Is Mormon discussion more of a anti Mormon forum

[_DrW]

It's no game. It is a well accepted scientific finding reproduced in any number of studies. Neither of the papers cited made the claim that religion is a measure mental illness - nor did I.

What the papers stated, and what I quoted, is that the delusional ideation associated with certain types of psychosis, and with disorders such as schizotypal personality disorder, cannot be differentiated from the unfounded beliefs of many religionists.

According to one of the papers cited, when presented with outlandish and clearly false assertions, religionists in the study agreed with such assertions at a rate indistinguishable from that of the mental patients in the study.

These kinds of outcomes have been reported in any number of studies. Bottom line is that committed religionists are highly likely to believe things that are simply not true (and obviously so to rational people).

I personally know of no peer reviewed studies, involving matched cohorts of believers (religionists) and non-believers (atheists & agnostics), wherein the non-believers exhibited delusional ideation, or agreed with outlandish and unfounded assertions, to an extent that was even close to that of the believers.

If you know of such a study, please post a reference or citation.
___________________

ETA: I failed to see what the Psychology Today article you cited on displacement has to do with the subject at hand. If your point was related to the author's book on the Psychology of Self Deception, perhaps you could comment further.

I was using displacement as an example of a not so fun game. To the issue at hand SEE https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/re ... l-disorder

Again, I did not claim - nor did the articles I cited claim - that religious fundamentalists are suffering from mental disease because of their unfounded beliefs.

What I did claim, and will continue to claim, is that individuals who continue to hold wholly unfounded beliefs, or tend to agree with or endorse ridiculous and outlandish assertions without evidence, and in spite of overwhelming factual evidence to the contrary, are in that regard pretty much indistinguishable from the mentally ill.

Moreover, individuals who identify as religious fundamentalists tend to exhibit such behaviors and beliefs to a greater extent than members of other non-psychotic cohorts. And more importantly still, as a group, such individuals present a clear and present danger to civil society.

Two more examples of unfounded beliefs dangerous to civil society since my initial post on this subject:

1. Microwaves can be used as cameras for surveillance of the general public.

2. New legislation that provides 24 million fewer citizens with health care would be an improvement over the present system.

[_Choyo Chagas]

1. Microwaves can be used as cameras for surveillance of the general public.

you may not believe it...
during ceausescu regime, our parents have plug out the TV connector every evening
you know, big brother syndrome
my descent

again, you may not believe it

2. New legislation that provides 24 million fewer citizens with health care would be an improvement over the present system.

you are a thief

As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a 'categorical pledge' were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.

familiar?

[_The CCC]

Dr. W:

Then please help me understand what you are saying. It appears you are saying that if a scientist makes a claim that is unsupported by the evidence it is not a mental illness, but if a religious person makes the same claim it is a mental illness. As a scientist who happens to be religious you can't have it both ways.

[_Fence Sitter]

Dr. W:

Then please help me understand what you are saying. It appears you are saying that if a scientist makes a claim that is unsupported by the evidence it is not a mental illness, but if a religious person makes the same claim it is a mental illness. As a scientist who happens to be religious you can't have it both ways.

To make your analogy work, it would have to be scientists (plural) who were making unsupported claims. So for example let's say we could find a group of scientist who believed in Big Foot. We could then show that same group another set of ridiculous assertions, say perhaps "evidence" for the Lock Ness monster, numerology, young earth arguments and so on, and that group would have a much higher percentage of participants who would believe in the new evidence than say compared to a control group of scientist who were not making unsupported claims.

Now he is then comparing that same sort of test to a group of mentally ill people who also are far more likely to embrace wild theories and unsupported evidence.

He is not saying the group of scientist who are embracing wild claims are mentally ill, just that they are as likely as a group of mentally ill people to embrace unfounded theories.

By the way I think your analogy is problematic to begin with, though, because a scientist making an unsupported claim is not acting as a scientist. Not that scientist don't make such claims, but they are not acting as such when they do.

[_DrW]

Dr. W:

Then please help me understand what you are saying. It appears you are saying that if a scientist makes a claim that is unsupported by the evidence it is not a mental illness, but if a religious person makes the same claim it is a mental illness. As a scientist who happens to be religious you can't have it both ways.

CCC,

There is the difference - and it is a very clear difference.

First and foremost, credible professional scientists do not make unfounded claims as such. When no relevant facts or evidence are readily available regarding given assertion (e.g. bigfoot exists), then a good scientist will remain skeptical. If interested in the assertion, the scientist may then look for evidence to support or discount the assertion.

One of the best examples to illustrate the process of moving from an idea to a fact or discovery is the prion story.

Studying degenerative neurological diseases, Stanley Prusiner came to believe that he had evidence for a pathogen that was smaller, less sophisticated and less complex than the simplest virus known at the time. Without any direct evidence, but with a great deal of data consistent with his idea, he referred to these pathogens as prions, and developed what became known as the prion hypothesis, or prion theory.

His peer colleagues were not convinced, nor was anybody else. Who ever heard of a pathogen that had no nucleic acid (DNA or RNA), but could yet lead to severe neuro-degeneration? Why, the very idea was scientific blasphemy.

Prusiner accepted the criticism, and worked on ways to respond to his critics with evidence. He came up with ingenious experiments and separation methods to isolate and identify the nucleic acid free protein materials, and he was eventually successful.

Critical here is that during all of this time working on the problem, Prusiner never developed credible data that clearly negated his core hypothesis. Without such negation, and without any viable alternatives to explain such disorders as mad cow disease (spongiform encephalopathy), or kuru in humans, for example, there was always reason to press on.

For his decades of persistence, and by accepting and responding to the criticism and legitimate questions from his colleagues, he discovered a whole new class of pathogens. For his almost single handed efforts, he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1997 for the discovery of prions.

Contrast this scientific approach to the approach of religionists who claim special access to truth without evidence - who claim to know what is best for themselves and everyone else due to their personal interpretation of a set of myths and legends written down by bronze and iron age individuals who believed the Earth was flat, disease was caused by demons, and didn't understand the advantages of keeping one's food separated from one's feces.

While this kind of unfounded belief is not necessarily mental illness, the gullibility that it engenders can be very dangerous to civil society. If the current administration remains true to form, we can expect more examples by Sunday.

[_The CCC]

Scientists make unfounded claims all the time. It is by the repeated testing by other disinterested peer scientists of that claim that fact is established. IE; Darwin wasn't the first to propose evolution of the species, he lacked DNA evidence we now know establishes Evolution as a fact. We're still trying to work out how it all worked out. Let's look at gravity. We all have a pretty good idea of how it works, things fall down, but still don't know exactly how it works.
SEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hByJBdQXjXU

Are they mentally ill or are they just wrong?

[_spotlight]

Why do apologists play rhetorical games?

Verlinde's ideas are not unfounded. He is starting with current theories and looking at a way to establish a model from which gravitational law can be derived.
The same with Darwin. He did not make unfounded claims but proposed a theory that explained what he observed of the natural world.

An unfounded claim would be something like "Oh look, a man with mummies for sale has come through our camp and the scrolls that were buried with these mummies just happen to contain the very writings of Abraham!"

By playing rhetorical games the apologist intends to put religious nonsense on an equal footing with legitimate inquiries about the natural world and the nature of reality.

[_DrW]

Scientists make unfounded claims all the time. It is by the repeated testing by other disinterested peer scientists of that claim that fact is established. IE; Darwin wasn't the first to propose evolution of the species, he lacked DNA evidence we now know establishes Evolution as a fact. We're still trying to work out how it all worked out. Let's look at gravity. We all have a pretty good idea of how it works, things fall down, but still don't know exactly how it works.
SEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hByJBdQXjXU

Are they mentally ill or are they just wrong?

CCC,

One more time; science is not based on unfounded claims. Propositions made by credible professional scientists are set forth as hypotheses, which are based on theoretical considerations, mathematical models, or initial observations. These hypotheses are then tested for validity by gathering relevant physical evidence from experimentation or observation. The original hypothesis can always be modified, or even discarded, as appropriate, as new data become available.

Religion, on the other hand, is based pretty much entirely on unfounded claims. What is worse, in fundamentalist religion, these unfounded beliefs are not subject to change, no matter what contrary evidence is provided.

How many times have you read statements of faith on this board to the effect that, no matter what contrary evidence might be presented, the believer knows of assurity that the Book of Mormon is true, that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and goddidit?

If you cannot see the difference from this simple example, then I would suggest that you spend more time reading about science, less time reading about religion, or both.

[_honorentheos]

The challenge is that no one - not the religionist, not the scientist - knows that they have something absolutely right rather than are merely fortunate in having certain effects occur after certain causes that they have misdiagnosed as far as the relationship is concerned. The benefit the scientist has over the religionist is that the culture surrounding science and the application of the scientific method reduces the probability of human bias but it doesn't provide unique access to objective reality like some people seem to imagine it does.

When someone claims science (a funny term in this context) does provide this kind of unique access, they've become a religionist about science as their faith in its abilities has exceeded the limits of cold, rational understanding they imagine they are still adhering to when they’ve actually adopted the thinking of a true believer for whom rational thought is perverted by their adherence to their religion of choice.

Had the world ended at any point in the last five hundred years, the human race would have never accessed the understanding of how things work we have today and been none the wiser of this gap in their understand. The problem is we'll never close that gap no matter how long we persist as a species.

Skepticism. It's the only justifiable position.

[_honorentheos]

Dr. W:

Then please help me understand what you are saying. It appears you are saying that if a scientist makes a claim that is unsupported by the evidence it is not a mental illness, but if a religious person makes the same claim it is a mental illness. As a scientist who happens to be religious you can't have it both ways.

What Dr. W keeps saying is that the tools for diagnosing mental illness require evaluating the content of a person's thoughts. He seems to enjoy the fact there is some aspect of this testing that requires a first stage assessment of a person's views about themselves and the world around them where the religious adherent's views appear grandious or contradictory to the understood norm, comparable on those particular categories with those diagnosed with mental illness. He doesn't speak to the fact there is no correlation between being religious and the next stage which assesses how these ideations affect a person's well being. So he's wrong when he says, "...individuals who continue to hold wholly unfounded beliefs, or tend to agree with or endorse ridiculous and outlandish assertions without evidence, and in spite of overwhelming factual evidence to the contrary, are in that regard pretty much indistinguishable from the mentally ill." Turns out people who are old tend to align better than the young for similar reasons. Under the limited definition, being young and optimistic would put one closer to having mental illness than not. It's just not the entire picture.

People with religious views can and are distinguishable from people who have mental illness precisely because belief content of one's thinking isn't the sum total of the evaluation or even what is relevant. It's moved from supportable assertion to propaganda. And in that regard does demonstrate a point he made earlier - fundamental religious belief can be dangerous to society. True believers willing to ignore when they have things wrong aren't limited to just those with belief in a deity of some type.

Being a true believer is a condition related to how one perceives the superiority of their worldview compared to that of others and the extent they are then willing to exercise that belief in their actions towards others.