Religion = Phobia

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Was watching a documentary on Netflix today about a therapist who treats people for phobias. His approach was basically to be able to gauge the person's level of fear and then slowly reintroduce rational behavior.

For example, if a person had a phobia about frogs and toads the therapist would start by showing the person pictures of frogs but holding the pictures at some great distance. The person would be visibly shaken at first and quite fearful and anxious. But over time and done properly the person would eventually come to touch and hold frogs, completely overcoming their fear.

Now these were all quite normal people with normal lives, jobs, relationships, responsibilities and families. But they all had a fear that caused them to do irrational things like run down the sidewalk on a rainy day to avoid frogs. Or ask another person in the supermarket to get something for them because they were too afraid to approach a certain food or fruit. One person could not touch her own knees or ever look at another person's knees.

To me their behavior seemed religious and I thought about religion as an untreated phobia, whether it was fear of god or fear of death of some kind of doomsday fear or fear of misfortune or fear of something else. Problem is we write these fears and irrational behavior off as religiously normal.

So is religion at its heart a phobia that gets treated by unlicensed therapists, and finds a solution in group acceptance? Is that all religion really is?

 

[Keith&Co.]

I read the memoirs of a girl who grew up with Scrupulosity.

It's a type of OCD. THe patient suffers anxiety from a fear of being guilty of religious, moral, or ethical failure. She would invent all sorts of rules to keep God happy, like feeding the dog (secretly) 72 times a day, or washing every surface in the kitchen if her sister cooked bacon, or praying every time there was a commercial on TV.
Lining up Skittles alphabetically by color, or searching for imperfect M&Ms to hide from her family (so it would not Anger God if they ate it).

According to her, a LOT more people suffer from this than get properly diagnosed, esp. young women, as their parents tend to just think she's gone Orthodox...

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I read the memoirs of a girl who grew up with Scrupulosity.

It's a type of OCD. THe patient suffers anxiety from a fear of being guilty of religious, moral, or ethical failure. She would invent all sorts of rules to keep God happy, like feeding the dog (secretly) 72 times a day, or washing every surface in the kitchen if her sister cooked bacon, or praying every time there was a commercial on TV.
Lining up Skittles alphabetically by color, or searching for imperfect M&Ms to hide from her family (so it would not Anger God if they ate it).

According to her, a LOT more people suffer from this than get properly diagnosed, esp. young women, as their parents tend to just think she's gone Orthodox...

I was also thinking along those lines. We call those people "devout." A majority of people consider their behavior normal because it's associated with religion. But if she was doing those things to prevent her house being taken over by apples, we would say she's psychotic or delusional or give it some other psychological name.

My original take on religion was that religious behavior is a legacy behavior, a carry-over from a time when humans were mostly bipolar, a condition that became selected against as human populations increased. But now I'm not so sure. I think it could be partly that but the phobia explanation seems a lot simpler and easier to accept. Bipolar behavior is not as easy to observe because bipolar individuals need to be treated today or their lives are a train wreck. But someone with a phobia can carry on with a normal life, simply adopting and practicing irrational behaviors by which they avoid the objects of their fears.

Another hallmark phobic behavior is to avoid saying the word or looking at a representation of their phobia. This reminded me of Islam and Judaism.

 

[Lion IRC]

This Op is a pretty old idea.

And there's a ton of books on the subject including a great one by Greg Moginson called
"God Is A Trauma - Vicarious Religion and Soul-Making" which speaks to the idea that something in our psyche akin to a phobia or repressed trauma can and should be treated.

In the opposite direction there are books such as "Gods and Diseases: Making Sense of Our Physical and Mental Wellbeing" by David Tacey which argue along the lines that taking away our religion (pro-atheism) leads to mental illness associated social pathologies.

So which is the abnormal state of mind? Is atheism a type of phobia or theism?
Or both?
Or neither?


Which reminds me. Did Richard Dawkins ever take the anti-phobia challenge to put on and wear an article of clothing which had some macabre association like having been worn by a serial killer or the like? I think he comfortably admitted that atheists have phobias like everyone else.

 

[DBT]

Probably rather than a question of being 'normal' it's an issue of mental health in the sense that we achieve a degree of mental stability and understanding of our condition where we no longer need to turn to irrational beliefs or destructive means (self medication, etc) in order to cope with life's events.

Obviously that may not be at all possible with the condition of chemical imbalances or structural damage to the brain.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I don't like the medicalisation of topics that are essentially just opinion. The underlying idea is that anything deemed abnormal is bad and needs to be repressed. Or that a person slapped with a diagnosis should feel shame about it.

The main problem with this approach is that it makes everybody a lunatic. We all engage in rituals. Whether those are pathological or not is a matter of definition. It seems basic to the human psychological make-up.

Medicalisation was used as a method to repress and ban those deemed undesirable both in the West and USSR during the Cold War. It's still a huge gaping wound on the world. Let's not go down that road again.

 

[bilby]

I don't like the medicalisation of topics that are essentially just opinion. The underlying idea is that anything deemed abnormal is bad and needs to be repressed. Or that a person slapped with a diagnosis should feel shame about it.

The main problem with this approach is that it makes everybody a lunatic. We all engage in rituals. Whether those are pathological or not is a matter of definition. It seems basic to the human psychological make-up.

Medicalisation was used as a method to repress and ban those deemed undesirable both in the West and USSR during the Cold War. It's still a huge gaping wound on the world. Let's not go down that road again.

If you think that not everybody is a lunatic then you need to get out more.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I don't like the medicalisation of topics that are essentially just opinion. The underlying idea is that anything deemed abnormal is bad and needs to be repressed. Or that a person slapped with a diagnosis should feel shame about it.

The main problem with this approach is that it makes everybody a lunatic. We all engage in rituals. Whether those are pathological or not is a matter of definition. It seems basic to the human psychological make-up.

Medicalisation was used as a method to repress and ban those deemed undesirable both in the West and USSR during the Cold War. It's still a huge gaping wound on the world. Let's not go down that road again.

If you think that not everybody is a lunatic then you need to get out more.

Ok, fine. But with that attitude then what does it matter if religion is a phobia? This is just the opposite extreme where we've normalized everything and robbed ourselves with the tools to do something about people with serious mental problems. I'm sure there's some middle ground where we can treat people who are dysfunctional while also allowed people to hold uncomfortable beliefs.

 

[DBT]

is there even a genuine concern to do something for people with serious mental illness on a societal/ government level that doesn't involve putting them in a ward and sedating them if they are creating a public nuisance, otherwise let them live on the streets and rot?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Which reminds me. Did Richard Dawkins ever take the anti-phobia challenge to put on and wear an article of clothing which had some macabre association like having been worn by a serial killer or the like? I think he comfortably admitted that atheists have phobias like everyone else.

Of course atheists can and do have phobias. One of the ladies profiled had a phobia about barns. I'm certain someone could have a phobia about churches or statues.

We don't allow dead bodies to rot away in our living rooms but I wouldn't equate that with having a phobia about tree roots or peas, as some people do. If I prefer not to wear an article of clothing that doesn't mean I am deathly afraid of it and it brings terror and panic attacks if I get close to it or imagine it. That's not phobia and it doesn't induce irrational behavior. Phobias induce irrational behavior, like running out of the room if someone pulls a banana from their bag. A phobia is an irrational fear accompanied by irrational behavior.

Think about what happens in the church just across the street from me every seventh morning. Large groups of people gather. They go through a ritual during which they turn wheat flour, water and fermented grape juice into an invisible, heroic, long-dead human that they then eat. They do this because they believe it will make them safe and secure in their futures. They do it because they are afraid of going to hell, a place where essentially another super human like creature lives. Does that behavior sound rational to you? These are adults who no longer believe in Santa and tooth fairies. What else would possibly be causing them to engage in this behavior?

 

[Elixir]

Was watching a documentary on Netflix today about a therapist who treats people for phobias. His approach was basically to be able to gauge the person's level of fear and then slowly reintroduce rational behavior.

For example, if a person had a phobia about frogs and toads the therapist would start by showing the person pictures of frogs but holding the pictures at some great distance. The person would be visibly shaken at first and quite fearful and anxious. But over time and done properly the person would eventually come to touch and hold frogs, completely overcoming their fear.

Now these were all quite normal people with normal lives, jobs, relationships, responsibilities and families. But they all had a fear that caused them to do irrational things like run down the sidewalk on a rainy day to avoid frogs. Or ask another person in the supermarket to get something for them because they were too afraid to approach a certain food or fruit. One person could not touch her own knees or ever look at another person's knees.

To me their behavior seemed religious and I thought about religion as an untreated phobia, whether it was fear of god or fear of death of some kind of doomsday fear or fear of misfortune or fear of something else. Problem is we write these fears and irrational behavior off as religiously normal.

So is religion at its heart a phobia that gets treated by unlicensed therapists, and finds a solution in group acceptance? Is that all religion really is?

The Lakota Sioux have a saying: "Religion is for people who are afraid of hell, spirituality is for people who have already been there."
The big problem with curing such people's hellaphobia is that it's so difficult to simply throw them into hell and wait for them to get over it...

She would invent all sorts of rules to keep God happy, like feeding the dog (secretly) 72 times a day, or washing every surface in the kitchen if her sister cooked bacon, or praying every time there was a commercial on TV.
Lining up Skittles alphabetically by color, or searching for imperfect M&Ms to hide from her family (so it would not Anger God if they ate it).

We all have some small degree of that kind of behavior. Reminds me of a fairly cute FB page called "I Will Go Slightly Out of My Way To Step On A Crunchy-Looking Leaf!"
Insanity is just a matter of degrees. (No, not a knock on the over-educated...)

 

[AJ113]

..These are adults who no longer believe in Santa and tooth fairies. What else would possibly be causing them to engage in this behavior?

Parental conditioning.