Could the belief in god considered a mental illness ?

originally posted by: jidnum
a reply to: LABTECH767

Could you be any more hostile?

You claim that God exists and here you are calling people names and belittling them? LOL

Man I would really really hate to believe in your God if it turns me into such a hateful and spiteful person. You know that's something I notice in a lot of religious people. It's pretty common actually. They want to say they love everyone and they are so kind but once you question their faith they act just like you and go the complete opposite direction and start trying to name call and belittle people, counter productive to your belief no?


So any way......your argument is "I exist therefore God has to be real?" very very poor argument.

You want to have a conversation about something? Then maybe you shouldn't come off as an arrogant know it all because at the end of the day you still have yet to show existence of God.

So there you go, you want your proof that cannot be denied?. Lack of proof of existence IS proof of NOT existing.

you could tell me whatever it is you want to tell me but until you show proof of existence......there is no existence. Simple as that. So the ball is in you court. You need to show me tangible without a doubt proof or it is simply just nonsense.

Sorry to have come across as hostile, actually I was more sarcastic as the debate is like shadow boxing for both sides, we both BELIEVE different thing's but I did not mean to be hostile toward yourself personally and if that is how I come across then I apologize this site is no place for bullying.

It's a subject many of us feel very strongly about on both sides of the debate, anyway whether you believe or not I wish you well and for this coming year we have just started.

(and by they way My God is not shaped by my belief's, I seldom if ever live up to the standards he set when he walked among us but that is another debate, one thing though he never approved of bullying, intolerance, injustice or greed and poverty so my God is actually what I look for in all people regardless of there faith or persuasion in there actions and there standards, my God is the very foundation upon which dream's of fair, tolerant and just society's are based as well as - despite right wing protestation's against this - social justice and of course forgiveness - healing so if you met him even as a metaphorical character which is all you really believe he is while I believe he was most definitely and is most definitely a real being you would probably like him indeed I get the impression if he walked among us today he would be surrounded by former Atheists as well as other's considering the twelve he first called to be his apostles ranged from tax collectors to poor fishermen).

Avoided this thread like the plague... but

The question... can belief in God be considered a mental illness?

Only when belief comes down to condemning people to hell IF they don't share said belief

a reply to: rickymouse
I believe in grammar.

a reply to: AkragonIn comprehension I believe.

originally posted by: Akragon
Avoided this thread like the plague... but

The question... can belief in God be considered a mental illness?

Only when belief comes down to condemning people to hell IF they don't share said belief

What if we understand the concept of ' belief' without conflating it with ' believing in'?.
If you place conditions on 'believing' by ' either/ or'', ( yes if they include condemnation to hell and no if they do not)when believing in God is sufficient regardless of conditions.By setting a condition it is clear you missed the thrust of the question.

Saint Anselm
First published Thu May 18, 2000; substantive revision Mon Dec 21, 2015
Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) was the outstanding Christian philosopher and theologian of the eleventh century. He is best known for the celebrated “ontological argument” for the existence of God in the Proslogion, but his contributions to philosophical theology (and indeed to philosophy more generally) go well beyond the ontological argument. In what follows I examine Anselm's theistic proofs, his conception of the divine nature, and his account of human freedom, sin, and redemption.

1. Life and Works
2. The Theistic Proofs
2.1 “Faith Seeking Understanding”: The character and purpose of Anselm's theistic proofs
2.2 The arguments of the Monologion
2.3 The argument of the Proslogion
3. The Divine Nature
3.1 Proving the divine attributes
3.2 The consistency of the divine attributes
4. Freedom, Sin, and Redemption
4.1 Truth in statements and in the will
4.2 Freedom and sin
4.3 Grace and redemption
Bibliography
Critical Edition
Translations
Secondary Literature
Academic Tools
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries
1. Life and Works
Anselm was born in 1033 near Aosta, in those days a Burgundian town on the frontier with Lombardy. Little is known of his early life. He left home at twenty-three, and after three years of apparently aimless travelling through Burgundy and France, he came to Normandy in 1059. Once he was in Normandy, Anselm's interest was captured by the Benedictine abbey at Bec, whose famous school was under the direction of Lanfranc, the abbey's prior. Lanfranc was a scholar and teacher of wide reputation, and under his leadership the school at Bec had become an important center of learning, especially in dialectic. In 1060 Anselm entered the abbey as a novice. His intellectual and spiritual gifts brought him rapid advancement, and when Lanfranc was appointed abbot of Caen in 1063, Anselm was elected to succeed him as prior. He was elected abbot in 1078 upon the death of Herluin, the founder and first abbot of Bec. Under Anselm's leadership the reputation of Bec as an intellectual center grew, and Anselm managed to write a good deal of philosophy and theology in addition to his teaching, administrative duties, and extensive correspondence as an adviser and counsellor to rulers and nobles all over Europe and beyond. His works while at Bec include the Monologion (1075–76), the Proslogion (1077–78), and his four philosophical dialogues: De grammatico (1059–60), De veritate, and De libertate arbitrii, and De casu diaboli (1080–86).

In 1093 Anselm was enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury. The previous Archbishop, Anselm's old master Lanfranc, had died four years earlier, but the King, William Rufus, had left the see vacant in order to plunder the archiepiscopal revenues. Anselm was understandably reluctant to undertake the primacy of the Church of England under a ruler as ruthless and venal as William, and his tenure as Archbishop proved to be as turbulent and vexatious as he must have feared. William was intent on maintaining royal authority over ecclesiastical affairs and would not be dictated to by Archbishop or Pope or anyone else. So, for example, when Anselm went to Rome in 1097 without the King's permission, William would not allow him to return. When William was killed in 1100, his successor, Henry I, invited Anselm to return to his see. But Henry was as intent as William had been on maintaining royal jurisdiction over the Church, and Anselm found himself in exile again from 1103 to 1107. Despite these distractions and troubles, Anselm continued to write. His works as Archbishop of Canterbury include the Epistola de Incarnatione Verbi (1094), Cur Deus Homo (1095–98), De conceptu virginali (1099), De processione Spiritus Sancti (1102), the Epistola de sacrificio azymi et fermentati (1106–7), De sacramentis ecclesiae (1106–7), and De concordia (1107–8). Anselm died on 21 April 1109. He was canonized in 1494 and named a Doctor of the Church in 1720.

If we consider the Theistic proofs of St. Anslems "Ontological argument” for the existence of God in his book 'Proslogion', the character and purpose of Anselm's theistic proofs are adequately summed up in his motto
('Fides quaerens intellectum'),"Faith seeking understanding".
St.Anselm is not hoping to replace faith with understanding( for the purposes of this thread understanding/'BELIEF') Faith for Anselm is more a volitional state than an epistemilogical state:For example
If one takes ‘faith’ to mean roughly ‘belief on a purely subjective basis of personal 'testimony’ (I believe yet I have not seen)or'understanding’ to mean ‘belief on the basis of philosophical scrutiny or insight’, one is likely to regard faith as an epistemological ' ONLY 'insufficient ( for the purposes of this question)position;

a reply to: joeyhalf

Im not questioning IF God exists...

when it comes to condemning others due to ones belief...

it is an illness

perhaps not so much mental as spiritual...

IMHO

originally posted by: LoneBird

originally posted by: TzarChasm

originally posted by: LoneBird

originally posted by: TzarChasm

originally posted by: LoneBird
a reply to: sapien82

Without grace from the Holy Father and Holy Son, I would be the most tormented man on earth.

Prayer and belief 100% work.

That says more about you than anything else. An addiction is an addiction however you dress it up.

It is not an addiction, it is a personal relationship.

A personal relationship that becomes stronger when one chooses to overcome the addictions of this world in order to have a closer relationship with the heavenly Father.

Having a personal relationship with a creature who only exists in your mind is called a delusion. Even if it's healthier than narcotics. And by healthier I mean not punishable by law.

I won't drag this along any further after this but it is this type of thinking which allows the devil and dark forces to run rampant over people. It's most likely how they will get their agenda, for a short time.

I believe this world is a test. We came here to be tested.

What we do here, it matters. And if one keeps reaching out to God, God will most certainly reach back.. eventually.

Usually people who say they are "being tested" are coping with trauma and using a higher power as a magical variable to turn that frown upside down. You're not a victim of chaos, you're being trained as part of a divine quest for the fate of the human race. It's not so different from LARPing really. But generally LARP folks are considered, well, you know. Weird. Often there is a diagnosis involved. There is coping, and then there is delusion. The belief that reality is dependent on factors that don't exist because it makes your life more tolerable. Superstition is a great example of this. Going to confession is coping, flagellation is delusion. Fasting is coping, televangelism and seed donations are a delusion. But they are both built on the same stage and use the same ideas to spread and infect the uneducated. Children die because parents don't believe in medicine. Churches march in protest because they are convinced god is sending gunmen to punish our schools for defending gay rights. Creationism tells us that we belong to god like a wrench in his tool box and our civil rights are a privilege he can revoke for any reason and without due process. I could go on but maybe you understand now. Much of Religion today is like how they classified meth as a narcotic but started putting a tweaked version of it in Ritalin and called it "pharmacy" which is basically how the old testament became the new testament.

originally posted by: Akragon
a reply to: joeyhalf

Im not questioning IF God exists...

when it comes to condemning others due to ones belief...

it is an illness

perhaps not so much mental as spiritual...

IMHO

But I was suggesting you are because you set conditions or a variable on belief in God when in fact it is pure A- priori .

a reply to: Blaine91555
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. J Kristnamurti.

In a mad world, only the mad are sane. Akira Kurosawa.

a reply to: Nothin

There are ways we can train our brain to become less gullible. For me the map-territory metaphor works well. I took it from General Semantics(GS), something that has shaped my mind. GS teaches how to have a scientific approach on matters that are usually hermetic to the scientific approach. It teaches that the true reality is not reachable by us, because everything goes through our senses and our brain, so we totally ignore the majority of things that are happening, and the things that we actually catch, we misinterpret and misunderstand. It teaches a mental gymnastic to help us distantiate ourselves from the things that are happening in our brain, how we feel about things, and to ultimately delay the reaction so the higher functions of the brain have the time they need to actually do their work. It is really about injecting elements of the scientific method into our everyday life way of thinking.

It is like someone who wants to have lucid dreams. They would force themselves to question reality 5 or 10 times a day when they are awake, until that becomes an automatism, in the hope that this automatism will manifest itself during the dream and help them become lucid.

For example in the following video, the guy says that what we perceive is actually controlled hallucinations, which were fine tuned by evolution just enough to be able to survive and reproduce, but no enough to enable us to see reality as it really is, or to even question these controlled hallucinations.


In the following video, the guy gives a metaphor that is similar to the map-territory metaphor. What we perceive is like a computer screen. On the desktop, you have a blue icon that represents a file, that sits in the bottom right corner. You might come to believe that what you see is reality, that your file is really blue and that it really sits in the bottom right corner of your computer. But this just an interface, a map. The reality of your file inside the computer doesn't look like this at all. This interface enables us to use the file, open it, edit it, save it, close it, etc., but this interface tells us nothing about the reality of our file inside the computer. This is a useful hallucination, a "controlled" hallucination in the sense that it is limited in scope, because it has been fine tuned by evolution.

a reply to: gosseyn

Thanks for the vids.
Watched them both, and they resonate strongly here.
Am not consciously using any 'method' per-se, other than checking the temp of the shower before jumping-in, and such automatismes.
Could very well be using 'ways' to deal with this supposed reality, like your mapping-method, but it would be kinda under the surface, and mostly unconsciously.

Here is a quote from the TROM series mentioned in your sig, and that may fit well in this thread:

" If a man has an apartment, stacked to the ceiling with newspapers: we call him crazy.
If a woman has a trailer-house full of cats: we call her nuts.
But when people pathologically hoard so much cash, that they impoverish a nation: we put them on the cover of fortune magazine, and pretend that they're role-models. " -- B. Lester.

( Don't know whom this B. Lester is ? )

Anyways, nice to meet you in our shared 'controlled hallucinations', for this short time.

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
a reply to: Blaine91555
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. J Kristnamurti.

In a mad world, only the mad are sane. Akira Kurosawa.

The problem with philosophers and artists is they tend to become a religion themselves and often in their own minds. They think thoughts uncountable others before them have thought.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. ~KJV~

originally posted by: Blaine91555

Hi Blaine.

The problem with philosophers and artists is they tend to become a religion themselves and often in their own minds. They think thoughts uncountable others before them have thought.

Is that anything more than a belief, that comes from your mind, thinking "thoughts uncountable others before them have thought" ?

Does your 'belief' extend to everyone, or you chose to single out "philosophers and artists" for some other reason ?

Can see how you may be right about the second part, but why single-out certain people, and call it a 'problem' ?
It is the way it is. Just live and let be.

Makes me think of the classic tavern guy: " Listen buddy, let me tell you what your problem is... "
LoL ! We've all met that person before, right ?

originally posted by: Akragon
a reply to: joeyhalf
Im not questioning IF God exists...when it comes to condemning others due to ones belief...
it is an illness perhaps not so much mental as spiritual...
IMHO

Murdering others because they have a another name for the same God is insane. Killing others because their belief systems differ is just bad manners.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: gosseyn

The phenomena in question that even you admit to occurs regardless. Other creatures can observe how it goes into other wavelengths that our eyes and brains do not perceive. We use technology to perceive it for ourselves.

Evolution could have made us see sound and hear light. For example there is something called synesthesia which is a condition some people have which mixes some of their senses. Some of them see colors when they hear sound, or they can feel the touch of something when they taste something. I remember reading about a guy who could touch and feel a cold cylinder in front of him every time he tasted mint. Approx 4% of the world population are synesthesists, so it is not a low number. But is it an illness, or is it just the path that evolution made their ancestors follow ? After all, it is just the result of genetic mutations.

If the numbers were inverted, if we had 96% of synesthesists, how would we call the 4% that are not synesthesists, that just see light and hear sound like you and me ? Retards, or more politically correct, people suffering from a mental illness ? If 96% could see flash of colors when they hear sound, all the music ever made would have been made not only to please the ears, but also to please the eyes. Synesthesists often think that there is nothing out of the ordinary with them for many years.

Imagine living in a jungle 200k years ago, a predator suddenly jumps at you. At the same time that you hear the roar of the predator, a flash of red light appears on the side of your visual field. Just like in a video game when the sides of the screen are colored in red to signify the player that combat mode is engaged.

Or imagine someone talking to you, and then you say to yourself "Hmm, there is too much purple in what this guy just said, I should no trust him".

And to top it off, there might be a whole bunch of new colors that we will never be able to experience. What new color could we see if we were able to catch infrared, or X-rays ?
Have you ever tried to imagine a new color ? It's impossible. But I am sure many animals are able to see colors we have never seen and probably never will.

originally posted by: vethumanbeing

originally posted by: Akragon
a reply to: joeyhalf
Im not questioning IF God exists...when it comes to condemning others due to ones belief...
it is an illness perhaps not so much mental as spiritual...
IMHO

Murdering others because they have a another name for the same God is insane. Killing others because their belief systems differ is just bad manners.

not sure what you're trying to say here.

a reply to: Akragon

sectarian violence is ridiculous

its violence from nothing but ignorance

I believe that is what they meant

if GOD is GOD , then there should be no separation between religions , why so many

a reply to: sapien82

Gog and Magog.

Often - maybe even always - those that claim to do thing's in the name of God are merely serving there own agenda's and are in fact for all there claiming and using this or that God's name as far from the ideals that whatever God that may be are supposed to represent.

But people that go out and do Good out of simple altruism, not to be rewarded for it or recognized but because they want to help others and have empathy are as any religious person would recognize regardless of there faith the instrument's through which the best of those ideals work.

On the one hand are the silent do good folk's and on the other the haters, filth and murder spewers that are the very antithesis of the ideal's and moral's that most religions hold in common.

So Gog and Magog go to war (but it is not the well intentioned folk that are the one's doing that).

originally posted by: sapien82
a reply to: Akragon

sectarian violence is ridiculous

its violence from nothing but ignorance

I believe that is what they meant

if GOD is GOD , then there should be no separation between religions , why so many

violence is ridiculous in most cases...

im lost in this convo...

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: sapien82

Gog and Magog.

Often - maybe even always - those that claim to do thing's in the name of God are merely serving there own agenda's and are in fact for all there claiming and using this or that God's name as far from the ideals that whatever God that may be are supposed to represent.

What you mean like those who claimed to write the word of god in gods name which eventually became the bible