Mental Health, Mormonism and Delusion (Update)

[_Maxrep]

I haven't read all the posts after this one, but the reason for this is that delusional thoughts are meant to be descriptive of a psychotically disordered cognitive process. Religious beliefs that one acquires through their culture don't usually get into a person's head via psychotic thinking.

If I understand correctly, an individual in Mormonism who holds beliefs that could be seen as delusional, should be viewed on a platform separate from these beliefs...

Take your average Mormon as an example. If we could say that this member had an identical twin, and that they were separated from this twin at birth, would this identical twin show signs of delusion? I'm going to guess that the twin has sound mental health. Mormons may have beliefs that could be placed categorically alongside other delusional ideas, and that could be a symptom of brainwashing alone, rather than an indicator of some mental health issues.

Since church leaders like to use sports analogies, let me throw out the following:

Effective member developement is similar to fielding a top level womens Olympic gymnastics team. Just as these athletes must be recruited and developed at a very young age(children), the same holds true for strong church members. In todays world, the only way to produce a healthy and productive member who can fit within the church community, is to have them raised by an active lds family. Just as the potential athlete in this scenaro requires quite a unique controlled environment at a very young age, so it is with LDS.

Perhaps we live in an environment now where a growing number of members are being exposed to tools, in this information age, that can test the viability of the beliefs from the religion of their birth. I think some members have had the option to visit a corner of their mind, where the capacity to determine the validity of the church's claims existed. My estimation is that many members negate that option entirely. Is choosing to avoid the critical determination, that a mature mind can produce, unhealthy if it conflicts with ones indoctrination from youth?

[_Doctor Scratch]

Wow, Maklelan: I'm impressed, and I'm more than glad to admit that my prediction was wrong. It's mighty big of you to admit that, per Mormon teachings, this woman successfully got her young kids into the Celestial Kingdom by murdering them.

You certainly see the flagrant spinning that you have to put on this event to make this sound like it supports the point of the OP. Of course, the fact that Latter-day Saints believe children who die before the age of 8 go to the Celestial Kingdom has never been disputed. The fact that a woman who had obvious mental problems committed an atrocious crime and managed, according to LDS ideology, to facilitate her children's entry in the Celestial Kingdom doesn't at all support anything that's being argued here. Another far less manipulative way to characterize the event would be to say that these children are not going to suffer in the eternities because of the horrific sins of their mother. That you would attempt to manipulate such a horrible crime just to score a petty and bigoted rhetorical point is just pathetic of you, Scratch. Have you no decency at all?

I'm not "manipulating" anything, Mak. This is just one of those strange loopholes afforded by LDS doctrine. And you've said here that you believe it. What a bummer that is.

[_EAllusion]

Having a delusional thought doesn't mean you are mentally ill. Probably every single person reading this post has had a delusional thought. Rather delusional thoughts are a symptom of particular kinds of mental illnesses (psychosis, major depression, bipolar...). The standard concept of mental illness requires a person's functioning in the world to be disrupted by their abnormal psychology in some significant way. If a person's delusions don't' rise to that, then they by definition won't meet diagnostic criteria. However, you can have delusional thoughts without that happening. Irrational paranoid thoughts are super-common. I think many people reading this can think back to a time when they had them. You weren't necessarily mentally ill for having had them.

[_EAllusion]

The religious outlook still unilaterally condemns it. First, the evidence pretty clearly shows that Brigham Young did not order the massacre. Next, Laban's murder was not the result of a conventional belief, but a direct command that compelled the quite reluctant Nephi to act. Are you saying this woman felt like she had been individually and specifically commanded by God in this instance to murder her children?

Mormonism does not in any way, shape, or form unilaterally condemn murder. It encourages it at times. So, you have to retreat to the tautological assertion that Mormonsim never encourages killing except when it encourages killing. Any killing it encourages is, by definition, not murder.

Ok, but then that's not very helpful to the point you are making. Since any sort of murder, er killing, is fair game as long as God commands it, your sweeping generalization is useless, since it tells us nothing about what sorts of killing is kosher. I think your point can be rescused with a different approach, though.

It is true that the LDS faith would condemn the kind of murder she engaged in. If it didn't, then people would be doing it left and right in acts of heroic self-sacrifice that Jesus never could muster. So it is absolutely necessary to condemn that specific kind of act lest the religion implode in on itself. Once-saved, always saved born-agains have the same issue with people committing suicide as a means to get to Heaven now.

[_Alfredo]

I think the faithful fighters in this thread need to realize that human history is nothing but the horrific and continual confirmation of the extremely evident and pervasive tendency for a human being to be unfathomably delusional, in full clinical capacity, for their whole damned life, especially in groups!

But no, critics can't just point out that one modern flavor of religion tends to be a bit crazy?

This is just too presumptuous of an outsider for a believer to consider impersonally?

Are we aware of how fantastically obtuse this sounds within the proper scope of this critique?

Jesus Christ. Get over yourselves and have some damned humility.

[Guest]

I think the faithful fighters in this thread need to realize that human history is nothing but the horrific and continual confirmation of the extremely evident and pervasive tendency for a human being to be unfathomably delusional, in full clinical capacity, for their whole f*****g life, especially in groups!

But no, critics can't just point out that one modern flavor of religion tends to be a bit crazy?

This is just too presumptuous of an outsider for a believer to consider impersonally?

Are we aware of how fantastically obtuse this sounds within the proper scope of this critique?

Jesus Christ. Get over yourselves and have some f*****g humility.

Alfredo,

I have read your post several times, and have to tell you that I still cannot be sure what you are trying to say or who you are trying to say it to.

What I did see was that you took the Lord's name in vain, and used the character string f*****g twice.

Please allow me to suggest that it might be helpful if you dropped the strong language and tried for clarity instead.

For example, if a sentence is punctuated with a question mark at the end, it would be helpful if it were worded as a question.

If you would care to express your points in an unambiguous way, I would be interested in what you have to say.

[_Alfredo]

I think the faithful fighters in this thread need to realize that human history is nothing but the horrific and continual confirmation of the extremely evident and pervasive tendency for a human being to be unfathomably delusional, in full clinical capacity, for their whole f*****g life, especially in groups!

But no, critics can't just point out that one modern flavor of religion tends to be a bit crazy?

This is just too presumptuous of an outsider for a believer to consider impersonally?

Are we aware of how fantastically obtuse this sounds within the proper scope of this critique?

Jesus Christ. Get over yourselves and have some f*****g humility.

Alfredo,

I have read your post several times, and have to tell you that I still cannot be sure what you are trying to say or who you are trying to say it to.

What I did see was that you took the Lord's name in vain, and used the f*****g twice.

Please allow me to suggest that it might be helpful if you dropped the strong language and tried for clarity instead.

For example, if a sentence is punctuated with a question mark at the end, it would be helpful if were worded as a question.

If you would care to express your points in an unambiguous way, I would be interested in what you have to say.

First, I don't see the particular problem in the very useful expression of powerful emphasis in one convenient cultural-linguistic packet. Concerning this simple purpose, "“F”" is no more relevant to my ideas than "exceedingly" is relevant to any idea in the Book of Mormon. They only exist to emphasize... some work better than others in many cases... Sorry, I can't bring myself to care.

My point was that on the face of human history... human beings have the profusely evident and remarkable tendency to entertain several serious delusions at at time, most of the time, and in all cultures. Especially when it involves groups, and especially, when it involves religion. Countless cultures and religions have been founded and built upon counter-intuitively useful delusions.

We have more than enough reason to expect any single significant group or religion to have its share of delusion. Some more than others. Read: Mormonism more than others.

Delusional cultures spring up all the time. We can barely keep track. So, why is too controversial to point out that what we should expect of delusional cultures and beliefs based on the behavior of their supporters?

It should be needless to say that we should expect several fuck-tons of delusion in several cultures.

Why is it controversial to point out that when comparing these super-likely-to-be-delusional cultures, Mormonism smashes the cake in sharing the strong cultural conditions of societies and groups drowned in delusion for our modern age? Do I need to bring up the FLDS?

To say, "Yea, we've seen this before. Mormonism is, at the least from the outsider's perspective, cult-ish." But don't get me started on the cult Missionaries put themselves through.

There's nothing controversial about admitting, "Sure, if Mormons are wrong, then of course, based on the extensive record of the mind's capacity to delude itself in all circumstances, especially in cases remarkably similar--and in many aspects identical--to Mormonism, the only reasonable conclusion is that hardcore believing members fit, to a significant extent, the delusional culture checklist."

It's up to Mormons to accept that their beliefs are as extreme as they are functional, and consequently, they must distinguish what critics claim are delusions from what we already know about delusional cultures to avoid reasonable and concerned questions about certain aspects of their mental health.

[_Alfredo]

Put simply, apologists often overreact because they're maintaining the misconception that Mormon belief doesn't match, in nearly every aspect, most of what we know about strong cultural delusion, evident throughout history.

They reject idea that they match the criterion for delusional cultures because they happen to believe their ostensible delusions are actually true and therefore, there's no analysis which would indicated they're some of the most likely candidates for delusion. This seems to be the only reason justifying their refusal to view things in a more historically and culturally aware perspective.

[_Doctor Scratch]

So I worked with a schizophrenic woman who believed that she was receiving revelations from a god she called the time lord about the nature of time. These fractured thoughts led to her doing hilarious/sad things like obsessively collecting and worshiping clocks.

Do you think this is similar to the apologists obsessively collecting books and suffering from the delusion that Mopologetics is real scholarship?

The million dollar question is whether they actually believe that what they are doing is "scholarship." I would guess that they probably do.

[_DrW]

The diagnosis for mankind is that everyone is equally delusional.

Emily,

If you are still reading this thread, I would be interested to know where the above statement came from (underline is mine). This statement would not seem to follow from any of the lines of reasoning in your post and seems out-of place there.

I think, at this point, for the purpose of diagnosis, you must determine which delusions are unhealthy and detrimental to society, and which delusions are not.

Let me point out again here that I was not claiming that believing Mormons should be, or could be, diagnosed as clinically delusional (suffering from delusion disorder.)

What I am saying is that believing TBMs (those who hold temple recommends, and didn't lie to get them, for example) meet all of the DSM-V criteria for a diagnosis of delusional disorder, but would not be so diagnosed because their shared delusions constitute the fundamental truth claims of a religion.

That is what we do as a society, right? We tell some people that their fairy god whatever is okay to believe in, but not others. Wiccans and fundamentalists get laughed at (rightfully so, in my opinion) and yet the God from near the vicinity of Kolob who commanded Joseph Smith to marry and consummate marriages with multiple women is perfectly acceptable... or not, since we got Warren Jeffs sent up for following god's will.

The difference between Brighamites and FLDS is that the leaders of the FLDS church remain willing to practice the religion as it was practiced when Joseph Smith died. I am sure that most clinical psychologists, upon reading the revelations of Warren Jeffs since he has been in prison, would consider him delusional, religion or no religion. Yet the behavior Jeffs exhibits in the 21st century in making up revelations from God to explain and justify his criminal acts is exactly the behavior exhibited by Joseph Smith in the 19th century.

At what point were we able to differentiate Warren Jeffs' delusion from the delusions of the leaders of the mainstream church?

I see no way that this could reasonably be done, since the behaviors at issue are intended to express unwavering belief in, and emulation of, Joseph Smith Jr., who was himself either severely delusional or one of the most prolific among the conmen, adulterers, liars, and religious and financial scam artists of the 19th Century.