Religion is a Mental Illness

Religion is a Mental Illness: by D Surman


Religion is one of the most serious mental illnesses of today. It is the inability to face the reality of life and the finality of death. It affects as high as 85% of the American Society. Approximately 75% of the American victims of this mental illness are Christians. The more pathetic and desperate a person’s life, the more likely they are to believe in a god. Typically, people with otherwise empty lives, are the strongest believers. It gives them the false hope that there is a higher meaning to their sad lives. The strongest of believers would admittedly be suicidal without religion and/or a god in their lives providing a mental safety valve.

Temporal Lobe Epilepsy disorder has been linked to extreme religious experiences. Patients who have TLE may have sudden and dramatic spiritual changes. There are many instances of these patients converting from agnostic or atheist beliefs to strongly active religious faiths. TLE causes abnormal electrical activity in their temporal regions and has been directly linked to these radical changes in religious belief and personality changes. Curiously, religious chanting and meditation reduce the activity of frontal lobe activity, which heightens Temporal Lobe activity. Further research in this area has uncovered that electrical stimulation of areas in the Temporal Lobe also produce these spiritual experiences. The electrical stimulation caused the control group to report feelings of "well being" euphoria and a feeling of a "presence".

It is a statistical fact that the higher your education, income, and intelligence, the more likely you are not to believe in a god. For every college student that converts to a religious belief system, 17 college students convert to secular or atheist beliefs. "Secular Humanists" have an average intelligence of 25 I.Q. points above their Christian counterparts...

A religion by definition is a superstition. A religion is the belief in a supernatural being or beings. A superstition is the belief in magic or phenomena beyond or outside of nature. A religious belief then is a superstitious belief.

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 afterlife. 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.

A common symptom of religion is delusion, often including notions of resurrection. But face it, you are not coming back. Well, no one has yet, with any convincing evidence, and an awful lot of people have died.

Religious people are dangerous. They cannot think for themselves, but instead cling to every word the bible says. Religious fanatics can somehow throw out all scientific evidence and replace it with the word of one book that has no credibility. They want to spread their illness to the rest of the world and contaminate the remaining 10% to 15% of the sane population. Atheists usually know and understand what is written in the bible better than those who claim to follow its word. Religious fanatics want to convert your children and will stop at nothing. They want the right to force you to follow their ideas and beliefs and restrain any conflicting beliefs or activities.

Recognizing religion as a class of mental illness would be a start in curing this disease. We should develop support groups, maybe along the lines of Alcoholics Anonymous “My name’s Mike and I’m a recovering Christian ...”