Is Religion A Mental Illness?

[Eastern Afrika]

So my thread about atheism being a mental illness is LOCKED, but this one continues?

Because it isn't.

Your correct and religion is NOT a mental illness but it is HUMAN NATURE

[Swkoll]

Troll thread is trolling?

[Simon Cowell of the RR]

You completely missed the point. God said not to do something. Adam and Eve did. God got a little PO and kicked them out of Eden. The actual crime was mildly irrelevant.

But god also knew that after telling them not to do it, they would do it anyway. What does that say about him?

He was a bit on the cruel/irrational side throughout the Old Testament. If you bothered to read it, you would see. I am one of those Christians who makes no claim to the idea that God is omnipotent. Or that our words and even describe Him.

Besides, The Garden of Even was a metaphor. It was not actually about God punishing two people for eating a piece of fruit.

[The Cummunist State]

But god also knew that after telling them not to do it, they would do it anyway. What does that say about him?

He was a bit on the cruel/irrational side throughout the Old Testament. If you bothered to read it, you would see. I am one of those Christians who makes no claim to the idea that God is omnipotent. Or that our words and even describe Him.

Besides, The Garden of Even was a metaphor. It was not actually about God punishing two people for eating a piece of fruit.

Assuming that you even said what you wanted to through the mass of grammatical errors, again, how do you know? The bible can be taken a infinite number of ways if you spin it enough.

[Chinese Regions]

Religion or any superstition is not mental illness, just irrationality.

[Gothinia]

800-something posts and the mods have yet to lock this incredibly offensive thread.

[The Cummunist State]

800-something posts and the mods have yet to lock this incredibly offensive thread.

Most of us are taking it like adults.

[Inutoland]

Ok, so as some of you know, i have taken a firm IC stance on Religion being a mental illness. IRL, i feel the same way. However, i would like to know if any of you feel the same way.

I find that religion is illogical, unproven, and frankly, a load of ancient bullshit that has never really contributed anything to the world that outweighs the horrible things it has caused for thousands of years, (racism, sexism, burning at the stake, witchhunts, inquisitions, wars, etc.) and is furthermore a society-upgraded psychological illness induced by the ignorance of how the Universe works and the fear of death.

So, nationstates: Your thoughts.

"Religion" is awfully general. Lumping together belief systems as diverse as tribal paganism, Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism is just bizarre.

Rather like saying that all atheists are evil just because Josef Stalin was evil and happened to be an atheist.

Personally, I disagree that religion is a mental illness. Atheism has raised a pretty interesting catalogue of horrors for the short time it's been considered a viable belief system (purges, ethnic cleansing, the Cultural Revolution, eugenics...), so that point just doesn't fly, to me. Atheism isn't any more logical than, say, Christianity or Buddhism; it just starts with a different assumption about the nature of the universe. This is not to say there aren't some pretty wacky religions out there, but there are some pretty wacky atheistic belief systems too. The same goes for unproven. You can't prove there's no God any more than I can prove there is. I try to approach my Christianity the same way I approach my science: if it doesn't stack up well against the evidence, I discard it. Or, being honest, I get really uncomfortable about it, pending further investigation.

To me, there's enough evidence in the way, for example, the cell's internal machinery all fits together and depends on each other to function, to point strongly toward the notion of a Designer. I don't have a problem if you can't see that, but to label all religions as symptomatic of mental illness just doesn't hold water.

[Evraim]

My thoughts?

You're wrong and your perspective of religion is simplistic. So, pretty much what I thought of the other thread...

Also, I really don't care how offensive this thread is. I would prefer the moderators to engage in as little censorship as possible, and if they don't think that this constitutes trolling I shall respect their opinions. The reason the other thread was locked is because it copied the unsubstantiated claims presented in the original post of this thread.

[The Cummunist State]

Ok, so as some of you know, i have taken a firm IC stance on Religion being a mental illness. IRL, i feel the same way. However, i would like to know if any of you feel the same way.

I find that religion is illogical, unproven, and frankly, a load of ancient bullshit that has never really contributed anything to the world that outweighs the horrible things it has caused for thousands of years, (racism, sexism, burning at the stake, witchhunts, inquisitions, wars, etc.) and is furthermore a society-upgraded psychological illness induced by the ignorance of how the Universe works and the fear of death.

So, nationstates: Your thoughts.

"Religion" is awfully general. Lumping together belief systems as diverse as tribal paganism, Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism is just bizarre.

Rather like saying that all atheists are evil just because Josef Stalin was evil and happened to be an atheist.

Personally, I disagree that religion is a mental illness. Atheism has raised a pretty interesting catalogue of horrors for the short time it's been considered a viable belief system (purges, ethnic cleansing, the Cultural Revolution, eugenics...), so that point just doesn't fly, to me. Atheism isn't any more logical than, say, Christianity or Buddhism; it just starts with a different assumption about the nature of the universe. This is not to say there aren't some pretty wacky religions out there, but there are some pretty wacky atheistic belief systems too. The same goes for unproven. You can't prove there's no God any more than I can prove there is. I try to approach my Christianity the same way I approach my science: if it doesn't stack up well against the evidence, I discard it. Or, being honest, I get really uncomfortable about it, pending further investigation.

To me, there's enough evidence in the way, for example, the cell's internal machinery all fits together and depends on each other to function, to point strongly toward the notion of a Designer. I don't have a problem if you can't see that, but to label all religions as symptomatic of mental illness just doesn't hold water.

Yeah, Religion isn't a menta-warbga WHOAAA, when was Atheism causing purges or ethnic cleansing?!

[Inutoland]

Yeah, Religion isn't a menta-warbga WHOAAA, when was Atheism causing purges or ethnic cleansing?!

Purges: Stalin, Mao Zedong, almost any other Communist/state atheist dictator.
Ethnic cleansing: OK, on further investigation, a trickier connection, and I'll retract the charge. However, the Nazis and others certainly based much of their belief system on an evolutionary, atheistic worldview in which certain groups (particulary Jews) were seen as "evolutionary dead-weight" or less-evolved "untermenschen" that could be externimated at will. This comes with the awareness that the church isn't exactly blameless as regards antisemitism, prejudice or ethnic cleansing. But in terms of the millennia-history of religions versus the two-or-three-centuries that atheism has been a viable belief system, it's still quite a catalogue to have amassed in such a short time.

[Tlaceceyaya]

Because it isn't.

Your correct and religion is NOT a mental illness but it is HUMAN NATURE

It's not human nature - no more human nature than gambling addictions or the english language. We are not born with a gambling addiction or knowledge of the english language.

[The Cummunist State]

Yeah, Religion isn't a menta-warbga WHOAAA, when was Atheism causing purges or ethnic cleansing?!

Purges: Stalin, Mao Zedong, almost any other Communist/state atheist dictator.
Ethnic cleansing: OK, on further investigation, a trickier connection, and I'll retract the charge. However, the Nazis and others certainly based much of their belief system on an evolutionary, atheistic worldview in which certain groups (particulary Jews) were seen as "evolutionary dead-weight" or less-evolved "untermenschen" that could be externimated at will. This comes with the awareness that the church isn't exactly blameless as regards antisemitism, prejudice or ethnic cleansing. But in terms of the millennia-history of religions versus the two-or-three-centuries that atheism has been a viable belief system, it's still quite a catalogue to have amassed in such a short time.

Are you kidding me. You're saying the Nazis were Atheists? Yeah, you're a joke. No sense talking to you anymore. By the way"


My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922

[NERVUN]

"Religion" is awfully general. Lumping together belief systems as diverse as tribal paganism, Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism is just bizarre.

Rather like saying that all atheists are evil just because Josef Stalin was evil and happened to be an atheist.

Personally, I disagree that religion is a mental illness. Atheism has raised a pretty interesting catalogue of horrors for the short time it's been considered a viable belief system (purges, ethnic cleansing, the Cultural Revolution, eugenics...), so that point just doesn't fly, to me. Atheism isn't any more logical than, say, Christianity or Buddhism; it just starts with a different assumption about the nature of the universe. This is not to say there aren't some pretty wacky religions out there, but there are some pretty wacky atheistic belief systems too. The same goes for unproven. You can't prove there's no God any more than I can prove there is. I try to approach my Christianity the same way I approach my science: if it doesn't stack up well against the evidence, I discard it. Or, being honest, I get really uncomfortable about it, pending further investigation.

To me, there's enough evidence in the way, for example, the cell's internal machinery all fits together and depends on each other to function, to point strongly toward the notion of a Designer. I don't have a problem if you can't see that, but to label all religions as symptomatic of mental illness just doesn't hold water.

Yeah, Religion isn't a menta-warbga WHOAAA, when was Atheism causing purges or ethnic cleansing?!

Check out the de-Catholiczation of France during the French Revolution.

And yes, that WAS done in the name of Atheism before the bawww'ing starts.

[Evraim]

Your correct and religion is NOT a mental illness but it is HUMAN NATURE

It's not human nature - no more human nature than gambling addictions or the english language. We are not born with a gambling addiction or knowledge of the english language.

Our genes may make us more likely to develop predisposition torwards such things as gambling or religion. Language, on the other hand, is a result of nurture more so than nature.

[The Cummunist State]

Yeah, Religion isn't a menta-warbga WHOAAA, when was Atheism causing purges or ethnic cleansing?!

Check out the de-Catholiczation of France during the French Revolution.

And yes, that WAS done in the name of Atheism before the bawww'ing starts.

Meh. I still don't think all that stuff was done in the name of Atheism, but so that the leaders would be considered the new gods.

[NERVUN]

Your correct and religion is NOT a mental illness but it is HUMAN NATURE

It's not human nature - no more human nature than gambling addictions or the english language. We are not born with a gambling addiction or knowledge of the english language.

Um... Your analogy isn't working too well there. Ignoring for the moment that gambling and English exist, humans DO tend to behavioral addictions and every human is born with the drive to speak a language. Hell, in terms of neurology, we're finding out that babies start differentiating sounds from the first few weeks, if not birth, and have a 'lock' on their surrounding language(s) long before their first birthday.

[Jerusalem and Damascus]

Check out the de-Catholiczation of France during the French Revolution.

And yes, that WAS done in the name of Atheism before the bawww'ing starts.

Meh. I still don't think all that stuff was done in the name of Atheism, but so that the leaders would be considered the new gods.

Now I think you're just making excuses, and did the exact same thing with the Soviet purges.

[Eastern Afrika]

Your correct and religion is NOT a mental illness but it is HUMAN NATURE

It's not human nature - no more human nature than gambling addictions or the english language. We are not born with a gambling addiction or knowledge of the english language.

We worshipped deities before we were even Homo Sapiens, so how is religion a mental illnes then

[The Cummunist State]

Meh. I still don't think all that stuff was done in the name of Atheism, but so that the leaders would be considered the new gods.

Now I think you're just making excuses, and did the exact same thing with the Soviet purges.

And your excuse for Yahweh killing 32.9 billion people iiiissss?

[NERVUN]

Purges: Stalin, Mao Zedong, almost any other Communist/state atheist dictator.
Ethnic cleansing: OK, on further investigation, a trickier connection, and I'll retract the charge. However, the Nazis and others certainly based much of their belief system on an evolutionary, atheistic worldview in which certain groups (particulary Jews) were seen as "evolutionary dead-weight" or less-evolved "untermenschen" that could be externimated at will. This comes with the awareness that the church isn't exactly blameless as regards antisemitism, prejudice or ethnic cleansing. But in terms of the millennia-history of religions versus the two-or-three-centuries that atheism has been a viable belief system, it's still quite a catalogue to have amassed in such a short time.

Are you kidding me. You're saying the Nazis were Atheists? Yeah, you're a joke. No sense talking to you anymore. By the way"


My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922

*sighs* Go look up the very nice, large, and well researched post on Hitler and his religious beliefs by my fellow Mod, Arch.

Check out the de-Catholiczation of France during the French Revolution.

And yes, that WAS done in the name of Atheism before the bawww'ing starts.

Meh. I still don't think all that stuff was done in the name of Atheism, but so that the leaders would be considered the new gods.

No, it was done in the name of Atheism. A great deal of the damage done to various temples, shrines, and churches in China during the Great Cultural Revolution was also done in that name as well.

Of course, this is a damn stupid argument to make because both sides can keep on showing just how bad the other can be, akin to pointing out how your opponent's clothing is dirty while standing hip deep in a sewer with him.

So let's agree that neither side has a moral high ground in terms of not having someone use it as an excuse to kill, maim, or commit horrific crimes.

[Evraim]

Check out the de-Catholiczation of France during the French Revolution.

And yes, that WAS done in the name of Atheism before the bawww'ing starts.

Meh. I still don't think all that stuff was done in the name of Atheism, but so that the leaders would be considered the new gods.

Couldn't the same be said for the majority of the atrocities committed in the name of religions?

[Eastern Afrika]

Now I think you're just making excuses, and did the exact same thing with the Soviet purges.

And your excuse for Yahweh killing 32.9 billion people iiiissss?

Where the hell did you get 32.9 billion?

[Jerusalem and Damascus]

It's not human nature - no more human nature than gambling addictions or the english language. We are not born with a gambling addiction or knowledge of the english language.

We worshipped deities before we were even Homo Sapiens, so how is religion a mental illnes then

I wouldn't say that humans were worshipping explicit deities before becoming Homo sapiens sapiens. I'd agree with animism, but generally it seems more obvious "deities" come from urbanization and wouldn't form with a hunter-gatherer society too well.

[The Cummunist State]

Are you kidding me. You're saying the Nazis were Atheists? Yeah, you're a joke. No sense talking to you anymore. By the way"


My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922

*sighs* Go look up the very nice, large, and well researched post on Hitler and his religious beliefs by my fellow Mod, Arch.

Meh. I still don't think all that stuff was done in the name of Atheism, but so that the leaders would be considered the new gods.

No, it was done in the name of Atheism. A great deal of the damage done to various temples, shrines, and churches in China during the Great Cultural Revolution was also done in that name as well.

Of course, this is a damn stupid argument to make because both sides can keep on showing just how bad the other can be, akin to pointing out how your opponent's clothing is during while standing hip deep in a sewer with him.

So let's agree that neither side has a moral high ground in terms of not having someone use it as an excuse to kill, maim, or commit horrific crimes.

I can wholeheartedly agree that your Theism or Atheism doesn't control your morality in the least, yes.