Ex-Gay Watch

I wouldn’t call that belief in the inerrancy of the Bible a mental illness.
I call it phony, cafeteria religious commitment.

Of course the very people that utter that statement know they don’t REALLY have to live according to the Bible in legal PUBLIC life.

Our laws and secular debate and the civil belief in basic freedoms are protective for THEM as well.
The divorced, the adulterous, and back talking children are not stoned to death.
And money lending and usury are thriving business in America. People work on Sunday.
The real Sabbath is Friday through Saturday.
Women have far more freedom than their Muslim counterparts in religious countries like Iraq.

This is how you know those Bible thumpers are full of **it.
Those Scriptural laws won’t and don’t apply to THEM now, nor their loved ones and never will.
As long as someone ELSE can suffer the consequences of those inerrant rules…they can live with them.
Goes back to the basic most fundamental rule there is-demand not for someone else that which you will not suffer as well.

Jim said, “I don’t believe you understand the double-bind that your and Dale’s arguments present.”

Please explain the double bind that you think exists in my argument.

Jim,

Thank you. You expressed that so beautifully.

Dale A and Robis, etc.

I apologize if I was being dismissive. I certainly enjoy your input and don’t want to exclude you or your view points.

However, if you re-read the above posts you will find that in no instance did Christians seek to define what you must believe. But you, on several instances, were insistent on what is acceptable for Christians to believe, or they are insane. You may want to reconsider who is running roughshod.

That having been said, please don’t feel that you can’t post whatever you like.

Robis (I think.. it’s anonymous)

You wish to define “reality” and have conveniently defined it to agree with what you believe. Further, you have decided that your “reality” is the only reality. And anyone who disagrees with you is “divorced from reality” and ergo mentally ill.

I have a friend who uses the same type of logic. I care for him and hope that some day he will find the strength to get off the meth.

Anonymous at November 2, 2005 05:32 PM

Jim said: “But the problem you appear to be having is that it doesn’t conform to your world view. To you, it doesn’t make sense. I agree. It doesn’t make sense to me because it doesn’t conform to my world view either. But that’s not the issue. World views don’t define sanity. If world views were the benchmark for sanity, then we’re all in trouble. That is the double-bind: You’re crazy because you don’t meet my definition of sanity.

Sorry, but you seem to be under the misapprehension that psychiatry had anything to do with science in the 1950s. It did not. It was what might be referred to as a “black art” generally surrounded by mumbo-jumbo. I did not fully agree with Thomas Szasz (professor of psychiatry at Columbia) that psychiatry was totally non-scientific, but it certainly was in the way it was practiced at the time. It has since been discovered that some abnormal behaviors such as schizophrenia can be linked to abnormalities in the brain that can be corrected by medication, but more than a few of their supposed “mental disorders” were nothing more than their judgements as to what ought to be. Including homosexuality.

What ought to be? That is hardly scientific. I am somehow reminded of the Philip K Dick novel Clans of the Alphane Moon. What ought to be? That, sir or madam is a crock.

Jim said: “Well, here is the heart of it. Reality. Are you going to define what is real for us? Should someone else? The majority? The overwhelming majority even? And why should I trust someone else to define what’s real?”

I’m not going to define what reality is because reason and its younger sister science has done a perfectly good job at that. For all your talk of worldviews, reality is not negotiable. You can have a worldview that says gravity doesn’t exist but you will still die if you walk off a cliff. You can have a worldview that says that human beings can breathe underwater, but you will still drown if you dive to the bottom of the ocean without a suit. It doesn’t matter what interpretation you put on reality, it does not care what you personally believe—it is not negotiable. That is not my personal judgement, anyone can perform those experiements and see that it is so–though they won’t be alive to report their findings. It also has nothing to do with what ought to be—I make no value judgements about the injustice of gravity or unbreathable water. It just is.

That said, regardless of the worldview of Christians who believe in a literal and inerrant Bible, those two features are exclusive to each other. They cannot exist together in the same universe. The Bible is either literal or it is inerrant. It is either inerrant or literal. It is not both. That is one of those facets of reality that are not negotiable. Again, that is not my personal judgement, anyone can do the exercises and see that this is so. It also has nothing to do with a value judgement on my part. It just is.

And let me add this as it seems to be an issue: I make no value judgement about mental illness either. I do not think that people who are mentally ill are less valid as people, or cannot have valid ideas or opinions outside of the problems they are having distinguishing reality. That seems to be a value others want to impose upon what I am talking about. Further, I don’t see any reason to assume that just because I assert inerrantism is a mental illness that I place my OPINIONS higher than the opinions of anyone, even inerrantists. That’s your baggage, not mine.

Jim Burroway at November 3, 2005 09:02 AM

Exactly!!! Thanks for putting it so succinctly.

You are welcome. I am a lawyer who has a real science background (I have a masters degree in physics). I do not pussy-foot around with this silliness.

Fortunately, the medical community has, subsequently, been able to develop regimens that might be used to ameliorate the effects of what were previously considered “mental disorders” if those who had the so-called “mental disorders” wished to partake.

Even if the medical community were to come up with a regimen that might make me straight (which they have not), I would not see any reason for me to partake. I have had enough problems with a cortical steroid ointment and i have determined that the only drug that I will take is aspirin.

Jim said: “Strawman arguments aren’t very pursuasive. I know of no Fundamentalist Christians making these claims. Maybe because they all died/drowned/etc. ? ”

It’s not a strawman. I’m not saying that anyone is making those claims. Perhaps you should reread what I wrote. You seem to have missed the point I was making. That point had nothing to do with what Fundamentalists believe, but rather the subjective nature of reality that you are proposing.

Further, your attempts to show that I place my OPINIONS above those of inerrantists fails because the passages you highlight do not address any opinions at all.

A double murder suicide was just committed by a young man with Aspberger’s Syndrome.
It’s a form of autism. The person who has it, may have a high IQ, but is socially inept.

Obssessed with a single subject, can’t read body language or cues from another person. Making them seem too bombastic for healthy interaction.

They don’t necessarily become so violent.
But this 19 year old had warned of his feelings of suicide on a website and bought a shotgun, despite a 10 day waiting period.

He killed a young woman and her father before taking his own life.
His photo shows a clean cut, dark haired boy, handsome with a nice smile.
His syndrome made him feel excruciatingly lonely.

The point is: our society has people with varying degrees of behavioral issues.
Some are mellowed with medication (which isn’t managed by LAW) and some are either subtley or strongly maladjusted and cannot function in ways that people DO notice.

Even if a mental illness or genetic deficiency is evident in individuals-there IS NO LAW that excludes or bans someone from marriage BASED on that issue.
So WHATEVER a person thinks of homosexuality, it has less implications for society than sociopathy or clinical disorders like schizophrenia.
And these issues are not excluded from homosexual people.
So, if anyone is going to argue a ban on marriage between gay people because they THINK it’s a mental or emotional disorder, they STILL are committing an egregious act against equal standards of inclusion for everyone.

The psychiatric community struck homosexuality from the DSM for more than a few specific reasons.
Most of which had to do with function.
In our basic respect for sexuality-how one functions sexually IS strictly personal.
We don’t measure or observe other people’s sex lives and how they handle it or to what degree.
We have no motive to intrude as neighbors or legal bodies unless and until, something that betrays or assaults another human being is in evidence.
Homosexuality doesn’t do that. It’s a personal characteristic and identity.
It’s not a cultural identity, it’s not based on a religious or social identity.
And no one has their entire lives disrupted or intruded on based on a personal characteristic, ESPECIALLY if, in their PUBLIC lives and condition, they are performing and functioning well and competently.
Nobody has taken a shotgun and blown away other people BECAUSE they were gay.

So all this bull**it over what homosexuality is and how it figures into marriage, job and other exclusions has no protection in the law equal to others who DO suffer from disorders of any and EVERY other kind.

Robis,

this is my final post on this subject.

Where your logic fails is that you start with a set of assumptions not shared by Christians. You reject the possibility of the miraculous. You believe the universe must act in accordance with the laws of physics as you know them to be.

You have predetermined the nature of God and applied to him the rules that you believe should apply. Thus, by your set of rules, it isn’t possible for God to be everywhere simultaneously or to know all things; that is contradictory to your knowledge of matter. Since you cannot fathom such a being you state that such a being cannot exist.

I suggest to you that your understanding of the universe and its possibilities is incomplete. I don’t fault you for basing your beliefs on what you know, I fault you for assuming that what you know is all there is to be known.

You mention walking off a cliff and that the automatic conclusion is falling. I hesitate in doing this because it truly does make me sound illogical or a nut and can lead one to discount my position; nevertheless, I will share with you a family story:

My grandfather was a preacher. One day he was traveling with a group of preachers to a meeting and needed to cross a ravine on a narrow and fragile bridge. The car was full and my grandfather was riding on the side step and holding onto the body of the car. After crossing the ravine the other men noticed that my grandfather looked shocked and asked why. He told them that for the last half of the crossing the car was riding on air. The men looked back and saw that the bridge had collapsed into the ravine.

My grandfather had a reputation for being scrupulously honest. I know that he believed the story.

According to your understanding of what is, the car could not have driven across air and safely gotten the ministers to the other side. By your standards, my grandfather was either lying or somehow deceived about the bridge (perhaps it fell after they got across). But – and here is the crux of the matter – you think that because my grandfather believed that a miracle had happened, he was demonstrating a rejection of logic and embracing the impossible and thus demonstrating mental illness.

I have no idea what happened. I don’t assume a miracle. Nonetheless, I cannot see my grandfather’s desire to understand his experience to be a sign of mental illness.

My family’s history is peppered with such stories.

Was my mother miraculously cured of vision impairment? I don’t know. Yet she believed so – and she seemed able to see better than most.

Was my uncle born dead? I don’t know. But my grandparents and their doctor believed so. He’s certainly alive today.

Did miraculous “healings” occur to people that I knew growing up? I don’t know. But Mrs. Hoague’s first x-rays showed inoperable cancer which was missing from the next x-rays.

Each of these things may have had a very logical and scientific based explanation that would be consistent with your understanding of reality. Perhaps no miracles occurred at all. My view of the world tends toward the skeptical.

However, I cannot say that these people – whom I know to all be logical people – were irrational in their understanding of what occurred. They saw things that seemed unexplainable by your set of rules and said “I cannot explain it, it must be God”. They based their understanding on what they observed.

You, however, have based your understanding on what you have not observed. You say that because you’ve not seen anything that cannot be explained by your rules, then your rules must be true. Further, you think that anyone who does not believe your rules is mentally ill.

I do not claim that you are not correct. Perhaps all things that exist can be explained by our current understanding of science. But it is incredibly arrogant to insist that this is the case.

For one to seek an understanding of what they’ve seen and to apply a supernatural basis to what seems on the face of it to be supernatural is not illogical or irrational. They may be wrong but they are not mentally ill.

The belief in a literal and inerrant God and the belief in Santa do not signify mental illness by themselves, but they are beliefs similar to those found in the mentally ill. Believers in God have been given a pass not given to adult believers in Santa. As long as one is able to function and meet the day to day needs of life one can have such magical beliefs and not be mentally ill. Nevertheless religious delusions are a common feature of schizophrenia and psychosis and with good reason – note the discussion of DL Foster under “Exodus Testimonials Blame Homosexuality for life Problems”. Having a large segment of society promote beliefs in magic and that contradictions can both be true triggers and feeds psychotic episodes in the mentally ill. When a susceptible person is unsure of (even a small) reality the idea that magic exists and contradictions are true can increase mental confusion and uncertainty to the point of panic which further prevents rational assessment of reality in a vicious cycle. Religious beliefs are certainly responsible for escalating the prevalence and severity of mental illness in society. I know, I’ve been there.

Religous beliefs are not consistent with what one typically finds in nature – things generally don’t move by themselves, we aren’t bumping into people we can’t see, there’s usually obvious reasons for things happening and a reasonable person will acknowledge that gods creating and controlling things including impossible contradictions is outside of what is usually seen and that is reason enough to have some skepticism.

Fundamentalists are willfully stupid in that they are willing to ignore what is usually seen in favour of explanations that would be considered less likely by a scientific thinker. Scientific thought emphasizes an equal consideration of all evidence and fundamentalists refuse to do that. There has been thousands of religions over the millenium and typically they claim to be true and all others false. A reasonable person will admit this means most religions must be false and based on this alone it is unlikely their’s is the one which might be inerrantly true. Few people are reasonable when it comes to their religious beliefs but most function well enough to be considered sane by most people. How many Christians honestly believe if they had been born in Japan or Saudi Arabia they would have come to believe Christianity is the one true faith? Not many I’m sure.

It is unfortunate that reality doesn’t provide perfect scientific answers to every question. Although it may not be very much so, psychology is as scientific as it can be at this time. That this is the best that can currently be done doesn’t justify dismissing the effort entirely. Raj, would you prefer society just throw up its hands and do nothing because the effort is (and possibly must be) far from perfect and scientific?

Anti-gay religous fundamentalist acceptance of the idea that the bible can contradict itself and still be inerrant is the same rationale Exodus uses to put out spiritual lies of ommission like encouraging people to jump to conclusions like: because the gays we know (some gays) have been sexually abused this means sexual abuse is the cause of same sex attractions. Its the same “logic” that allowed people to believe “Its okay for me to own my slaves, I am a good person”.
The same logic allows exodus to say “complete change is possible” and encourage the belief that all gays can completely convert same sex attractions into opposite sex attractions when what they really mean is the trivial technical truth that a gay person can suppress strong desires and pretend to be heterosexual. One cannot condemn these actions of Exodus and slave owners and not condemn the belief that its possible for the bible to be contradictory and true. A reasonable person acknowledges the contradictory belief in biblical inerrancy is typical of those that accompany mental illness, not typical of nature.

I lied… it wasn’t my last post.

Randi, you make some excellent points. However I disagree on a few things:

1. “Fundamentalists are willfully stupid in that they are willing to ignore what is usually seen in favour of explanations that would be considered less likely by a scientific thinker.”

This is true to an extent. Some small number of fundamentalist always fit this discription. However, few fundamentalists willfully ignore the obvious in favor of the miraculous. Usually this comes into play when there is no obvious answer.

2. “There has been thousands of religions over the millenium and typically they claim to be true and all others false. A reasonable person will admit this means most religions must be false and based on this alone it is unlikely their’s is the one which might be inerrantly true.”

Don’t fall into the trap of using results based logic.

A reasonable person could also conclude that the fact that their religion has endured while others perished is evidence that theirs is the correct one, blessed and ordained by God.

Remember too that most fundamentalist trace their religious heritage back to Adam and so consider their religion to be the oldest and most authentic. Others were just a flash in the pan.

3. “Few people are reasonable when it comes to their religious beliefs but most function well enough to be considered sane by most people.”

This one I agree with completely!!

4. “Religious beliefs are certainly responsible for escalating the prevalence and severity of mental illness in society.”

I suspect that religion does not contribute so much to the occurance of mental illness but rather becomes a magnet for those who are mentally ill.

So does politics, incidentally. Maybe it has something to do with a sense of power for those who feel powerless. It isn’t coincidence that many people who charge into the polital sphere for religious reasons are, well, um… you know.

5. “Having a large segment of society promote beliefs in magic and that contradictions can both be true triggers and feeds psychotic episodes in the mentally ill.”

Much has been made in these posts of the inerrant belief in a contradictory scripture. If by contradictory you mean that it contradicts alternate beliefs or scientific observation, that has been discussed ad nauseum.

If however you mean self-contradictory, I think the fundamentalists have addressed whatever contradictions may occur.

I think one of the problems that anti-Christians have in debate with Christians is that they don’t recognize that a “literal” belief in scripture is nuanced. Some literalists believe that the story of Lazarus is figurative, others not. Some believe that much of Genesis is alegorical, others ascribe to the details including talking snakes and a 144 hour creation. All beleive that certain portions of Leviticus are applicable and others not. Yet none of this is arbitrary and without years, decades, centuries and even millenia of study, debate and argument.

If there are two biblical segments that appear contraditory, you can be certain that fundamentalists have seen those two and have made some conclusion that is consistent with their belief structure. These are not simple uneducated back-woods people and if we choose to see them as such we do so to our own detriment.

and finally,

6. “The belief in a literal and inerrant God and the belief in Santa do not signify mental illness by themselves, but they are beliefs similar to those found in the mentally ill.”

This is not particulary relevant in that the sane and insane have many traits in common and share many beliefs.

I think a more relevant point would be that the mentally ill often include people who are extreme in their religiosity or overly devout. It seems to me that the indicators of mental instability have less to do with the beliefs chosen and more to do with the level of insistence.

Based on nothing more than my observations, those most convinced of their dogma and least willing to accept or hear an alternate voice seem the least capable of functioning.

Or to put it in terms that fundamentalists would understand “beware of the man who shouts “amen” the loudest.”

The fundamentalists I’ve encountered are the most vehemently anti-gay and they do favour miraculous explanations over obvious ones. They feel for example its okay to criticize the National Education association for not presenting both sides of the story, while they do not criticize the ex-gay groups for doing the same.

Timothy you saying don’t fall for results based logic is indistinguishable to me from saying don’t fall for the conclusions of scientific experiments. One may certainly suggest that a resonable person may conclude that because their religion has persisted that it is the one true religion, but is the assumption that it has persisted till now reason to assume that it will continue to persist? No. Prior to the dismissal of old religions at that time one may have made the same conclusion. Religions have lasted thousands of years, just because one persists to a present point in time is no reason to believe it will continue to do so and hence be justifiably considered valid any more than a religion that has persisted for thousands of years but just not to this point in time. Historically religions do not persist and there is no reason to believe that Christianity or any other current religion will differ in the long run.

Religion certainly triggered and contributed to the last psychotic episode I experienced. Why don’t you laugh at your dismissal of my experience just as you laugh at the dismissal of religious people’s experiences?

I’m referring to the biblical beliefs that are self contradictory. At that time I was psychotic the belief in space aliens certainly made as much sense to me as the belief in gods. These beliefs are on a par in my experience in that they are a last gasp attempt to explain what seems unexplainable in typical natural terms. I have since found reaonable explantions for what seemed unexplanable to me and I wouldn’t blame anyone for questioning my beliefs in the supernatural for what I still cannot explain. The fundamentalists have most certainly not explained such self-contradictory biblical beliefs to me despite my demands they do so. I can only assume they do not have such explanations or do not consider them convincing themselves.

You say I don’t understand that the literal belief in scripture is nuanced? Well, I do understand that, the trouble is its so nuanced that an average Jane like myself can’t see any logic in it whatsoever – it ignores what is typically seen in nature for the more unlikely explanation again and again. At some point one must say that this belief is predicated upon that which is unlikely based on something else which is unlikely based on yet another unlikely thing and at some point a reasonable person must say this is so unlikely as to be reasonably considered untrue.

I never said fundamentalists are mentally ill, in fact I said most are not. What I said is that the belief in the inerrancy of the bible is unreasonable and similar to beliefs in magic considered symptomatic of mental illness. Anyone stating the self contradictory bible statements are true is at least at that point in time unreasonable, albeit not necessarily mentally ill. The belief that the bible is not inerrant is not confirmation of mental illness but is to be condemned in the same way exodus’s lies of ommission are.
Agree to disagree? You said you agree that the belief in the inerrancy of the bible is wrong. If you don’t consider wrong beliefs unreasonable then why say you consider them wrong in the first place?

Whoooaa….

Whoops, I meant to say “Belief that the bible IS inerrant is not confirmation of mental illness but is to be condemned in the same way exodus’s lies of omission are.”
-randi

I started to respond but then I realized…

nah, I’m done.

Thank God. Any more of this and I will lose my mind.

(Channelling Monty Python)

And I’d like to point out that this is the 76th comment to this post.