Religion and Insanity

by JWdaughter 14 Replies latest jw friends

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  jgnat

  Some very good points, there.

  I think our current society has collectively bought in to the insanity that food micro additives and "refined" foods are poisonous, yet jumping out of a moving helicopter to ski down a virgin mountain is cool. We have young men jumping off third story balconies thinking they will survive. Or stomping in the head of a homeless person, not realizing they stomped him brain-damaged and blind. After all, Schwartzenegger jumped three stories and walked away from a beating.

  The lawyers, I believe, were laying out the age-old argument that what is today's cult could be tomorrow's established religion. That is, cultures tend to reject any belief or group or person that is too far from their norm. If enough people join, it becomes the new norm. So it might be said in a free society, let every man follow his own insanity as he will.

  But that is quite different than the clinical insanity that I've witnessed in my relatives. In that case, they do things that they would not do when they are healthy. There is measurable and documentable changes in their brain makeup and chemistry. They cannot cure themselves, because their brain, which is damaged, cannot tell itself that it is sick. Others have to take over for their own safety. I've done this a couple times, and both times they have come back to thank me for intervening.

  I look more to the effects and the intent on whether something is good or bad. Perhaps that is why cult watchers are switching to terms like "high control group". If an organization uses known manipulative techniques to coerce people to join and prevent them from leaving, is that person freely following their own insanity?
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  Qcmbr

  Its a very thin line between religion and insanity - if someone told me they were hearing voices I'd point them towards the psychiatrist first.
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  Q. Bert

  On the other hand, thinking itself seems to come with a "still, small voice" to it.
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  Narkissos

  In many ancient cultures the notions of divine revelation (through prophets, oracles, etc.) and insanity are closely related. To be insane (including epileptic seizures) is to be "in the hands of the gods," hence in a sacred and protected position -- where unveiling of divine mysteries can occur for the benefit of society at large, through conscious interpretation (usually by the priest or "prophet" in the strictest sense). This is apparent in the Hebrew Bible where the same verb nb' (from nabi', "prophet") can mean either "prophesy" or "acting/talking crazy" (see for instance the "prophets" in Samuel and especially "Saul among the prophets"). Or in Plato's Phaedrus where the oracles' mania (insanity, delirium) is praised above common sense in certain circumstances. In early Hellenistic Christianity there was a dialogue of "wisdom" and "folly," including ecstatic experiences, as 1 Corinthians attests.

  The narrow definition of reason in the Western modern age has reduced insanity to mere pathology: nothing meaningful can be expected from it any longer. As a result religion is severed from its psychological roots to a large extent. We have lost the belief in a "night of the mind" which obscures what can be seen in daylight but allows for a deeper, farther sight -- the light of reason is starless.
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  Q. Bert

  And then there is the "idiot savant", a person with Savant Syndrome, described at http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/faq.cfm.