Religion and mental illness
Offline I'm not a psych major, but from a pure layman's perspective, I can definitely see how being raised in religious fundamentalism could contribute to mental illness later in life.
Christian fundamentalists teach their children that some invisible thought-monitoring deity is watching their every move and reading their every thought, and will send them to some alternate dimension if they "sin too much" where they'll be tortured by fire but never die. They teach them that demons, talking snakes, sex with angels, parting oceans, burning bushes that talk, and water turning to wine are all real. They believe that you can "talk" to this invisible deity and have a "personal relationship with him" They believe in a huge "librul atheist public school NWO conspiracy" to hide the scientific evidence that the Earth was created by magic in 7 days, take prayer out of public schools, and force your kids to listen to "satanic rock music" and have sex so they can get more abortions.
If you think about it, the basic tenants of Christian fundamentalism sound like a summary of a paranoid schizophrenic's thought process. I can see how just being raised in an environment like this - where kids are trained not think critically or distinguish between fantasy can contribute to these type of disorders. This is why I believe fundamentalism is in itself child abuse, and fundamentalist churches are nothing more than cults - the idea that "religious freedom" should protect them is absurd if you ask me..
Optimism is reality, pessimism is the fantasy that you know enough to be cynical
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Lets skip all religious labels for a second and accept the reality that will always exist in evolution as pointed out by Dawkins in "The God Delusion". "The moth mistaking the light bulb for moonlight".
That by itself is NOT a mental illness, just a result of evolution not being about perfection, just merely part of the means of getting to the point of reproduction. So filling gaps with absurdities(just like the moth mistaking the light bulb for moonlight) will always be part of our evolution. Bottom line, humans did not evolve to make their main focus testing and falsification, although our brains have evolved to a higher degree of the ability to do such.
Religion MOST CERTAINLY, and for that matter, any form of collective dogmatism, political or religious, can make mental illness worse. H
But irrational thinking by itself is not a mental illness. It just means the person having the irrational thought has not taken the time to think through and examine it. Humans evolved with this gap filling default because of the real evolution in all species of fight or flight when we don't have time to examine the events around us. Unfortunately the downside of this reality is that these gaps "sudden decision making", that have benefited all species in avoiding predators, still over rides our ability to examine, more often than not.
There is no human that goes their entire lives without doing something irrational or saying something irrational. It is part of our elvolution. We all do it, you and me and everyone.
But, mental illness can be made worse by ANY absurd claim. This is why people think they have been abducted by space aliens.
But a really bad popular meme can be destructive on a collective level because of the popularity of that irrational meme.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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I think religious belief is more like Stockholm syndrome than a mental illness. The thought process is more like a child engaged in fantasy rather than a mental illness. Christianity encourages adults to 'become as a child'.
Certainly there are some religious people with schizophrenic tendencies and religion exacerbates the problem. But belief is more is due to conditioning, group acceptance and because people just don't know any better.
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