Deifying The Disabled - How Religion Slips Mental Illness Under The Radar

Cross posted at God Is For Suckers!

"Neurotics build castles in the sky. Psychotics go and live in them. Psychologists charge rent." - Unknown.

Right on the heels of my prior post, more bedlam erupted in the form of a lone shooter in Colorado. Another senseless tragedy.

Stardust pointed out rightly, here, that there was an immense silence from on high - no intervention (outside the perceived nonsense that survival of this, or any incident, is indicative of such), no parting of the heavens, no blinding light, no angels stepping in, in short, no miracles whatsoever. Just another sloppy sentence in the book of humanity's history.

I'm not a big fan of the idea that religion impels folks to commit unspeakable acts, or enact tragedies. I'm of the mind that these incidents would've occurred regardless of epistemology.

My main peeve, is that obviously deficient world-view that religion improves people, when in fact, all one has to do is scan the news feeds (or even historical events) to put the lie to that sentence.

Augustine is quoted as saying, "Never judge a philosophy by its abuse." Which, as far as I'm concerned, is an unmitigated load of crap. How else are we supposed to judge it then? One may as well argue that every system has its good points, regardless.

My other major issue, is that a system based on the supernatural tends to overlook obvious symptoms of mental illness. If a hereafterian meets with someone who claims to have visions (read: hallucinations), has glossolalia (read: blathers gibberish) or hears voices (read: schizophrenia), and overall makes claims to have some sort of alternate reality that's agreeable to the listener, the possibility that the exponent of these 'worldviews' is unhinged is (usually) glossed over.

Again, history is rife with these examples. Indeed, one has only to scan any religious texts to find evidence where lunatics were not only given a free hand, they were actually applauded for misconduct (I'd link to a few examples, say like this little ditty, or perchance this one, but knowing this readership, well over a hundred such instances will get trotted out anyways).

Time to trot out a bit of objectivity:

I have stipulated elsewhere, that I used to hear 'voices'. It's actually fairly common in most folks. Despite its commonality though, there's a stigma attached. It tends to isolate people. Left to our own devices, we then have the habit of rationalizing why we are the sole recipient of these auditory hallucinations. There's even a movement for those folks (I'm voice-free now - so I'm on the outside looking in).

And, in fact, hallucinations of many varieties are common among the rational and irrational alike.

So there doesn't seem to be any really clear-cut definition as to what signifies mental illness - I've always maintained that everyone is something of a 'lunatic', there are simply degrees of acceptability.

So when does it become unacceptable? How about here? (Note the religious language - 'haunted by demons' is so much more fraught with romantic meaning than being a squalid crazy.) How about this little event? Or this one?

In my humble (amateur) opinion, I think that the issue rolls around the ability to anchor oneself to reality. It is one thing to daydream, to have fantasies (large and small) that harm no one, it is another thing to live in accordance with those fantasies, and it is entirely something else again to force them on others.

Repeating myself: it is harm inferred and harm incurred that is the yardstick we use. In the case of Murray, we see that, even though he was a few shades more irrational than the crowd he sought refuge with, his symptoms match some of those we'd find in any ascetic fanatic living in the desert.

So, nutshelling it:

There are numerous examples that illustrate that as a species, we see, hear, touch, taste, and even smell something illusory - and on a small scale, this is somewhat acceptable (it kind of has to be).

On the broader scale; religion tends to sanctify the borderline lunacy, and throw roses at the chemical imbalances, proclaiming a deus ex machina - that is, until the marginal mental illness blossoms into something of a nepenthes rajah writ large and prone to cannibalism.

And the sheep wander about with that nonplussed look on their faces, because no one saw it coming. After all, they prattled enough to the unanswering sky, didn't they? Their shepherd certainly loses enough lambs, does he not?

This is the Apostate, signing off.