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Still Don't Think that Theism is a Mental Disorder?
rationalresponders.com — Kelly from the Rational Response Squad beats up on Christians, Muslims, and "respect other peoples insane belief atheist appeasers" all in one post. Will the muslims try to censor this image from Digg as well. Tip to muslims: remove Muhammeds pedophilic penis from your ass and join the rest of the world in the 21st century. Dogma must die.
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- mr804, on 01/13/2008, -2/+7***** yeah it is a mental disorder.
- Edweird, on 01/13/2008, -1/+6couldnt be more clear cut, excellent blog +1
- HereticChick, on 01/13/2008, -0/+6Wonderful article Kelly. I've always wondered about these people who kill their kids because, they were protecting them from Satan, or demons kill them in their sleep, or a child was "possessed by and evil spirit". There's obviously quite a gaping hole in a person's thought processes that allows religiosity to come flooding in and makes them think that this is the only way. Religion + mental illness = total disaster
- yellowcakewalk, on 01/13/2008, -0/+7Superstition may have had survival value, in an evolutionary sense, thousands of years ago. It may be innate. It's a struggle for many intelligent people to conquer their innate superstitious urges and embrace reason.
- CookieDuster666, on 01/13/2008, -0/+9"My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can."
-- Frank Zappa - zappo1776, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2As an atheist who has been told all my life by 'believers' that I have a mental disorder, I don't agree with doing the same thing back to them. This sort of thing just pisses people off.
- CharlesEvo, on 01/15/2008, -0/+1I'm an atheist, but it seems to me that dragging this apparently schizophrenic guy who cut his hand off as a springboard for this argument is simply opportunism, pure and simple.
If you can't discern between real psychosis on the one hand, and religious fervor and its various neuroses on the other, then there's a problem here.
Schizophrenic people often can't navigate between imagination and reality. It's like living in a dream, often a scary dream where voices are commanding you to do things, and for some reason it's hard to resist those voices. That is a function of chemical imbalances in the brain that probably have a biological basis. But to link schizophrenia, however indirectly, to religion as a mental illness is irresponsible.
I like Kelly's posts, and I like the remainder of this particular post of hers, but I found that using a genuinely psychotic individual as a springboard for this post just creates confusion about what mental illness really is.
It's not uncommon for schizophrenics to have "religious" delusions, but they can also have non-religious delusions involving extreterrestrials, the CIA, the FBI, the KKK, Nazis, their neighbors, family, and friends.
Is religion a form of mental illness? Maybe, but it's not the same as schizophrenia. Even in cultures full of religious, superstitious beliefs, schizophrenics still stand out as psychotics with chemical brain imbalances.- bullhead2007, on 01/15/2008, -0/+2I'm an atheist too, and I don't like the "religion is a mental disorder" stuff that the RRS says sometimes. I do think that religion can, and often does, shut down the logical and rational parts of the brain of people who would be or are normally rational and logical. However, I don't think this prejudicing and almost bigoted behavior by pissed off atheists will help anyone, and especially not atheists.
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