Religion or just mental illness?

Good question.

Probably for the same reason that insanity disguised as governmental action is allowed to flourish.

It's sanctioned by the laws we've allowed to be enacted in our names. It's supported by the state as we've organized it.

Re: Religion or just mental illness?


There is someone standing on a street corner in most major U.S. cities doing exactly this every day. Unless they physically threaten someone no one carts them off...



Nope...



At what point is it accpetable for somone to decide what is or isn't an acceptable religious belief for someone else? Now, I largely agree with you that these people are off the wall. But the concept of "freedom of religion" means just that. I don't get to decide whether or not your religious beliefs are acceptable or not.

Re: Religion or just mental illness?


My guess would be because so many believe they are representing something bigger than themselves. A greater cause. A cause to save the world from their sins and from themselves, driving fear into the heart of those who are uncertain about what exactly they believe. It is sad that there's so much finger pointing in our world. That it's somehow "ok" to point the finger at one group of people and condemn them merely for not believing what you believe.

It should be fine for the shirt to read " I hate fags", the fact that we have "hate speech laws" shows how far we have fallen from the ideals of the Founding. The thing to do is to marginalize these types of extreme minority views, not repress them or criminalize speech. If they can convince the majority that they are right then more power to them. I see no reason to gum up democracy just because some overly squeamish people say that they can't deal with words that they don't like. They should go bury their head in the sand until they grow up, not impose their dysfunction on the rest of us.

I don't know, saying "I hate fags" is certainly different from saying "Kill fags," or "Burn down a faggot bar" and inciting people to do just that. I don't think the Founding Fathers had the intention of allowing people to incite murder and destruction through the First Amendment.

The Founders aimed for liberty for all, which includes the liberty to hate whom ever you want to hate. It ends when your liberty impacts another persons liberty, such as by bringing harm to them. Ideally those being uncivil would get marginalized on those grounds alone, so while the freedom to say what you want is nearly unlimited, society is also free to impose a cost on you for your actions.

Re: Religion or just mental illness?

Very hard to distinguish the two in this case. And unfortunately in many cases.

"Intellectually, religious emotions are not creative but conservative-"
John dewey

Religion is an organized association of people with fear and fault.
Anything organized under this circumstances is conditional.
And conditional warrants the loss of individuality.
Loosing individuality spreads ignorance.

Hmm...

This is not about spreading ignorance so much as it is about clinging to one's own ignorane and fear, stalling one's own growth as a human beings.
These people are like animals. I've no respect at all for their views.

Maybe the protest is about aggressively oppressing their own feelings of love for their fellow man, like a modern day ritualistic self-torture

if it is mental illness we can cure.
But religion is full of illenes.
Moral
Ethical
Natural.

In fact, Oliver Wendel Holmes made exactly that point when he pointed out that the First Amendment does not give someone the right to shout "fire!" in a crowded theater.

The point about incitement to criminal behavior is the governing principle. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League routinely monitor hate groups, and if you go to their sites, you'll see both that they can only monitor those who don't incite to criminality, and that they come down like a ton of bricks on anyone who does.

In Germany the church( Catholic, protestant brand) is empty.
But hospitals are infested with christians( Many non belivers live here)

Cyracuz,
Dawkins targets this issue with aggression. He says that as soon as the word "religion" is mentioned, everyone says, "Oh, religion. We can't touch that. It's special." In this way, people are allowed to do horrible things, using religion as their shield (but note: religion spurred them to do it in the first place).

Hmm... I just figured out a cure for just about any mental illness there is.

Just gather all those suffering from it, have them sign a rooster ( at least where I live you can found a religion by getting a certain minimum number of members) and voila...
The people are no longer sick. They're just religious.

It is my god given right to have multiple personalities.... :wink:

I suppose religion is a form of mental illness, or at least the need for one is.

Re: Religion or just mental illness?
A more apropos question to ask might be: exactly what (if anything at all) is rational about any of man's activities in the general sense over time?

After all, moral relativism indicates there may be no absolute standards of correct behavior. Furthermore there is no identified express purpose to man's existence with which to base a set of rational expectations.

Thus your above question presupposes an identified express purpose to man's existence with which to base a set of rational expectations!

Since you've opened this can of worms by begging the question, you are now faced with the responsibility of answering it.........have fun!

Apart from having a fuzzy idea at best about what constitutes moral relativism, that last response displays a complete ignorance of the concept of the social contract, and why it has been a popular concept for thousands of years, even when not so identified.

As Hobbes points out in Leviathan, in rather crude and primitive terms, people will band together for their mutual benefit. This is, essentially, the source of a social contract. Social contracts are not based upon "moral relativism," they are based upon a consensual definition of what is "wrong" and what is "right." Even in the most cynical interpretation, they deal in what is permissible and what is impermissible.

In the context of a social contract, the question: "Why is insanity disguised are religion allowed to flourish" makes perfect sense. The answers may be simple, or complex. In many of the earlier (though not necessarily the earliest) examples of social contracts, the "contract" has been imposed by a religious hierarchy, such as a priesthood. Such societies are usually completely unable to see any of the contradictions and absurdities of their own belief set (which is what i take Cyracuz to refer to in labeling religious belief insanity); although they are usually completely intolerant of any other belief set.

In societies which allow some degree of religious pluralism (this is not necessarily and all or nothing proposition--many European societies after 1520, for example, would tolerate some kinds of Protestantism, but not the Anabaptists, and definitely would not tolerate Catholicism), the motive to tolerate another's religious "insanity" would be the "thin edge of the wedge" principle--don't interfere in your neighbor's religious practice so as not to inferentially assent to interference in your own religious practice.

However, complicating the entire discussion is Cyracuz' insistence that any spiritual beliefs (other than his own) are suspect, and likely to be definable as religious insanity. In any society with a successful social contract which has functioned well over time, the motive for unacceptable behavior--whether religious, ideological, criminal, whatever--is of less importance (or no importance at all) than the effect. If you do things which endanger or harm others, society will intervene.