| Should religious faith be a category in the DSM? |
| Yes, add it! |
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14% |
[ 4 ] |
| Wait, it isn't already? |
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3% |
[ 1 ] |
| It's already in the DSM, under Schizophrenia. |
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14% |
[ 4 ] |
| NS, you are going to burn in hellfire! (and/or be smote by Zeus) |
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3% |
[ 1 ] |
| No, it is perfectly sane to believe in religious doctrine. |
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44% |
[ 12 ] |
| Other |
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18% |
[ 5 ] |
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| Total Votes : 27 |
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NarcissusSavage
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 03, 2009
Age: 31
Posts: 657
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 Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 4:53 am Post subject: Obvious missing diagnosis? |
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| Given the delusional nature of religious views, should they be classified as a mental disorder/group of disorders? It seems to me to be a resounding and obvious Yes. What are your thoughts? |
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ruveyn
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 22, 2008
Age: 76
Posts: 29336
Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 4:56 am Post subject: Re: Obvious missing diagnosis? |
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| NarcissusSavage wrote: | | Given the delusional nature of religious views, should they be classified as a mental disorder/group of disorders? It seems to me to be a resounding and obvious Yes. What are your thoughts? |
In order to stay sane we need a coherent view of the world. Religion is that view adapted to living in the Bronze Age. However, we no longer live in the Bronze Age. Something more abstract and scientific is called for.
ruveyn |
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CoMF
Deinonychus
Joined: Feb 08, 2012
Posts: 328
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| Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 5:09 am Post subject: |
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| Regarding religion as some form of psychosis seems like a pseudoscientific belief to me. |
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ruveyn
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 22, 2008
Age: 76
Posts: 29336
Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 5:11 am Post subject: |
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| CoMF wrote: | | Regarding religion as some form of psychosis seems like a pseudoscientific belief to me. |
It is more of a habit and an error than it is a psychosis. Most people are not critical thinkers. Most people tend to follow in the paths that their parents walking.
ruveyn |
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CoMF
Deinonychus
Joined: Feb 08, 2012
Posts: 328
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| Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 5:14 am Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | | It is more of a habit and an error than it is a psychosis. Most people are not critical thinkers. Most people tend to follow in the paths that their parents walking. |
That sounds like a far more reasonable viewpoint than the implication that religion should have its own entry in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
ETA: If the ability to demonstrate critical thinking was the final arbiter in deciding whether or not we're suffering a mental illness, I don't think we'd be able to build psychiatric hospitals fast enough to keep up with the "demand," so to speak.
Last edited by CoMF on Sat Mar 17, 2012 5:18 am; edited 1 time in total |
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donnie_darko
Phoenix
Joined: Nov 27, 2009
Age: 23
Posts: 1794
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| Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 5:15 am Post subject: |
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| No, I would consider that discrimination. People can't choose their beliefs, any more than somebody can choose to be gay. |
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foxfield
Raven
Joined: Sep 11, 2011
Age: 25
Posts: 109
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 9:47 am Post subject: |
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Well, a large majority of the world's population has a religious faith of some sort.
So if anything not believing in God should be a mental disorder, since the purpose of the DSM is to classify deviations from the norm. |
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NarcissusSavage
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 03, 2009
Age: 31
Posts: 657
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| Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 10:01 am Post subject: |
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| foxfield wrote: | Well, a large majority of the world's population has a religious faith of some sort.
So if anything not believing in God should be a mental disorder, since the purpose of the DSM is to classify deviations from the norm. |
An exerpt from Wiki
| Quote: | | The current version of the DSM characterizes a mental disorder as "a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual [which] is associated with present distress...or disability...or with a significant increased risk of suffering." It also notes that "...no definition adequately specifies precise boundaries for the concept of 'mental disorder'...different situations call for different definitions". |
Doesn't say anything about the "norm" or even any "majority".
If the world gets overrun with zombies carrying the T virus, we don't suddenly start calling the zombies healthy and the 1% non infected group sick.
_________________
I am Ignostic.
Go ahead and define god, with universal acceptance of said definition.
I'll wait.
Maybe you are too?
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foxfield
Raven
Joined: Sep 11, 2011
Age: 25
Posts: 109
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 11:11 am Post subject: |
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| NarcissusSavage wrote: | | foxfield wrote: | Well, a large majority of the world's population has a religious faith of some sort.
So if anything not believing in God should be a mental disorder, since the purpose of the DSM is to classify deviations from the norm. |
An exerpt from Wiki
| Quote: | | The current version of the DSM characterizes a mental disorder as "a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual [which] is associated with present distress...or disability...or with a significant increased risk of suffering." It also notes that "...no definition adequately specifies precise boundaries for the concept of 'mental disorder'...different situations call for different definitions". |
Doesn't say anything about the "norm" or even any "majority".
If the world gets overrun with zombies carrying the T virus, we don't suddenly start calling the zombies healthy and the 1% non infected group sick. |
By that argument, surely the ability to feel pain should also be classified as a mental disorder.
After all, it causes a 'significant increased risk of suffering' and in many people's cases, 'present distress'.
The vast majority of people suffer from this unfortunate condition. Only a few people do not. |
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Lord_Gareth
Velociraptor
Joined: Feb 21, 2012
Posts: 440
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| Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 11:14 am Post subject: |
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| foxfield wrote: | | NarcissusSavage wrote: | | foxfield wrote: | Well, a large majority of the world's population has a religious faith of some sort.
So if anything not believing in God should be a mental disorder, since the purpose of the DSM is to classify deviations from the norm. |
An exerpt from Wiki
| Quote: | | The current version of the DSM characterizes a mental disorder as "a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual [which] is associated with present distress...or disability...or with a significant increased risk of suffering." It also notes that "...no definition adequately specifies precise boundaries for the concept of 'mental disorder'...different situations call for different definitions". |
Doesn't say anything about the "norm" or even any "majority".
If the world gets overrun with zombies carrying the T virus, we don't suddenly start calling the zombies healthy and the 1% non infected group sick. |
By that argument, surely the ability to feel pain should also be classified as a mental disorder.
After all, it causes a 'significant increased risk of suffering' and in many people's cases, 'present distress'.
The vast majority of people suffer from this unfortunate condition. Only a few people do not. |
However, feeling pain prevents greater suffering by informing the conscious mind of when the body is being harmed, injured or abused. IIRC, those who cannot feel pain have to be constantly careful that they haven't accidentally afflicted themselves with some catastrophic injury that will cripple them for the rest of their lives.
_________________
Et in Arcadia ego. - "Even in Arcadia, there am I." |
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jojobean
sacred clown
Joined: Aug 13, 2009
Posts: 3341
Location: In Georgia sipping a virgin pina' colada while the rest of the world is drunk
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| Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 11:27 pm Post subject: |
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Spirituality of some sort has been with humans since the mesolithic period as far as science can tell. I think it is part of us that in some form is always with us. Even some religions like buddhism dont have a belief in a diety but there still is a belief in the spiritual workings of the universe.
It is not a form of insanity itself...although some people can have mental illness and religious beliefs are part of the theme of that person's illness, religion is not the illness itself.
Personally, I have experienced many miracles and spiritual encounters that were later verified by history...it would take me more faith not to believe in spirituality than to accept what I have experienced.
Jojo
_________________
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.
-James Baldwin |
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goodwitchy
Phoenix
Joined: Dec 29, 2011
Posts: 785
Location: Interplanetary
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| Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 12:22 am Post subject: |
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I had to vote "Other" because to me, there's a difference between faith and believing religious doctrine, and I agree with what Jojo wrote, "It is not a form of insanity itself..."
_________________
Aspie score: 161 of 200
Neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 38 of 200
Autistic/BAP -123 aloof, 124 rigid and 108 pragmatic
Autism Spectrum quotient: 41, Empathy Quotient: 19
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Sweetleaf
Metalhead
Joined: Jan 07, 2011
Age: 23
Posts: 14828
Location: Somewhere in Colorado
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| Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 1:08 am Post subject: |
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No that would be stupid, following a religion is a choice...having a mental illness and/or disorder is not.
_________________
It's like alice in wonderland except, my names not alice and this is the real world not a dream. |
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hyperlexian
loves the man who typed too much and ran outta spa
Joined: Jul 22, 2010
Age: 41
Posts: 21970
Location: with bucephalus
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| Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 1:26 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | delusion (dɪˈluːʒən)
— n
1. a mistaken or misleading opinion, idea, belief, etc: he has delusions of grandeur
2. psychiatry illusion See also hallucination a belief held in the face of evidence to the contrary, that is resistant to all reason
3. the act of deluding or state of being deluded |
i think that most religious people would say that atheists are deluded, using the exact same definition.
_________________
on a break, so if you need assistance please contact another moderator from this list:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5043493.html#5043493 |
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Brony2011
Blue Jay
Joined: Dec 31, 2011
Posts: 97
Location: Oklahoma
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| Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:55 am Post subject: |
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I was in a psychology class once where the textbook brought up this subject. There was some sort of anthropological group and a psychologist or psychiatrist who were studying a tribe, and I remember this being in a village in Africa, though I could be mistaken. There was a local older woman in this community who would throw fits and was ostracized because of it. The psyhologist asked the man who was his guide, "What's wrong with her?" To which the man answered, "She's crazy," so the psychologist asked why, and he said, "Because she thinks she hears voices and talks to the dead, and she killed somebody's goat," so the psychologist said, "But you do those things as part of your religion." To this the man explained, "Yes, but she does them at the wrong times."
In other words, sanity itself is culturally defined, and current diagnostic criteria state that if something could be explained by ones beliefs or customs as part of that person's society, then we don't consider it to be delusional.
The flip side of that is to consider that scene from 12 Monkeys, where he explains how if someone back in the day had told people about germs, he would have been considered crazy, but today if a man said, "I don't believe in germs," then he's mentally ill. So if somebody showed up saying he was Zeus, we could probably assume he was schizophrenic, but if he hurled lightning bolts, it would change some people's minds. |
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