Is religion a mental illness?

The following essay titled 'Is Religion a Mental Illness' was written by crimsontactics (22Feb2012)  and is re-posted here for record purposes only. Kindly click [here] to the forum where it is discussed and discuss it there, Tks.

 Is religion a mental illness?

Firstly, just a short disclaimer. I'm not trying to insult or degrade any specific racial or religious group or religion as a whole. Just as it's their rights to believe in and promote their chosen divine entitles or beliefs, I feel that it's my rights to be able to believe in my own opinions and to at least share my views. I'm Catholic btw, although I'm starting to doubt my own faith.

Is religion a mental illness? What caused me to spawn such a thought?

Around a decade back, I paid a visit to IMH with my grandmother to visit another family member who was suffering from dementia. During the visit, I happened to overhear a conversation between two nurses. Although the exact details are no longer clear, I'm certain that they were talking about a new patient who claimed that she had an imaginary friend. I later learned that she was diagnosed with an advanced stage of hallucination, or adulthood paracosm. This is a condition where a person conceive in his mind an imaginary entity and believes that it is actually a part of his environment. This incident had sparked my curiosity about the possible relationship between religion and mental illness. I thought of trying to debate about this issue back in the past, but a series of crackdowns on "racism" back then had instilled enough fear in me to keep my mouth shut.

Around two weeks back, I was having a conversation with a friend back in my army camp. Our conversation turned to the topic of religion and my friend, being a staunch atheist, was finding every possible way to demote religion. Out of the blue, he said a sentence which re-sparked my initial curiosity and promoted me to create this thread. The sentence was, " Ben, seriously, what's the difference between a religious person and a mental patient?"

Is there a difference?

This is a very sensitive question. However, if you were to just close your eyes for a minute, disregard the government's propaganda that racism and religious-discrimination is bad and to just consider this very question, you'll realize that there is actually only one difference. Both believes in imaginary entitles, both thinks that these entitles are a part of the world, be it physical, emotional or spiritual, and both will condemn, or at least view negative, others who do not share their similar imagination. The only difference is that religion is believed by a large group of people while an imaginary friend is only believed by one person, the patient himself.

Does an entity or belief exists simply because a large group of people says so?

Yes. If a large enough group of people believes in something, it exists due to social pressure. Humans are social creatures. We fear prejudice and shame more than we fear death. Since our social norms are determined by the views of the majority, something can actually exists if enough people believe in it. The minority have no choice but to conform to it for the fear of rejection. They then educate their children, who have no clue as to what's going on, the ways of which they conform to. Most of their children will treat these as facts as children will imitate their parents during their adolescent stage. Thus, religion is a form of mental illness, since both share similar characteristics, made acceptable by society due to social pressure.

Religion is a mental illness.

Just like a virus, it slowly fester within it's host, hoping one day to consume and control it. And fester it did. Left untreated for generations, religion had found ways to counter human's main source of immunity, logic, and had created defenses for itself.

Firstly, there is the legislation. Laws protecting religions are the first line of defense this illness had made, punishing those who do not conform while protecting those who spread it. Many people who criticize religion face legal consequences while there is virtually no punishment against those who criticize free thinkers or atheists. What's worst is that religion should be separated from the state.

Secondly, there is social conditioning. As of now, many religious people view free-thinkers and atheists as bigoted and arrogant, a "malfunctioning product" of the civilized world. Even free-thinkers and atheists themselves had been infected, conforming to social norms that criticizing religion is wrong although instinctively we know that there is something amiss about religion.

Lastly, there is religious tension. Currently, we've religious conflicts in many parts of the world and everyone is somewhat concern about it. As we focus on the conflict of individual religions, we fail to realize that the root of all these problems may be religion itself, the mental illness that had infested many of us, myself including. Religion is very adaptive and capable. It's willing to sacrifice a portion of itself, for instance pitting specific religions against one another, to preserve the rest, just to ensure it's survival.

Just like a mental illness, there is nothing good or bad about religion. There is nothing right or wrong about it either. Religion is just an illness that had reach its terminal stage at an epidemic scale. No treatment is needed now. All we can do is just pray for a painless end.