Religious Trauma Syndrome: How some organized religion leads to mental health problems

An excellent post indeed.......

I believe that religion can become dangerous to us mentally if we attempt too hard to become "perfect" by a definition that is terribly lacking in wisdom, patience and understanding of the flaws of others.

Ecclesiastes 7:16

"Be not righteous overmuch, and do not make yourself overwise; why should you destroy yourself?"

An example of a group of people becoming too religious..... would be this group of zealous members of a religious group in the first century:


Acts 23:12

¶

Here is another example of a group of people becoming far, far, far, far too religious......

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2430792/jewish/The-Spanish-Inquisition.htm

The Spanish Inquisition
By Yosef Eisen

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_United_States

A decline of 0.4% per year means that it will take another 185 YEARS for the problem to "fix itself".

How is that an acceptable alternative given that over that period so many will be FORCED to needlessly suffer from RTS?

 

You are correct that taken to extremes the harm becomes physical rather than just mental.

 

All societies engender neurosis. This can become severe, depending upon the individual. Education can help, but it must be the correct type of education. That is dramatically lacking.
Religious belief is a choice. The tragedy for humans is that this choice is rarely experienced as such.
There are fundamentals of how the mind works. There are fundamentals of how linguistics affects thinking. There are fundamentals of physics that inform us about existence. There are too few people who are fully aware of these.

 

Unfortunately we live in a society where education of that type is denigrated, as is education in general.

Education is one of the key factors towards having a healthy society which includes sound mental health.

 

Atheism doesn't solve a lot of problems. People need still to have a sense to their life, so either they fall in drugs or do things like communism or new-age idiot things. If atheist had a good knowledge of philosophy, it could be a part of the solution, but most of them don't.

 

Please stick to the OP topic.

TYIA

 

Interesting, I suppose I am the rare non Druggy, non communist idiot amongst the Atheist community you know so much better than I do,

 

I'm trying. Could you please to clarify what's exactly the topic ? I got it it's about trauma caused by religion, but maybe I'm mission something. I just aknowledged that religions create some problem, exceptionnaly with some specific dogmas. There is a world between the conception of religion of ML.King and the abbot Pierre or the one of fanaticist. From my point of view, you can have fanaticism without religion.
There is not a lot of things to do, the moderate religious people have to fortify them, and I suppose that some associations of former victims of that could be nice too. Skilled mental health professionnals is very good, but that's quite expansive and a lot of people can't afford that.
I however suppose that their fanaticism won't last for a long time. Excessive things tend to end quickly.

I would have voted for the two last options. Too bad, we don't have the options of multiple votes.

Nice strawman argument. You will quote me where I pretend that all atheists are drugged addict or communism. I just say that a lot of people need 1) To feel usefull and related to a community 2) to have a meaning to their life. 3) To have a philosophical base.

I suppose it's why some people accept so much abuse of their religious community, to not be cut from the herd. We're still herd animals. There is wolves who are absolutly mistreated by the rest of their pack, but they still prefer to live mistreated with the pack, than non-mistreated without the pack. We're not that much different. It may explain partly how we can end with RTS.

I suppose that people with RTS should be too well surrounded by benevolent people.

I'm atheist by the way.

 

Because its steady. You ever heard 'if it aint broke, don't fix it?' The insinuation is that trying to make it better when you don't know what your doing is likely to break it more.

I don't have a huge horse in this fight. Do w/e you want. I can't stop you. But consider yourself warned- meddling in folks spirituality will make them defensive and suspicious. Anyone who merely suspects they might be the target of an agenda against religion will be less likely to question the religion and more likely to question the agenda instead. If you leave it alone, the trend will continue. If you meddle, you might make things better... but you might reverse it and make things worse.

Believe me or not, I really don't care. You've been warned.

 

Yes, there are fanatics who have nothing whatsoever to do with religion just as there is abusive mental control without religion.

So to clarify the topic we are ONLY dealing with the SUBSET of fundamentalist/evangelical religious sects what engage in ABUSIVE mental control of their members. That is the CAUSE of the problem that has now been DIAGNOSED as RTS.

There is no problem at all with moderate religions that do not engage in these nefarious abusive mental control practices. That was clearly stated in the OP. Normal religions do a lot of good things and can be a positive influence on both individuals and society.

The OP topic deals with the EXCEPTIONS that are the CAUSE of people suffering from RTS.

I agree than mental health counseling can be expensive which is why I am proposing that the fundamentalist/evangelical sects that are the cause of the problem be required to pay for the treatment for those that they have mentally traumatized.

 

But it is BROKEN and we now have the DIAGNOSIS to prove it.

Your "solution" is impractical because it does NOT deal with what is BROKEN.

Instead what you are proposing is no different to what the RCC did with their pedophile priest issue. They just ignored it and hoped that it would eventually "go away". That resulted in thousands more cases of innocent children being abused.

Your attempt to issue a warning threat is duly noted for what it actually is, an asinine strawman deflection.

No one is "meddling in folks spirituality"!

Abusive mental control is NOT "spirituality" because it is MENTAL ABUSE!

Religion does not give anyone the right to inflict harm of any kind on anyone else. That applies equally to both pedophilia and mental abuse.

 

I completely agree with the article, but think we have to be cautious that not all "patriarchal" family structures are bad.

It can also be possible to go too far in the other extreme too.

Maybe if we look at the East Asian family structure they could have something to teach us.
(Then again, I also believe cultural patterns are not always the most compatible with genetic of different groups, but don't want to get too off-topic here)

 

Agreed that it isn't a patriarchy problem. The problem stems from abusive mental control and that is not gender specific.

 

The only reasonable way to address this is unfortunately in the hands of religious people who do not even recognize the issue and therefore cannot address it. Fortunately the separation clause of the U.S. sets a boundary that is both slowly degrading religious influence AND creating a backlash and attempt at weaseling into societal/government law. Religion WILL inevitably fade as science and knowledge expand, but it will take time....I would guess the rest of this century.

 

Abusers of all sorts will always deny that they are engaging in abuse so it is not confined to only those with religious beliefs.

That said there will be those who will erroneously believe that the abusive mental control is "doing the lord's work" rather than actually harming the abused.

This is a complex issue and the resolution is not going to be quick and easy. However to not even try would mean abandoning the abused and that is unacceptable.

Therefore, no matter the difficulties, it must be tackled and the problems encountered overcome by sheer persistence irrespective of the denials of abuse.

 

Religious delusions are common in schizophrenia, bipolar, and other psychotic type disorders. Supposedly there is a "God" part of the brain in humans that lights up during these episodes.

https://www.npr.org/2009/07/21/110997741/is-this-your-brain-on-god

 

The ability to achieve what religions call a "spiritual state" is common to all mammals per the scientific studies of brains.

However there is no evidence that achieving this mental state of mind results in any connection to an imaginary deity.

 

I agree. Gods were made up by people to explain the unknown. That doesn't mean that some people don't need God. We haven't figured everything out yet. I bet if an asteroid was headed towards earth a lot more people would believe in God though.

 

Yup!

There are definitely people who do benefit by what normal religions have to offer.

In times of crisis some do turn to religion and some don't. The myth about no atheists in foxholes has been exposed as just that. In your example of a asteroid there would be people who would turn to science to find out if there was a means by which to deflect the asteroid.