Religion = insanity?

[Doobah47]

I've recently met a couple of people recently turned 'insane'. These people appeared to have no fundamental religious doctrine about them before, but now they won't eat pork...

I've noticed that religion seems to turn people insane, via propaganda - often people with psychosis are very much in awe of religious motivation. Do people think that following religious dogma is akin to a psychotic listening to the voices in their head?

I've always thought that religion is very much similar to a vagina, with philosophy as the clitoris - stimulate one and the other will respond - we all know what the thought of a vagina could do to a man - entice them and send them crazy with passion. The concept of a religion encases people inside buildings or doctrines, like a womb; usually with an ideal being love/reproduction of the members inside (conversion/common dogmatic binding) - so we can see that being inside a religious theory is rather like being inside a vagina/womb.

In almost all of the world's religions there are central patriarchal figures, one could say that these men represent the penis inside the religion - so religion (theology + dogma) is in fact a figuration of the act of coital union.

Sexual passion could render a person completely insane - their conscious common sense is rendered unimportant in comparison to the proposition of sex with an incredibly attractive member of the opposite sex, so the idea that a figuration of sex could render people insane is not entirely crahazy.

Does anybody follow this idea? I'd like to hear responses...

This one screams red alert to me, so it bears warning pre-posting to remind you all to keep it clean and on topic. Clean as in...this is not a porn site.
~Ari

[Aristoddler]

To some people, killing five people in the name of God is a mental illness or psychosis.
To some others, killing five people in the name of God is serial murder.


To some...religion is a psychosis.
Perspective is a wonderful thing.

[boagie]

Doobah,

I think the better question might be why do unbelievers fear the thought of believers in power, do they fear, the lack of intellectual integrity, the irrationality, do they ponder the horrific history of warring theologies. If you cannot reason with someone reguarding any one topic is it then reasonable to assume you cannot reason with them on any topic. I get the impression from some of the Christian folks I know that Christianity is our team, you know like the Mets, and when they win, I win? Bush, makes my blood run cold!!

[Doobah47]

I'd say that I do not particularly care if my 'leader' is religious, so long as their own beliefs do not interfere with their political functioning; surely logic and democratic agreement are the fundamental factors of what a politician in a democracy should say - if they do let their own views into the arena then we are left with some sort of fascism. If politician says "god" or "evil" then we all must understand that only the individual in question has any remote understanding of what is meant by saying such things - so subjective matters (such as religion) should be kept out of politics; they are after all merely the administrators of our nations, I don't think they should have the power to rabble-rouse using religion as a tool.

Although we might elect the particular politician in question, that is as much control as the democracy has when the politician starts waving around his power and claiming God is with him or some other such stoopidious remark (the 'Axis of Evil' is but a flare in a sea of secularism I'd say, Bush will leave us soon, and I hope that others learn that his gross incompetance renders the USA as a triple 20 on a dart-board, ie nail them is what a vast majority think).

So overall I'd say that politicians should be entirely secular, yet that does not stop a religious person influencing by democratic power the politicians.

[boagie]

Doobah,

I could not agree more. However it is well known that the right wing conservative party placed their own in power in getting Bush elected. Bush in the mean time assured his right wing religious following that he was being directed in his war efforts by God. These people have some very strange ideas which could profoundly effect the world, example, the end times, the belief that Israel was given to the Jew by god himself, it kind of stacks the deck against the Arab world. In order to be a good Christian one must put to one side reason. These are dangerous people to us all, in a global way.

[Doobah47]

Israel was a part of English occupied territory, so perhaps if we were to take a look behind the facade we might find some aristocratic conservative religious propogators running the USA/UK (the Conservative party in UK was set up by Jews).

I think we face the most humungous of problems in trying to detach people from the faith aspect of religion (the faith in good/truth/god/messiah), because it is the faith aspect that people such as Bush depend upon, this kind of messianic leadership which turns religion into reason. Religion is so broad that it can come up with many reasons to be left intact, thus dismissing reasons to diminish such aspects as the faith in God's will.

The only tool we have that can really be used to any effect is the truth, and the proving of the truth to ordinary people; this will not diminish the faith aspect, but it will diminish the desire for people to want to remain under the umbrella of a specific 'true' interpretation, thus diminishing the following of somebody who claims to be God's messenger/messiah/chosen one.

So with that I'd like to say that the truth is ineffable, language is a lie, and any philosophy one commits is patently false, thus all religious propaganda is FALSE.

[boagie]

Doobah,

Yes, truth is vital, but to the population of non-believers must alter somehow this unfounded respect which Christianity has enjoyed for so long. It is after all an unreasonable request that one should respect an opinion for which there is no evidence. Humor I would say is more effective in blocking their path of self-righteousness, show your amusement at absurd claims if they insist on sharing them with you.

[Didymos Thomas]

Is this a thread to pick on the extremists, who are an easy target to begin with, or is this a thread investigating the relationship between religious belief and insanity?

If this is a thread about religious belief and insanity, I would advance the notion that religious belief is not equivalent to insanity. I would also suggest that religious belief does not necessarily promote the sort of behavior that makes people seem unreasonable, and that any instance of such is an example of either ignorance or someone abusing believers out of greed instead of being the result of simply religious belief.

[boagie]

Originally Posted by Didymos Thomas

Is this a thread to pick on the extremists, who are an easy target to begin with, or is this a thread investigating the relationship between religious belief and insanity?

If this is a thread about religious belief and insanity, I would advance the notion that religious belief is not equivalent to insanity. I would also suggest that religious belief does not necessarily promote the sort of behavior that makes people seem unreasonable, and that any instance of such is an example of either ignorance or someone abusing believers out of greed instead of being the result of simply religious belief.

Thomas,

Insanity was not my choice of terms. If indeed Christianity was not a political animal, there would not be that fear of them gaining more political power. An inoffensive, unaggressive Christianity is not the problem, but many Christians it seems while claiming to be Christians want to see themselves as not part of that agressive Christianity which is attacking science and reason. It seems where there is great tolerance of Christianity, this only encourages greater aggression on the part of that institution, to the point of tolerance becoming a withered weed which is in need of pulling. Seriously who would be worried about a simple religious belief if it is not extended into the political arena.

[Doobah47]

Reason itself is a religious belief - a form of human generated doctrine (although founded in fact, also like alot of delusion).

I was not intending to pick on any extremist or religion - in fact it might be best if you left your coat at the door for this thread, unless somebody has pinned it to your waist and wrists and you just can't get it off. The thread actually veered towards extremism due to digression, woops! not my fault.

Anyway, my point is that religion incites mad people to do things; perhaps all people are mad to begin with and religion just caps them as it were, like a labotomy, or perhaps people are maddened by religion - I think there's an argument for both sides.

Originally what interested me was that mad people turn to religion and manifest their framed opinions with actions such as the refusal of pork. The part about the coital union vis a vis religion/theology
was simply an analysis of how or why this could be.