Is religion a psychological problem?

What is your opinion about this matter?

Would it not be better for mankind as a whole if we could know when we are being delusional?

I am not tring to put anyone or any religion down, I just seem to think that I am able to observe, 'that we are all delusional at times.
This seems to be one of the many stumbling blocks for progression in all aspects of life.

reasoning logic wrote:

What is your opinion about this matter?

What if we were to start first by asking something like, 'Is believing in something that may not be so a psychological problem?'.

Well if you want my opinion, then "no". But that is all you will get out of me.

reasoning logic wrote:

What is your opinion about this matter?

What sort of psychological problem? Dogma!

How would it be problematic? No room for advancements in ethics!


People usually have to die for the advancement in ethics to take place within a religion, and then they still call the old text the word of god and make up excuses for the old behavior of the past instead of saying what it was," ignorance!

thack45 wrote:

reasoning logic wrote:

What is your opinion about this matter?

What if we were to start first by asking something like, 'Is believing in something that may not be so a psychological problem?'.

The issue with the OP is essentially what you are asking here Thack. It stems from an essential misunderstaning of psychology. People often assume that just because there are delusional type disorders that all psychology and all mental processes follow suit. People assume that okay delusions are things that people believe that aren't. So if someone believes something that isn't s/he is delusional. This is not the case however.

With regards to delusional disorders: The DSM-IV, "personal beliefs should be evaluated with great respect to complexity of cultural and religious differences since some cultures have widely accepted beliefs that may be considered delusional in other cultures. Specifically, in order to fall under the definition of a "delusion," a belief must be sustained despite what almost everyone else believes, and not be one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith)."
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (4th ed., text revision). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.

So we can see that psychology is defined within the parameters of society and cannot be seperated from it. A person's integral psychological makeup is as much nurture as it is nature. The break in reality is not so much a break from empiricism as it is a break from a normative array of beliefs within the parameter's of a person's sociological makeup.


Also a key misunderstanding here is that the mind works exclusivly from physically emipircal data, which is true in a sense but untrue in the sense from which religion is demonized. A person has a belief system that is always self contradictory in places although to the believer it is not self contradictory.

http://www.cognitivebehavior.com/theory/beliefsystems.html
"What people believe to be true is that which is coherent to their already established cache of truisms. This cache is developed over time and is significantly shaped by the significant people in the environment. Its development is monitored by the rigor with which each new proposition is analyzed in relationship to what already exists.

When something registers as contradictory it creates internal stress, Cognitive Dissonance and can be dealt with in many ways. a person can ditch the belief, a person can modify the belief, a person can compartmentalize a belief. None of these means of menta re-alignment are creating delusions or really any other psychological disorders or are illogical processes. The mind operates on truism not truth.

The notion that physically empirical things are better than non-physically empirical things is a truism in itself. An axiom upon which a moral code is built. It is an ethical morae that itself is not backed up with empirical proof.

GoshisDead wrote:

thack45 wrote:

reasoning logic wrote:

What is your opinion about this matter?

What if we were to start first by asking something like, 'Is believing in something that may not be so a psychological problem?'.

The issue with the OP is essentially what you are asking here Thack. It stems from an essential misunderstaning of psychology. People often assume that just because there are delusional type disorders that all psychology and all mental processes follow suit. People assume that okay delusions are things that people believe that aren't. So if someone believes something that isn't s/he is delusional. This is not the case however.

With regards to delusional disorders: The DSM-IV, "personal beliefs should be evaluated with great respect to complexity of cultural and religious differences since some cultures have widely accepted beliefs that may be considered delusional in other cultures. Specifically, in order to fall under the definition of a "delusion," a belief must be sustained despite what almost everyone else believes, and not be one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith)."
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (4th ed., text revision). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.

So we can see that psychology is defined within the parameters of society and cannot be seperated from it. A person's integral psychological makeup is as much nurture as it is nature. The break in reality is not so much a break from empiricism as it is a break from a normative array of beliefs within the parameter's of a person's sociological makeup.


Also a key misunderstanding here is that the mind works exclusivly from physically emipircal data, which is true in a sense but untrue in the sense from which religion is demonized. A person has a belief system that is always self contradictory in places although to the believer it is not self contradictory.

http://www.cognitivebehavior.com/theory/beliefsystems.html
"What people believe to be true is that which is coherent to their already established cache of truisms. This cache is developed over time and is significantly shaped by the significant people in the environment. Its development is monitored by the rigor with which each new proposition is analyzed in relationship to what already exists.

When something registers as contradictory it creates internal stress, Cognitive Dissonance and can be dealt with in many ways. a person can ditch the belief, a person can modify the belief, a person can compartmentalize a belief. None of these means of menta re-alignment are creating delusions or really any other psychological disorders or are illogical processes. The mind operates on truism not truth.

The notion that physically empirical things are better than non-physically empirical things is a truism in itself. An axiom upon which a moral code is built. It is an ethical morae that itself is not backed up with empirical proof.

So by this defined criteria any thing is logical within relegion If we all agree that it is logical?

To think that woman are property and other men can be property and that child sacrifice is ok would be logical by this criteria as long as we all think it is ok within or religion.
what this means is that anything that we agree together in our religon is pyschological! even if it is drinking poisen Koolaid.

[ "personal beliefs should be evaluated with great respect to complexity of cultural and religious differences since some cultures have widely accepted beliefs that may be considered delusional in other cultures. Specifically, in order to fall under the definition of a "delusion," a belief must be sustained despite what almost everyone else believes, and not be one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith)."]