Are the churches cultivating schitzophrenia?
What is believeing in something you cannot see?
Faith or schitzophrenia?
Any thoughts?
Perhaps some churches, but that is because they are not adhering to biblical teaching. Seeing isn’t always believing, empirical knowledge is only part of the equation of learning. Why do we accept the 5 Euclidian postulates in Geometry? By nature they are unprovable, but yet accepted as factual, aren’t mathematicians exercising faith? We accept that a square is a geometric object with four equal sides, or triangle with 3 equal sides. Why does the Pythagorean theorem (a2 + b2 = c2) always work? What is a line? What is a point? These are all conceptual facts, but unprovable by empirical knowledge, but accepted by faith, as factual.
They are learned via the rational thinking aspect. Faith would fall into that category. Why? Because God is not provable in the empirical sense. We however, have a concept of God, and in some cases accept it, others reject it. There is enough reasonable evidence to establish the belief there is a God, including some empirical evidence, the argument from design. I’m not saying faith is easy, but it is necessary to have a belief in God. Trusting God is a difficult place to be, but it is the best place to be.
If I didn’t answer this completely, please feel free to respond, only serious inquiries will be acknowledged. 
I think schitzophrenia is only partly the right word, paranoia fits too. Schitzophrenia can be brought about in the way a person sins all week then goes to church on Sunday and gets forgiven. That is a bit much to swallow. Paranoia is applied when the church convinces all that they will go to a bad place if they don’t follow the rules. That those that are not a part of the church are evil. I have been prayed over and prayed for so many times by “the faithful” I should have a seat at the top table. They do this for me because I am a good person that has no faith in the churches. Hmm. interesting isn’t it? Is that paranoia or schitzophrenia? I am bad but I am not. I am worth saving but, I still am going to hell.
Before we proceed further, we must clarify what you mean by good and bad.
the terms are relative without a specific context in mind. Are you good because you have never taken a life, or are you bad because you are not perfect? When a man came to Jesus and asked, “good” master, why did Jesus ask him, why do you calll me good? 
On some personality tests religious people tend to show a significant degree of psychotic thought process. That’s because they answered a few questions in a specific way.
Anyway, I have always thought the same as Kriswest in that religion teaches that you are being constantly monitored by a being that can see you and read your mind. That means that a person can become consumed with worry regarding every little aspect of their lives, and that can be very stressful. Stress is a big factor in going crazy.
I completely disagree.
I wouldn’t trust a God who behaves like a classic schizophrenic. According to the good book this alpha male in the sky has committed some horrific acts of violence, is obsessively jealous, manically changes his mind, gets off on temptation and punishment, is a deviant regarding his sadomasochistic beliefs on sexuality, and generally behaves like a mad man. Jesus isn’t much better. He’s been quoted advocating slavery, chopping off the heads of non-believers, and believes he is the center of truth itself.
No, God is not someone I would want to trust.
Regarding the question at hand, religious beliefs requiring mythic monsters in the ground and heroes in the sky expose the stunning capacity for delusion and insanity inherent in the cultures of man. I believe psychology will not be anywhere near useful until it reevaluates religious beliefs as a type of insanity.
“I wouldn’t trust a God who behaves like a classic schizophrenic. According to the good book this alpha male in the sky has committed some horrific acts of violence, is obsessively jealous, manically changes his mind, gets off on temptation and punishment, is a deviant regarding his sadomasochistic beliefs on sexuality, and generally behaves like a mad man. Jesus isn’t much better. He’s been quoted advocating slavery, chopping off the heads of non-believers, and believes he is the center of truth itself.”
Hey, it just dawned on me that what is described must constitute a good person!
whoa there. we dont accept their existence in the real world on faith. we created them in the fake world as a means of vaguely describing things that resemble them in the real world. nobody ever said a line or point exists in the real world or that the hypotenuse of a real world right triangle is exactly what pythagoras would say it is. we merely said that the things we created have many mathematical characteristics that we didnt initially plan for, and those roughly translate into the real world.
just because i dont see something doesnt mean that it doesnt exist, true. But it does mean that its 100% possible that, instead of religion being real and invisible, the priests have actually been ripping us off and that our brain plays tricks on us sometimes.
i dont know much about schizophrenia, but id say this guy is actually just being a fake, pretentious idiot (or just incompletely brainwashed). i think schizophrenia is more like hearing voices in your head, feeling that things are real when they are just in your head (ron howard is reading my brain and telling me to do things, i must wear tin foil, the fbi is documenting all the weird porn i download, “i know i dont have any proof, if only you could see it from my point of view”).
im gonna guess it was because jesus wanted to find out what the guy considered good so that he could point out why he was wrong and what good really is. are you saying its really because jesus didnt know whether or not he was good?
things that tell people about the real world, that allow real diseases to be cured at the expense of cell clumps who really dont care, that allow people getting real diseases to use real condoms, that prevent a real douchebag president from really stealing the presidency purely because idiots hate fags.
usually, real things are good, or at least knowledge of their reality. when you make all kinds of religious declarations, ask yourself: what if they are all fake. hating fags, banning stem cells, banning contraception, electing bush. what if you get up to heaven and it turns out buddha is god and gayness, abortion and not killing muslims are all things that he is perfectly ok with, and in fact encourages. what if your religion is actually rich people trying to control you into doing these religious things for evil purposes? that would be bad.
even if the religion isnt currently conspiring to brainwash everyone, they certainly started out that way. i mean, either the church was founded and maintained by lying shit bags, or god actually endorses the inquisitions, torturing people to make them say they love jesus.
dont listen to what the church says, and dont listen to them tell you what jesus said. figure it out yourself: treating your neighbor like yourself makes the world better. thats why you should do it, not because someone in the sky will torture you for all eternity if you dont.
believing in deism which affects your life in no way other than the acceptance of the idea that the universe was created for a reason instead of no reason, that feels good to me, and has too little content to change any of my behavior in the real world for the worse. god gave us one single thing that we can all believe in without any doubt: our subjective happiness is good. believing anything else at all is a leap of faith and wont neccesarily lead to more happiness.
Well, that is not what the Bible precisely teaches. But before I proceed, let me clarify something about God. God is eternal, we are not, God is omniscient, we definitely are not, God is everywhere, we are not. Now God is portrayed as being a good, gracious, just, merciful and holy God. He loves His creation, as well as human beings. God is not an ogre who is on a fault finding mission, as many people envision as such, this couldn’t be further from the truth. This only shows how ignorant people are concerning the Bible. God says is Philippians 4:4-8 to rejoice in Him, because He will take care of His own. You should read this for yourself, since you seem a bit unaware of this truth. I certainly don’t worry, because I know God is looking out for my good, He would do the same for you, if you accepted His gift of eternal life in Jesus. You should try reading Romans chapter 5, very enlightening. Well, I’m a little pressed for time. Until then, God bless.
What do you mean by ‘see’?
We only see what we can comprehend. Inotherwords, we only see what our brain is able to see. So what do you mean by ‘see’?
Your idea of faith being schitzophrenia needs rethinking.
In our modern culture most Christians regret the Inquisitions which does not make sense to me. The Bible (Old and New Testaments) condones acts of violence as justifiable and necessary for the distribution the gospel. In other words the Inquisitions are a logical extension of Christianity.
Either the Bible is the literal word of God and must be adhered to as truth. Or the Bible is capable of being interpreted as an allegory or guidelines. Regardless of how one justifies interpreting the Bible it must be admited that the Bible has become subjective. If the Bible is capable of subjective interpretation then its value is nor more important then Thus Spoke Zarathustra or the Bhagavad Gita.
I doubt Christians are willing to submit themselves to that sort of thinking, but subjective interpretation of the Bible must lead to this conclusion. The only solution is to view the Bible literally. When the Bible is the literal word of God then Christianity makes sense. Of course one must be prepared to be a good neighbor and treat others as they would treat you and at the same time make sure to stone them to death for uttering blasphemies.
Did this make any sense? Does this get through to Christians? I’m sure a few of the athiest on this topic understand but I have yet to express this idea to any Christians. I’m very curious!
I find it rather difficult to believe in any religous organization. Where one person stands at a pulpit and translates the religous text for you. I just don’t have that much trust. I consider myself spiritual but, not religous.Lets not gorget that translating can lead to errors. Third party translations are bad about that.
Look at a lot of religous texts The bible for one, it started out in one language with different writers writing different ways. Then it gets translated into another language. Then revised for more modern understanding then someone has to tell you what it is actually saying.
And all this translating has not dropped anything or lost anything or changed. When the bible first started being printed in quantities it was priests or monks that did the books by hand. Lets say that most of the monks wrote exactly what they read. There was probably one monk that for some reason changed something in his section that he was transcribing. Who would know or catch it. The odds of that happening are pretty good. Its the human factor.
All of the religious stuff that we are familiar in the west came from mid-east culture, which is insane, thus the religions are insane. The seem to mirror all the weirdness and negatives of the thought processes that we all now see there.
I believe that is why Europeans, Americans, and Asians never quite got into the religion like its creators.
Hi, someemofag
I can see your logic in asserting that the Old Testament “condones” violence. But please show me where you’ve found such motivation in the New Testament.
Can you explain why the mid-east culture (and their religion) is insane?
Lets put it in simple terms…
2 car lot owners, and a tech/service manager. One of the owners doesn’t want anything to do with the work involved and responsibilities in owning and running a business. The other does and uses it as way to steal money from his parter.
This guy wants to control the service manager, but has no knowledge of the workings of the shop. So he uses a tactic to get information and manipulate the tech. He becomes the good guy, and puts all the bad things HE wants from the tech as coming from “evil greedy John”. “Rick” is the “protecter” or advocate.
Rick wants John unapproachable to David, so he becomes their channel of communication. He is then free to twist away. Rick is now John’s word to David.
What happens when David gets wise to it?
edited
“Can you explain why the mid-east culture (and their religion) is insane?”
Sure, there’s a bunch of reasons.
1.Many countries base their governments on religious people or royal people. That’s insane because it’s believed that a cosmic superbeing wants those people to rule over the people. That’s very illogical, and has been cast off by the west.
2.In some countries you can be killed for having improper beard length.
3.Women are not acknowledged as being bright or worth much. In the west this has been disproven countless times.
4.You can be killed for being an sexual oddity.
5.People are encouraged to publically kill people with stones.
6.Zoroastrians and Jews will not intermarry with others, thus resulting in birth defects.
That was just a quick string of ideas off the top of my head. All have something to do with the religions there.
A long time ago people from the mid-east tried to get everyone in Europe to convert via the threat that they wouldn’t trade desired goods if they didn’t. So, the European kings forced the population to switch from their native religions to Christianity.
I contend that the religions never quite took, no western country follows any middle-east religion to the letter, and that’s because the people didn’t buy the insanity.
The faith in religion is no less blind and dangerous than the faith in progress, one-humanity and a better future as well as faith in Reason and science.
Have any kind of faith and your mind is close forever.
Religion is like training-wheels. It lets you ride the bike without actually knowing how.
Some people need it to help them with these kinds of things. Leave em be.