Religion = Schizophrenia

"Once we can look at religion objectively and impartially, it becomes entirely obvious that religion has all the characteristics of a form of insanity. To one degree or another the religious mind must accept, and believe in, another world; a supernatural or unnatural world, a world filled with all sorts of imaginary beings called gods, devils, angels, saints, demons, etc. These imaginary creatures are talked to, asked for favors, guidance, "signs", or miracles, and then blamed or thanked for natural events that follow. Except for the cloak of religion, such beliefs and actions would otherwise cause an individual to be judged insane, and committed to an institution for treatment." -Emmet F. Fields

 

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

George Washington

 

Well society without religion has never been tested before so you can't say it wont work.

 

The Soviet Union tried it. Look what happened to them.

 

Much of the developed world has already nearly accomplished it. Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark and the UK are among the least religious nations on Earth. And According to the United Nations Human Development Report (2005), those nations are also the healthiest nations on Earth.

Religion really only permeates in third world developing nations. IN INdustrialized nations, religion is loosing its grasp and they are becoming more and more secular. The US is strangely unique among industrialized nations in its religiousness. But there are a few theorys as to why. For one thing, the most religious states are also the states that have the most abortions, divorce, drug use, poverty, welfare use..etc. Its no secret that these are also red states, held red by their huge Christian Conservative majority. Another reason is that we have a lot of immigrants, who also come from poor lifestyles, especially from Mexico and Latin America. And they bring their religion with them.

 

But back to the first post itself:

"Once we can look at religion objectively and impartially, it becomes entirely obvious that religion has all the characteristics of a form of insanity. To one degree or another the religious mind must accept, and believe in, another world; a supernatural or unnatural world, a world filled with all sorts of imaginary beings called gods, devils, angels, saints, demons, etc. These imaginary creatures are talked to, asked for favors, guidance, "signs", or miracles, and then blamed or thanked for natural events that follow. Except for the cloak of religion, such beliefs and actions would otherwise cause an individual to be judged insane, and committed to an institution for treatment." -Emmet F. Fields

You cannot say this isn't true, even if you are religious in my opinion.

 

But Founder's Intent...you're not telling the whole story:

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors." -Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

"It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the Apocalypse], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to General Alexander Smyth, Jan. 17, 1825

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity." -Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

"But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." -Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear."
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

"Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."
-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

"I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789

"They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion."
-Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."
-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.

"The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814


"You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819

"As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, Oct. 31, 1819

"Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, April 13, 1820

 

Neither has society without government for that matter.

Give the following a read and see if you can refute it. I'm not saying I fully agree with it, but I do find it very interesting:

Primary Description of "Government"

"Government" is a granfalloon, a scam, a hoax, a fraud, a swindle, a theatrical tragicomedy, and a form of parasitism or cannibalism kept in place by certain fraud-words, by superstition, by idolatry, by gullibility, by lack of thinking skills, by brainwashing, by mass hallucination, by terror, and by violence -- also characterized by compulsive lying, economic rape and value destruction, serial killing, war mongering, mass murder, quackery of the deadliest kind, primitive "alpha-ape" behavior, and the abuse of hierarchical systems.

"Government" is a "Granfalloon"

In his book Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut coined the word "granfalloon" to describe abstract concepts like "nation," "state," "country," "government," "society," "IBM," etc. He wrote, "To discover the substance of a granfalloon, just prick a hole in a toy balloon." In his book The Incredible Secret Money Machine, Don Lancaster explains:

"A granfalloon is any large bureaucratic figment of people's imagination. For instance, there's really no such thing as the Feds or the General Veeblefeltzer Corporation. There are a bunch of people out there that relate to each other, and there's some structures, and some paper. In fact, there's lots and lots of paper. The people sit in the structures and pass paper back and forth to each other and charge you to do so.

All these people, structures, and paper are real. But nowhere can you point to the larger concept of "government" or "corporation" and say, "There it is, kiddies!" The monolithic, big "they" is all in your mind." [emphasis added]

A granfalloon is the lumping together of many diverse elements into an abstract collection, and to then think and speak as if the abstract collection is one single entity capable of performing actions. This phenomenon leads people to say things like "the government runs the country." I hope you realize (or will soon) just how absurd the previous sentence is.

Full article at: http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl07b.shtml

 

I like that angle. Thanks for sharing that with me.

 

I don't think religion is a form of a mental disease.

I think that religion started because people could not understand what was going on around the world (such as bad weather, tornadoes, and other natural disasters). Since they didn't have enough knowledge to explain what was going on in the world, they sought religion and believed that there was some entity that controlled all these things.

I guess humans just want certainty. They fear what they don't understand.

 

If someone did not claim these beliefs were not just another religion, but real, he would be given psychiatric treatment though. This just highlights that religion is the same as a type of insanity but under a blanket that makes it acceptable.

 

Religion is just a false belief based on inaccurate information. It can share characteristics with mental illness, but then so can many thinking errors.

The Bible contains many inaccuracies and stories of impossibilities such as a talking donkey:

Numbers 22:28-30, NAS 28
"And the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?” 29 Then Balaam said to the donkey, “Because you have made a mockery of me! If there had been a sword in my hand, I would have killed you by now.” 30 And the donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your donkey on which you have ridden all your life to this day? Have I ever been accustomed to do so to you?” And he said, “No.”

Has anyone ever seen a talking donkey? If they say "yes" then they're obviously a little confused (if they say they talked to a donkey then they probably are suffering from a mental illness). Talking donkeys don't exist, and never have.

The bottom line is that organized religion is a tool used to control people. All the religions are an attempt to explain God, but they ultimately place power in the hands of religious leaders instead of teaching true spirituality.

 

Talking donkeys = Democratic National Convention.

Organized religion and communism share many similarities. This is one of the bigger ones.

 

Yeah, but communism doesn't rely on making up a superhuman being.