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I think it quite the opposit ,
Sanity has little to do with one's belief ,especially acquired voluntarily not cohersively .
All believers I know choose to turn to God, they were not forced or badgered into faith .
That would be contradictory to free will.
Unike islam, christians do not force any one to believe , they demonstration of love and the news of God's love and provision are completely voluntary, both of the messenger and the listener .
Cults that are not actually christian do manipulatie things that misrepresent either by hate or by compromise with immorality.
I find it hypocritical for those that are not christian at all, to be judging christians for their failures, when they them selves cannot behave to begin with, even the simplist of christian values. genuine honesty.
The better churches i have attended , make a lot of emphisis on being clear with one's relationship with God, and a reat deal of self exmination.
Being part of a church does not automatically make one 100% christian. fact is most folk are 10% on average .
To a great many it is a social event , killing an hour before the game.
The term "christian" is not one of lockstep performance ,and reguation ,so making blanket accusations for the poor performance of a few is a serious stretch of making excuse. exacting blame painted with a very broad brush.
Seriously devoted christians look at nonbelievers and mentally challanged, havig been out side at one time, them self.
Some one that has given up has resisted the Holy Spirit in their life ,and love their rebellion more than God.
Though hell has been an insterment of fear, used in inspiring complicity with God, neglecting that warning would be more offensive in the long run .
Having learned God's love in my life, and fellowship with Him , I am not concerned with hell, but am concerned that i learn what pleases God . He meets needs in my life no one else can , and neither you nor any other person can beat that . ever.
I think it quite the opposit ,
Sanity has little to do with one's belief ,especially acquired voluntarily not cohersively . All believers I know choose to turn to God, they were not forced or badgered into faith .
That would be contradictory to free will.
Unike islam, christians do not force any one to believe , they demonstration of love and the news of God's love and provision are completely voluntary, both of the messenger and the listener .
Cults that are not actually christian do manipulatie things that misrepresent either by hate or by compromise with immorality.
I find it hypocritical for those that are not christian at all, to be judging christians for their failures, when they them selves cannot behave to begin with, even the simplist of christian values. genuine honesty
Many people are told that if they do not accept the Christian faith, they will burn in hell for eternity. It's the equivalent of a person holding a gun to your head and telling you, "Love me of your own free will, or else", only on an infinitely more terrifying scale (we're talking eternal pain and torment here). How is that not force?
Many people are told that if they do not accept the Christian faith, they will burn in hell for eternity. It's the equivalent of a person holding a gun to your head and telling you, "Love me of your own free will, or else", only on an infinitely more terrifying scale (we're talking eternal pain and torment here). How is that not force?
It is only a force if you believe it. You have the freewill to accept or not. IF you are at peace with your beliefs, this will not be an issue. If it is an issue, you should continue to search for what makes it not an issue for you.
I do understand why some would be so stressed and looking for some absolute proof that God doesn't exist with all the talk of the "end of times". I cannot imagine not being set in my beliefs and comfortable with my faith. It must be all consuming which is evident in the number of posts appearing trying to get that proof that God doesn't exist. The proof isn't going to come so you might want to regroup and find another way to resolve torment.
It is only a force if you believe it. You have the freewill to accept or not. IF you are at peace with your beliefs, this will not be an issue. If it is an issue, you should continue to search for what makes it not an issue for you.
You admit it's force. If someone is holding a gun to your head and saying, "Love me or else," your choice is not really to love the person or not; your choice is to pretend to love that person and possibly not be killed, or to be honest and suffer the consequences. Unless the person holding the gun to your head is, themselves, mentally unstable, they obviously are aware that you are just saying you love them to save your own skin. And they don't care. What does that say about that person? What does that say about a god who does the same thing?
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Here is complete opposite view of what causes mental illness: What causes of Mental Illness (etiology) I do understand why some would be so stressed and looking for some absolute proof that God doesn't exist with all the talk of the "end of times". I cannot imagine not being set in my beliefs and comfortable with my faith. It must be all consuming which is evident in the number of posts appearing trying to get that proof that God doesn't exist. The proof isn't going to come so you might want to regroup and find another way to resolve torment.
I honestly don't know what you're trying to say here ^^^. Whether or not someone believes in God's existence (I tend to), has nothing to do with them needing to accept self-contradictory ("God is love/God will send you to eternal torment if you don't believe what we tell you you have to believe") and crazy-making beliefs about God.
It is only a force if you believe it. You have the freewill to accept or not. IF you are at peace with your beliefs, this will not be an issue. If it is an issue, you should continue to search for what makes it not an issue for you.
I do understand why some would be so stressed and looking for some absolute proof that God doesn't exist with all the talk of the "end of times". I cannot imagine not being set in my beliefs and comfortable with my faith. It must be all consuming which is evident in the number of posts appearing trying to get that proof that God doesn't exist. The proof isn't going to come so you might want to regroup and find another way to resolve torment.
So glad you posted this link. As it assuredly points out, there are no concrete biomarkers or objective exams for "insanity" which means the whole concept of "mental illness" itself is a form of religion since it's completely taken on faith via decree from doctors and drug companies. The anti-Christian zealots on the internet want faith/religion to be rebranded as pathology but they're fooling themselves. Psychological/psychiatric constructs are just secular value systems cloaked in medical lingo. It's made up quackery.
No, religion is not in and of itself insanity. It, generally speaking, is irrational, but so is much of the human experience.
The irrationality of religion is often used to legitimize, justify, or rationalize insanity, but I am not convinced that is is any more culpable than any other form of human unreason, just maybe more pervasive.
-NoCapo
If religion itself is not insanity, it does often seem to be a carrier which results in mass insanity. Exodus 22:18 states, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." And what did this lead to?
During the great witch hunts which raged across Europe sporadically between the 15th and 18th centuries, whole areas, particularly in France and Germany, were almost entirely denuded of women. Slaughtered in a Christian religious frenzy to satisfy "the following of scripture." This is EXACTLY the sort concrete example of insanity that religious make believe leads to.
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Witch trials in the early modern period
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Numbers of executions
Ever since the ending of the witch hunt, various scholars have estimated how many men, women and children were executed for witchcraft across Europe and North America, with numbers varying wildly depending on the method used to generate the estimate. In the nineteenth century, historians were still unsure as to the exact number, for instance the German folklorist Jacob Grimm claimed that the number was simply "countless"[68] whilst the Scottish journalist Charles Mackay believed that it was "thousands upon thousands".[69] A news report of 1832 suggested 'however incredible it may appear, the enormous sum of three thousand one hundred and ninety-two individuals were condemned and executed in Great Britain alone'.[70] Within several decades, the American suffragette Matilda Joslyn Gage had claimed that nine million women had been killed in the European trials, a figure which would be repeated by a number of later writers such as Gerald Gardner, although it has since been described as having "no rational basis whatsoever" by the professional historian Ronald Hutton.
In the latter part of the 20th century, as historians began to study the witch trials in greater depth, the estimated number of executions began to be reduced, with the historian Norman Cohn, in Europe's Inner Demons (1975) criticizing claims that they were in the hundreds of thousands, calling these "fantastic exaggerations".[72] Attempting to come to an accurate figure, the historian Brian Levack, author of The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe (1987), took the number of known European witch trials and multiplied it by the average rate of conviction and execution. This provided him with a figure of around 60,000 deaths, however, for the third edition of the work (2006) he later reassessed that number to 45,000.[73] This number was criticized as being too low by Anne Llewellyn Barstow, author of Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts (1994)—a work which was derided as un-scholarly and "largely ignored by academics"[74]—who herself arrived at a number of approximately 100,000 deaths by attempting to adjust Levack's estimate to account for what she believed were unaccounted lost records, although historians have pointed out that Levack's estimate had already been adjusted for these.[citation needed]
Ronald Hutton, in his unpublished essay "Counting the Witch Hunt", counted local estimates, and in areas where estimates were unavailable attempted to extrapolate from nearby regions with similar demographics and attitudes towards witch hunting. He reached an estimate of 40,000 total executions. Table of recorded and estimated executions according to Hutton's estimates[75]
Country Recorded Estimated
American Colonies 36 35–37
Austria ?? 1,500–3,000
Belgium ?? 250
Bohemia ?? 1,000–2,000
Channel Islands 66 66–80
Denmark ?? 1,000
England (and Wales) 228 300–1,000
Estonia 65 100
Finland 115 115
France 775 5,000–6,000
Germany 8,188 17,324–26,000
Hungary 449 800
Iceland 22 22
Ireland 4 4–10
Italy 95 800
Latvia ?? 100
Luxembourg 358 355–358
Netherlands 203 203–238
Norway 280 350
Poland ?? 1,000–5,000
Portugal 7 7
Russia 10 10
Scotland 599 1,100–2,000
Spain 6 40–50
Sweden ?? 200–250
Switzerland 1,039 4,000–5,000
Grand Total: 12,545 35,184–63,850
Witch trials in the early modern period - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Now, factor in the various periods of Inquisitions where many more thousands more were tortured and killed, and THIS is exactly the sort of mass insanity that religious make believe can lead to when it is followed to it's natural conclusion. Make believe is NOT BENIGN. Make believe is always potentially DANGEROUS, simply because it is not grounded in reality. Being separated from reality is PSYCHOTIC BY DEFINITION, and leads to psychotic behavior as a matter of natural progression.
If religion itself is not insanity, it does often seem to be a carrier which results in mass insanity. Exodus 22:18 states, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." And what did this lead to?
During the great witch hunts which raged across Europe sporadically between the 15th and 18th centuries, whole areas, particularly in France and Germany, were almost entirely denuded of women. Slaughtered in a Christian religious frenzy to satisfy "the following of scripture." This is EXACTLY the sort concrete example of insanity that religious make believe leads to.
This is all moot since one could...
A) argue the examples you pointed out are perversions/outliers, and
B) point to various forms of mass insanity done in the name of (what was at the time considered) medicine and science, i.e. the Holocaust (T4 euthanasia was largely carried out by psychiatrists) and forced sterilization programs (influenced by eugenics), the Tuskegee Experiment and other destructive harm in the U.S. done by the supposedly rational portion of the population.
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Originally Posted by Tired of the Nonsense
Now, factor in the various periods of Inquisitions where many more thousands more were tortured and killed, and THIS is exactly the sort of mass insanity that religious make believe can lead to when it is followed to it's natural conclusion. Make believe is NOT BENIGN. Make believe is always potentially DANGEROUS, simply because it is not grounded in reality. Being separated from reality is PSYCHOTIC BY DEFINITION, and leads to psychotic behavior as a matter of natural progression.
Make believe can manifest itself in all human endeavors, though. That isn't a religion problem, it's a human one. The 70,000 people that died under Action T4 (carried out by physicians) were victimized by the make believe of scientists and doctors.
No, religion is not in and of itself insanity. It, generally speaking, is irrational, but so is much of the human experience.
The irrationality of religion is often used to legitimize, justify, or rationalize insanity, but I am not convinced that is is any more culpable than any other form of human unreason, just maybe more pervasive.
-NoCapo
^^^ completely agree.
This woman is obviously insane, but any mental health professional will tell you that what's prevalent in the thoughts of the psychotic delusional is religious ideation and imagery. And most often, guilt that is either caused or amplified by religion. Whether this is because religion is a directly contributing factor or just a common mind-softening agent, I leave as an exercise for the reader. IMO, probably a combination depending on the in-duh-vidual in question.
We don't know all the history of this case and so don't know how much a factor religion was, but obviously it was in the mix or she wouldn't be talking of demons.
There is another case recently where the woman killed her child because she was "a demon", forced the older sibling to put the body in the fridge, where it remained for years until the mother was caught trying to transport the body in the car, IIRC. She stated defiantly in court that she did it, she's glad she did it, and she'd do it again. Here again religious ideation is in the mix but she's clearly ... oh what's the technical term ... batsh_t crazy?
I don't think it's particularly productive to suggest that the religious are crazy or that religion unambiguously leads to insanity. Some religious people are crazy, as are some areligious people. Some religious people remain sane and functional. I'd even allow that some of those people find it easier to remain sane and functional because of religion, and probably couldn't handle bare-metal atheism.
Yay for America. Religion is called insanity, believing you are the opposite gender is not....coming out of the closet gets you a phone call from the president, and we just redefined marriage.
Yay.
Obsessing might be a form of insanity.
(btw Vizio - you have left pertinent questions unanswered - would you like the links?)
If religion itself is not insanity, it does often seem to be a carrier which results in mass insanity. Exodus 22:18 states, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." And what did this lead to?
Now, factor in the various periods of Inquisitions where many more thousands more were tortured and killed, and THIS is exactly the sort of mass insanity that religious make believe can lead to when it is followed to it's natural conclusion. Make believe is NOT BENIGN. Make believe is always potentially DANGEROUS, simply because it is not grounded in reality. Being separated from reality is PSYCHOTIC BY DEFINITION, and leads to psychotic behavior as a matter of natural progression.
But I would argue that religion provided the excuse for these actions, but the underlying causes were the much more mundane greed, fear, and prejudice against those who are different.
The Spanish Inquisition, for example, was horrific and brutal, but underlying the religious aspects were the fact that an unpopular ethnic minority had money and power (Jews) and the authorities, civil and religious, as well as the general populace resented it. Thus the hunt for Marranos.
Same with the Salem Witch trials. A careful study shows that underneath the religious veneer lies a story of greed, money, power, and sex. Religion is just one of the frostings we as human being have taken to slathering on top of the dungheap of our fears, desires, and neuroses in order to convince ourselves that it is really a cupcake.
The danger in religion is not that it causes this behavior, it is that is excuses and rationalizes it. As Pookie points out, there are a multitude of other rationalization, religion just happens to be one of the most pervasive and powerful, precisely because it is an irrational proposition and makes no pretense otherwise.
-NoCapo
P.S. Never have I thought I would be referencing "Pookie" in a serious discussion
Last edited by NoCapo; 07-08-2015 at 11:11 AM..
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