Religion: A Mental Illness?

by Mike Johnson

MikeJohnson@Cox.net 602-956-0180

I know little of Religion and less of Psychiatry.

So I will resort to common sense, a curse I’ve had since childhood. I’m sure many will contest my simplistic view that Religions are forms of mental illness. Religion in its numerous forms infects the whole of personkind. No group is immune. It infects the poor and the rich; the weak and the powerful; the smart and the retarded. A cure is desperately needed.

ESSENTIALS of  RELIGIONS; GOD, PROPHETS and PROFITS

I am ignorant of the detailed beliefs and histories of religions. This ignorance is not accidental. I consider it foolish to spend time studying what early on proves to be baseless. A mathematical charlatan who requires that 2 + 2 = 11 in his proof would loose my attention too (unless he quickly explained that he was using a unusual but valid numerical base.) Simplifying a bit, religions seem to usually require a God, Prophets and Profits.     GOD is usually very powerful. Not too powerful because that messes up convenient concepts like free will. Too much God power makes bad things hard to explain. The optimum amount of power can be vague and variable but usually permits granting of certain perks, like an after life. This provides a useful motivational tool.     God supposedly talks through PROPHETS. Prophets are like schizophrenics but since most lived before psychiatrists invented schizophrenia they were believed to be really talking to God. Nowadays they would be sent for treatment.     The need for PROFITS is self-evident. How else can we promote our Gods? How else can we build extravagant monuments to show our love for God? The religious profess poverty and proclaim things like “It’s easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”  There must be extenuating circumstances that I am too ignorant to understand. These apparent incompatibilities don’t faze the devout Hypochristians.

If the devout behave, they inherit an eternal joy-filled life after death. No one is in a hurry to get there though and suicide is discouraged (with a few significant exceptions).     Mostly, the children are taught to love their neighbors. Inexplicably this gets corrupted by man (remember the old free-will option) so that at some point they can/should kill those with differing beliefs. This is a BAD SIDE EFFECT of religion and can become a major irritation.  It’s often used by proxy; some money/power-grabbing tyrant exploits the gullible to do his dirty work in the name of religion.

THE UNITARIAN  NON SOLUTION

For a while I thought Unitarians had a solution; respect one another’s religions. I’ll accept your irrational superstitions if you’ll accept mine. It’s a bit patronizing but certainly preferable to “My God’s right and expects/requires me to kill you”. It’s rather like an insane asylum where the patients claim to respect each other’s particular illusions. This is good, but wouldn’t it be much better to recognize the illnesses for what they are and look for cures.

SYMPTOMS OF THE RELIGION DISEASE

A common symptom of religion is delusion. Often including notions of resurrection. But face it, you’re  not coming back. Well, no one has yet, with any convincing evidence, and an awful lot of people have died.     Another symptom is irrational self-importance. God has a PERSONAL interest in each of us. He has a hundred Billion galaxies to caretake (about 20 for each inhabitant on earth. And each galaxy contains about a hundred Billion stars. But He is really concerned about US.  So a plane crashes and He miraculously saves that beautiful baby. Wow, what love! But what about the other two hundred passengers who died in agony? Of course they could all be sinners. Even more confusing, suppose 200 innocents survive but the one (sinful?) baby gets mashed.  Come on now!     OK, so it’s the sins of the airplane designer that caused it. But what about the zillions killed by natural disasters: earthquakes, floods, volcanoes...?     These simple scenarios occurred to me as a child and have survived, unexplained, all the wise men who have tried to save my soul.

CURE the PATIENT; DON’T KILL HIM

I don’t have a cure. But I do think that recognizing Religion as a class of mental illness would be a start. Rather than the Unitarian approach, develop support groups, maybe along the lines of Alcoholics Anonymous - “My name’s Mike and I’m a recovering Anglican... As one of my friends quite rightly points out, religions do have some very good side effects. After my grandfather died, my own father and his brothers were fed for years in England by the Salvation Army and the Church.  My former wife and I were befriended by a Church Army captain when we stumbled off the boat in Montreal as clueless immigrants from England.    Desperate, oppressed people survive daily on the hope offered by religion. Ironically these conditions frequently arise from the abuses of religion. But wouldn’t real justice and humanitarian reform be preferable?     The real benefits often associated with religions need not be thrown out with the bath water. Hopefully, they can be salvaged but without the superstition and mysticism that make religions so dangerous.