Religion as a mental disorder
Offline Following on from Brian and Kellys video on this topic. I thought it might be worth a further discusion.
The wiki gives the following as signs of delusional disorder.
- The patient expresses an idea or belief with unusual persistence or force.
Hmmmm sound familiar people?
2. That idea appears to exert an undue influence on his or her life, and the way of life is often altered to an inexplicable extent.
Oh really!
3. Despite his profound conviction, there is often a quality of secretiveness or suspicion when the patient is questioned about it.
hmmmm anyone ever encountered a theist being evasive about their beliefs? Anyone ever found a thesist being suspicious of those who question their beliefs?
4 The individual tends to be humorless and oversensitive, especially about the belief.
Ahahhahahahah oh yes! Look at the recent terminal sense of humor failure over Kathy Griffin for concrete proof of this one.
5.There is a quality of centrality: no matter how unlikely it is that these strange things are happening to him, the patient accepts them relatively unquestioningly.
It just gets better and better really doesn't it.
6. Any attempt to contradict the belief is likely to arouse an inappropriately strong emotional reaction, often with irritability and hostility.
Dude I would swear that this wiki entry was actually about religious beliefs
7.belief is, at the least, unlikely.
Its at least unlikley! Try down right impossible.
8.The patient is emotionally over-invested in the idea and it overwhelms other elements of his psyche (psychology).
Yep
9. The delusion, if acted out, often leads to behaviors which are abnormal and/or out of character, although perhaps understandable in the light of the delusional beliefs.
Oh yes.
10. Individuals who know the patient will observe that his belief and behavior are uncharacteristic and alien.
Any one ever seen any changes in character in those that convert?
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What else does this show? That the RELIGION of psychiatry has its own delusions about delusions.
Wow, all-caps and everything.
DING DING DING We have a winner!
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Why would anyone diagnose a whole population by something they read on a wiki? Are we into armchair psychology now?
If they cross reference wiki with the DSM or other credible sources then the wiki factor is diminished. In our particular discussion our counterpart started with the wiki definition, so we stayed with the credible portions.
FYI: Nobody has attempted to diagnose whole populations of people throughout this entire process, from either side of the discussion.
I personally listen to the experts, and follow their lead (ie Todangst). Kelly however is studying to be a psychologist half way through a 5 year masters program which she will resume a.s.a.p. at an (unnanmed for now) Ivy League school.
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I have a M.S. in experimental psych with a year in clinical.
Do you disagree with the list of traits of a delusion posted on the Wiki? If so, in your expert opinion, which of them is erronious and why?
I haven't bothered to verify since the entire subject is absurd. There's a lot in the DSM that I can take out of context and apply it to over a billion people. What does that prove? It would just prove that I'm taking something out of context and abusing psychology to promote a biased agenda.
So you as a guy who calls people out left and right everyday for being completely fucked in the head, chooses not to draw correlations between those traits and traits of someone commonly holding a mental disorder.... Do you at least lend credence to "Religion is a virus" as Dawkins would say.
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Religion, as any other idea, is a virus. If you like I could apply the list equally to politicians, libertarians, or Marxists.. Mental disorder has to do with behavior that resides outside the norm. Talking to an imaginary friend, as many children have done, is perfectly within the norm. The imaginary friend talking back is outside the norm. Rather than overgeneralize about all religion you could narrow your parameters to orthodoxy.
Ok then please explain why its absurd. Look at the list, if you have time that is, and explain why you think that this list is not applicable to religion.
I'm sure there is. So please explain why the list above is taken out of context in the case of religion.
If you can present an argument as to why this is teh case then please do so. My personal opinion on the matter is that religion is probably not a mental disorder per se but it certainly shares many of the the traits of one. The list above is so applicable to religion that there are clearly some similarities that are worthy of discusion. This discusion may yield useful information on how to "treat" people infected with religion. Your insights as a psychologist could be very useful here. If you can be bothered that is....
Because you can't diagnose an entire population of people based merely on your bias and opinion.
Because it doesn't fit into any of the subtypes and you have done absolutely no testing to give a diagnosis.
The list you provided can apply to numerous mundane issues like someone who thinks their girlfriend is cheating, someone is spreading rumors about you, your boss is going to give you a bad job evaluation, etc. It's safe to say we could use a weak diagnosis and apply it to practically everyone on the planet. So what does that do? It means it isn't a mental illness since it applies to everyone. However the listing of behavior is merely a jumping point to the actual concerns listed in the subtypes which distinguish the nonbizarre beliefs to bizarre ones.
You should keep in mind that listings in the DSM are not merely for mental illness but for classification of behaviors that imply no mental illness. You happened to come across one and misapplied it. If you like you could go into the DSM-IV and there's a category for people who are losing faith in their religion and expressing doubts about their religion. If you use that you could categorize all Atheists who left religion as suffering from a mental disorder, or you could use it correctly as a classification of behavior.
So it has similarities with other insecure or irrational thoughts?
Ok well thats interesting in itself.
No we are applying it to a sepcific type of thought. One which can lead to homicidal behaviour, psychosematic bleeding, can break up families, be a root cause in suicide and a whole host of other ratehr nasty results. Religion has a hand in many such cases. The other insecurities and thoughts you mention don't really cause these to the same extent. The effects of religion along with their smiliarities to other mental illnesses warrents further discusion I think.
Religious beliefs are bizaare. When one compares them to all the other beliefs that people hold they arfe really really strange. As a percentage of "all the beliefs held" they are a very tiny fraction. Its just that most of the population hold one of these really odd beliefs. This is itself worthy of investigation. Normally nonsensiacal beliefs like religion would be rejected by most people most of the time. They really should be the preserve of the complete nut job and yet they are common place. In other words we have set of beleifs that are so absurd that they should by all rights be very rare any rational and sane person should reject such absudities without a second thought and yet they don't this is fascenating.
Actually I didn't. If you would care to read my post you will see the bit where I said that I don't actually agree that religion is a mental illness. But it does share many similarities with on.
The difference of course being that atheism is an entirely rational position where as religion and belief in god is an absurd irrational belief. The fact that such an insane set of belief is so widespread is really strange. Normally insane beliefs are rejected, they tend not to work very well, they tend to yield no useful facts about the world, in fact when acted on they tend to lead to dangerous and harmful behaviour and hence are dropped. Yet religion remains despite of all this. Why is this the case
Is it correct to assume that irrationality is necessarily dysfunctional?
You admit that insane things are summarily rejected. Apparantly religious ideas do not meet what ever threshold of insanity is necessary for rejection. Dawkins had to come up with some convoluted things about memes to explain the persistence of religion. Occams razor would suggest that theism is not a form of insanity as the simplest explanation for the persistence of religion is that beneath all the diversity of ideas there is actually something there. Our brains evolved to perceive light, sound, temperature, etc. Why is it so hard to think that our brains also evolved to perceive god?
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Does language exist in a way like sound, light and heat?
If I have an afterlife it is only to turn in my grave at statements like that.
My brain does not perceive God.
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
Its not necessarily so but its a fairly good indicator. Especailly if those irrational beliefs are held very strong and people refuse stubornly to give them up even in the face of contradictory evidence.
For the most part yes they.
I think is reaches the threshold of absurdity or insanity quite easily. There are far less absurd beliefs that we all reject out of hand. For example beleif in unicorns is far far more likely to be true than belief in God and yet all sane and rational people reject unicorn belief without a second thought. Why God belief is imune from this is a very interested question.
No this is in fact not the simplest answer. Religion makes such big huge massive claims about there being a God entity that we would have to pretty much change all that we know about how the universe actually is. Religion proposes that an entity unlike any thing ever encountered by anyone ever, un totally unprecidented power, intellect and complexity actually exists and by some totally unexplained process made everything breaking every law of physics so far observed. That is in no way the simplest explanation.
The study of religion as a natural phenomona is an anthopological one. Its study of human psychology and culture. These are complex issue and the answer will not be a very simple one but it will be far simpler than the proposed God entity theory. Daniel Dennet does some good ground word in his book Breaking the Spell - religion as a natural phenomon. I suggest you give it a read its really very good.
Because God does not exist it would would be pointless to evolve to see something that does not exist. You could try to fromulate a Darwinian model that perhaps the illusion of God is somehow very important for human suvival and this is why we uninversally in all cultures delude ourselves in this way (all cultures develop religion). But I don't think we evolved religion in a biological evolutionary sense the time scales are not really long enough. I think perhaps cultural evolution is a more likely candidate. Those cultures that didn't evolve religion where out competed by those that did. In the competative past when different tribes where competing for resource perhaps religion was a useful survival trait that gave some tribe an edge in social cohesion which allowed that tribe to defeat or coquor its competitors. Thus the religious tribes tended to survive. But this is all discussed in far more detail in Dennets book. Give it a read there are other options - one is that religion is just a side effect of a more useful evolved trait in our thinking.
Then you are defective.
Here you make the mistake of assuming the conclusion and molding the evidence to it. "God does not exist therefore the trait of theism is pointless" is bad science.
Objectively, theism exists. Objectively, pointless adaptations are ruthlessly eliminated by natural selection. Conclusion? The evolution of the human brain to allow the conceptualization of theism was not pointless. Theism is universal among all cultures that I know of. Natural selection, AFAIK, does not promote traits to universality without those traits having some survival advantage. Evolutionary science would suggest that theism exists because it has some purpose.
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For that I have ample evidence
Evil religion
If what you suppose is held true, most of Hindus and Muslims will be insane. I dont intend further to talk about Islam, since I dont belong in it. But as a Hindu (you must have an idea, since you have studied Hinduism), let me tell you as a community we are deeply religious but very tolerant.
The religion is expressed by common multitude of Hindu Humanity in devotion , prayers, hymns, rituals (Poojas we call them) , singing together songs praising the various lords.
As an example of devotion , let me quot an example. Justs today we have witnessed the last daye of the Hindu festival of Ganesha Chaturthi. All over India, 10 days ago , people buy a Ganesha Idol , keep in their house, decorate it , offer sweets to it ceremonially , do worship and then merge it in the sea or lakes on the last day . There is huge fanfare and colourful procession when the idols is talen to the sea. There is an explosion of devotion. (This may be an example of say an irrational religious belief as per an atheist)
But Hindus are very tolerant , peaceful and happy people. The devotion is more among poor people. Lately devotion has increased dramatically among noveau rich also.
So if you are in any manner indicating that we are mostly collectively insane, is it not prepostorous. You may berate religion , if it does bad only continuously. The mute point is a huge majority of people are religious in most countries (China could be an exception due to communism). Religion has its black sheep, but to taint most of the Humanity as insane is not correct.
I am looking for Atheists to increase my belief in God
Poof!
With a wave of my wand, I will invoke a theist badge under your name.
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There are also religions like Buddhism and animism that are nontheistic. From there the argument could be made for a biological basis for belief (which says nothing about actual supernatural ideas, of course). However, before you applaud evolution for its efficiency, remember that we have vestigial organs and a tailbone. Maybe this debate, and the rise of secularism, indicates evolution bucking to shed a certain possible vestige.
Agreed. But I suppose it will be a multi-generational thing the end of which I will not see.
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Or perhaps saying "oh we have religion therefore God exists" could also be considered bad science. All the evidence that we have suggests that God is not real. All the scientific evidence points to, if not the impossability of God, then to the fact that such an entity is ver very very very unlikely to exist. Many cultures have legends of dragons, flying horses, sea monsters, fairies, ghosts and all sorts of other things. Is this taken as evidence that these things exist? No! Well not by rational people. They may have their root cause in some real phenomona but thats a different story.
That is inded one idea explore in Daniel Dennets book. Theism may very well have or still doesserve a useful purpose in our social evolution. But I don't think there has been enough time for this to be hard wired into to our biology. Relgion is a phanomona perhaps on a few 10's of thousands of years old which is not really much time at all to have it bioloogically selected for. I would say that IF religion has been selected for then it will be in the selection of strong competing societies or tribes. But this idea does have its problems.
Another example explored is that relgiion is aby product of a fundamental adaptation. Its a by product of our ability to empathise with others and put ourselves in others shoes. This is necessary for the complex, co-operative human scoieties to exist which where in turn vital for our survival. This ability to think how other would act and how others may feel or think (whats going on in their heads) copmbined with an ability for abstract reasoning perhaps is thr root cause for religion. The tribal "religions" are basically anothropomorphic where we project our thinking (human traits) on to other phenomona. Its really blowing a terrible storm so the being that looks after thesky must be angry. That type of thing. Pehaps religion is an inevitable consiquence of this very useful ability to empathise.
Anyway if you are interested I would recomoned Dennets book. He does of course consider the possability that the reason why religion is universal is that there is something to it. But he conlcudes that this is unlikely for a variety of reasons.
Ooops I'll stop you there and ask you to re read my post above this time I would be really greatful if you could pay atention to the bit where I say
"My personal opinion on the matter is that religion is probably not a mental disorder per se but it certainly shares many of the the traits of one."
I will grant that Hinuism, due to its pluralistic nature, is somewhat more tollerant than the other majour religions. However it is still guilty of great intollerence. The caste sysetm is a hugely intollerent system for example. The way women are treated in Hinduism is unacceptable to me as well. But you are right compared to Islam and Xtianity you guys are ok. Have a gold star from the atheists.
Well actually thats not strictly true I'm afraid. In Western Europe proably only 10-30% of the popluation are religious. Its similar in Japans. People may nominally identify themselves as Xtians in those countries but most of them are not in practice. They don't go to church say prayers or act in any way as if God is real. They are practicing atheists. Here in the UK recent studies show that only 35% of the population actually believe in God, this figure is even lower in some other European countries. What is interesting to note is that, with the exeption of the united states, those countries with lower religion tend to have higher: wealth, equality, racial harmony, literacy, educational standards, stanards of living and stadards of life quality. They also tend to have lower teen pregnacy, crime, poverty and general shittiness. Is this a conincidence? That as religion vanishes in puff of logical rational thinking people tend to become more civilised? Who knows.
No religion is the black sheep of human thought its just that some sheep are blacker than others.
I didn't I said it shared some interesting similarities with mental illness which I posit explains rather a lot.
Agreed.
All the evidence suggests that a supernatural, omniscient, ompnipoent, omnibenevolent god does not exists. All I suggested is that the universality of theism suggests the possiblity of SOMETHING being "there". All the theological fluff does not negate the fact that theistic ideas exist in all cultures.
But none of these beliefs are universal as is god thought.
I didn't claim that the existence of theism was proof of god. I claimed that a possible explanation for the persistence of theism was that there was "something there" and that this was a simpler explanation than memes.
We don't know the age of theistic thought. Our species is muich older that the 10's of thousands of years where we are able to find evidence of cultural artifacts sufficient to understand the culture of people back then. You can't conclude either way whether thiesm existed before any known historical artifacts.
What is the title? I'll add it to my list of things I should read. Unfortunatley, that list has things added much faster than I remove them.
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Ok so you say they exhibit insane like qualities, but they are not. So where do we go ahead from here
But if you agree that huge bunch are not insane , then fine.
Regarding no. of people being religious, I read somewhere in one authoritative post that more than 90% are religious, what is your source. I am not saying I am right or you are wrong.
Regarding Hinduism, There were times when woman werent treated perfectly. Not so today. Hinduism thrives and many women rule the roost and inspire others. India's ruling party's chief is a woman and also acknowledged as one of the most powerful in the world . India has now its first woman president (we wish the USA also gets one) , India's biggest state (and possibly the most casteist) , Uttar Pradesh has now a woman chief minister who comes from the erstwhile untouchable caste , moreover she got overwhelming support from Brahimns the upper castes in the elections.
The caste system started off with good intentions , but got distorted over few centuries, but is now breaking up and losing relevance , though people are becoming more religious. We acknowledge caste system as a negative of the religion and the religion has reformed or reinvented itself in some manner by shedding baggage
I am looking for Atheists to increase my belief in God
Well thats an interesting question. The similarities between mental delusion and religious thought perhaps give some clues as to how we might adminsister treatment to those inflicted with religon. How we can free people from religion, if that is our goal. If that is not our goal then perhaps it will offer some clues as to how we can make their religion more benign and prevent it from becoming a destructive force which quite clearly it can become with some people.
Well this all depends which country you look at and what you mean by "religious". World wide as a percentage of population and if you take religious to mean "says they believe in the existence of a god or say they belong to a religon" then your 90% figure is probably about right. But if we look a first world nations we will see that is figure is much lower. In the UK according to the national census about 70% of people, when asked what religion they where, put down Christian (there is a list to choose from) BUT this does not in any way mean that 70% of people are actuallu practicing Christians. Recent surveys indicate that in the UK only about 35% of people actualu believe in the existence of God and only about 10% of people actually atend church regularly (once a week)
http://www.vexen.co.uk/UK/religion.html
This tells me that whilst 70% of the population will say "oh I'm a christian" but in actual fact many of them don;t even believe in God! They are merely identifying themselves as culurally christian rather than actually following a relgion. So how many religious people are then in the UK? Well I would say between 10% and 30% my definition of religion here is people that actually act as if they believe in what they claim they believe i.e. they at least go to church or moque or temple from time to time. Many of the others may identify themselves as belonging to a religion but this is purely from a cultural prespective. They dont actually believe in or follow that religion, they probably won;t activly say they are non beliveres but the actions are the same as if they where an atheist, they are practicing atheists. The statistic presented show that majority of the 70% "christians" in the uk national census are in fact not religious and are in fact practicing atheists if not out and out atheists!
This is again something that Dennet explores in "Breaking the spell- religion as a natural phenomona" he calls it Believing in Belief rather than actual belief.
Hmmm you will have to qualify that a bit and back up the statement.
So what? The religion still treats women as second class citizens. Its a patriacal society with women being given away by their faimilies along with a load of other material possesions to form a contract with another family. The woman ministers are credable and are largely due to the seculaisation of India they are nothing to do with Hinduism which is a mysogonistic as Islam and Christianity,
No they are not becoming more religious. You will really need to check your facts here. India is becoming more and more secular. All of the progress towards equality have come as part of the secularisation of India rather than them becoming more religious!
Well thats good. This is why Hinduism has more respect from me than most religions as it is less stuck on its dogmas.