rather than deviant.
As some might say "It's not a bug, it's a feature"; or, it may have been for primitive humans, holding societies together for lack of reason or proper education.
As some might say "It's not a bug, it's a feature"; or, it may have been for primitive humans, holding societies together for lack of reason or proper education.
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alex11230
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Re: What is your opnion (religion mental illness)
I will take a whack at this, using the Simpsons. ...
In one episode (if anyone can provide the title, I would greatly appreciate it), Marge says something about how religion isn't supposed to be a chore. It's supposed to help you be a better person and be more tolerant and forgiving of others. (I'll come back to that.)
In another episode, Lisa mentions to Bart that Pablo Neruda wrote that you grow a soul; that is, you aren't born with one, but rather, it develops as you suffer and grow as a person.
Now let's look at that from an atheist-angled mindview. I try to be tolerant. I try to be forgiving. I don't always succeed. But I try. I don't do it because I want to move closer to Jesus. I don't do it because I want to sing with the angels. I don't do it because of religious indoctrination. I do it because, frankly, I could spend my entire life being intolerant and unforgiving, and it would grind me away to nothing in no time flat.
Seriously, for the majority of the aggravations you face in life, the jackholes who are causing them did so in a staggeringly small window of time. The incredible so-and-so who almost killed you when he cut across four lanes of traffic with no turn signal, at 75 miles an hour, maybe 3/4 of an inch from your front bumper? I'm sure you remember because when you got home you had to throw away what HAD been a perfectly good pair of pants. That was over with in less than two seconds. The rational thing to do is archive it in memory. The emotional, meat-instinct thing to do is go for his eyes.
Let's wheel Marge back in here. See how she and I are, pretty much, at the same point? I try to be a better person, just like she does. That doesn't mean I don't get angry. It means I pause. Before I follow that so-and-so home and key his car for scaring me half to death, I stop. I try to be reasonable. I give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe his wife is in labor. Maybe his father is dying. And after a little while, it simply becomes some detail I can recall. "Oh, yeah. You gotta be careful. Some of these people drive like the steering wheel came off in their hands."
I do all that because it's simply practical. Not because I need 200 Hail Marys to get into heaven.
Now let me get to Bart and Lisa. As Lisa points out, Neruda opined that the soul grows. So that makes me wonder. If you die at 10, it's a very different person than the one who would die at 20, or 30, or 90. Ten-year-old you is busy burning ants with magnifying glasses. By 20 (fingers crossed), you've grown out of that and recall it with distaste; the vile actions of someone who simply did not understand why senseless killing is not appropriate. At 90, you probably have a lot less interest in barhopping and sex. The whole nose-to-the-grindstone thing probably seems equally ridiculous. You've probably learned a lot along the way and sigh at the thought of how all that learning, earned at such cost, will soon simply pop out of existence. Your "soul"--all the things you learned along the way, the whole scar-filled skin, all the guilts, regrets and victories--is pretty much full-up.
And from that framework, from what Marge and Bart and Lisa hint at, I conclude that religion isn't a mental illness, per se. It's a stage of development that some people get locked at. (If you get locked into it, and refuse to evaluate it, yes, that's a form of mental illness, because you intentionally and actively are choosing to not examine what you're doing.) A while back, a friend's children were staying at my home. And Friend put one of the Disney animated films into the machine. And at one "scary" moment, one of the children, maybe four years old, burst into inconsolable tears of fright. Friend grabbed the remote control and paused the DVD. "Look," he said. "See? It's just pretend. I can rewind it. I can fast-forward. See? It isn't real."
And the child kept crying. It simply could not bridge the emotional and the intellectual.
That doesn't mean the child was damaged or ill. It just means that the child didn't understand. That was about a decade ago. He's no longer scared of animated images on a screen. His "soul" has grown to that point. But a lot of people get "scared" when they're young. Devils and angels and sins and hell and all the rest of it. And they never have the moment where they integrate reality with religion.
It isn't illness. It's limitation. But like very few limitations, it can be completely overcome.
In one episode (if anyone can provide the title, I would greatly appreciate it), Marge says something about how religion isn't supposed to be a chore. It's supposed to help you be a better person and be more tolerant and forgiving of others. (I'll come back to that.)
In another episode, Lisa mentions to Bart that Pablo Neruda wrote that you grow a soul; that is, you aren't born with one, but rather, it develops as you suffer and grow as a person.
Now let's look at that from an atheist-angled mindview. I try to be tolerant. I try to be forgiving. I don't always succeed. But I try. I don't do it because I want to move closer to Jesus. I don't do it because I want to sing with the angels. I don't do it because of religious indoctrination. I do it because, frankly, I could spend my entire life being intolerant and unforgiving, and it would grind me away to nothing in no time flat.
Seriously, for the majority of the aggravations you face in life, the jackholes who are causing them did so in a staggeringly small window of time. The incredible so-and-so who almost killed you when he cut across four lanes of traffic with no turn signal, at 75 miles an hour, maybe 3/4 of an inch from your front bumper? I'm sure you remember because when you got home you had to throw away what HAD been a perfectly good pair of pants. That was over with in less than two seconds. The rational thing to do is archive it in memory. The emotional, meat-instinct thing to do is go for his eyes.
Let's wheel Marge back in here. See how she and I are, pretty much, at the same point? I try to be a better person, just like she does. That doesn't mean I don't get angry. It means I pause. Before I follow that so-and-so home and key his car for scaring me half to death, I stop. I try to be reasonable. I give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe his wife is in labor. Maybe his father is dying. And after a little while, it simply becomes some detail I can recall. "Oh, yeah. You gotta be careful. Some of these people drive like the steering wheel came off in their hands."
I do all that because it's simply practical. Not because I need 200 Hail Marys to get into heaven.
Now let me get to Bart and Lisa. As Lisa points out, Neruda opined that the soul grows. So that makes me wonder. If you die at 10, it's a very different person than the one who would die at 20, or 30, or 90. Ten-year-old you is busy burning ants with magnifying glasses. By 20 (fingers crossed), you've grown out of that and recall it with distaste; the vile actions of someone who simply did not understand why senseless killing is not appropriate. At 90, you probably have a lot less interest in barhopping and sex. The whole nose-to-the-grindstone thing probably seems equally ridiculous. You've probably learned a lot along the way and sigh at the thought of how all that learning, earned at such cost, will soon simply pop out of existence. Your "soul"--all the things you learned along the way, the whole scar-filled skin, all the guilts, regrets and victories--is pretty much full-up.
And from that framework, from what Marge and Bart and Lisa hint at, I conclude that religion isn't a mental illness, per se. It's a stage of development that some people get locked at. (If you get locked into it, and refuse to evaluate it, yes, that's a form of mental illness, because you intentionally and actively are choosing to not examine what you're doing.) A while back, a friend's children were staying at my home. And Friend put one of the Disney animated films into the machine. And at one "scary" moment, one of the children, maybe four years old, burst into inconsolable tears of fright. Friend grabbed the remote control and paused the DVD. "Look," he said. "See? It's just pretend. I can rewind it. I can fast-forward. See? It isn't real."
And the child kept crying. It simply could not bridge the emotional and the intellectual.
That doesn't mean the child was damaged or ill. It just means that the child didn't understand. That was about a decade ago. He's no longer scared of animated images on a screen. His "soul" has grown to that point. But a lot of people get "scared" when they're young. Devils and angels and sins and hell and all the rest of it. And they never have the moment where they integrate reality with religion.
It isn't illness. It's limitation. But like very few limitations, it can be completely overcome.