From: rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu (Eric Rescorla)
Subject: Re: THE MIND OF THE BIBLE BELIEVER
Organization: Rescorla for himself.
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 01:49:24 GMT

In article <1993Jan13.010409.12615@bmerh85.bnr.ca> dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham) writes:
>In article <1993Jan12.234915.21969@cs.yale.edu> rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu (Eric Rescorla) writes:
>>In article <1993Jan12.212544.8542@bmerh85.bnr.ca> dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham) writes:
>>>In article <1993Jan12.172957.18493@cs.yale.edu> rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu (Eric Rescorla) writes:
>>>>Ms. Mausmann could start by showing that there was a higher rate
>>>>of mental illness among Christians.
>>>Does anybody around here actually bother to read and think
>>>about some of the more interesting articles posted here?
>>I try to. I followed this thread back as far as my expire
>>time permits. I found at least one original argument by Ms.
>>Hausman where she made this assertion. It still sounds
>>like bullshit to me. And I'd still like to see proof.
>I don't think you're ever going to see proof of any kind.
Neither do I. Me, I suspect it's because the assertion is
complete bullshit. But that's just the skeptic talking.

>  I'd imagine
>that any study which unambiguously showed that Xianity makes people crazy
>would either be hushed up, marginalized, or drowned in a sea of babble.
Well, geez.
It's my opinion that atheism makes people stupid, but any
study that showed that would have been hushed up by the atheist
psychologists who run the peer review system. Conspiracy theories
are so nice when one doesn't have any evidence, aren't they?

>Plus the fact that on this wacked out planet, unanimous agreement on what
>constitutes mental illness would probably be impossible.
Quite true, but that just makes Ms. Hausmann's assertion even
more silly. (I.e. it's not only unsubstantiated, but also
meaningless.)

>  Me, I think
>that Xianity *is* a mental illness, because it causes its adherents to
>lose contact with reality.  Its doctrines, such as those pertaining to
>sex, only add fuel to the fire.
I'm sure they'd say the same thing about atheism.

>>>Like, for example, Stephen Doe's _THE MIND OF THE BIBLE BELIEVER_
>>>series, from which this thread's title originated?
>>It's expired at my site. I just turned on news a couple days ago.
>>Ms. Hausman's article contains no reference to that one.
>I'll email it to you if you wish.
Is it worth it?

>You're right that Maddi was not
>referring to that particular set of articles.  My comment was just
>meant to express a bit of frustration at the fact that nobody here
>ever seems to learn anything from past articles.  It's understandable
>that Xians wouldn't, because their defensive reaction would kick in
>immediately, causing them to either ignore the articles, or to write
>them off as bunk.  However, I was surprised that you wouldn't have
>gotten something out of the series, but if you never had a chance to
>read it, I can understand.  Still though, there have been other good
>articles, and the plethora of raving lunatics posting to this group
>ought to give you some cause to wonder what made them that way.
I'm quite prepared to believe that there are quite a few lunatic
Christians. Remember, there are a lot more Christians than atheists,
so you're likely to see more loony toons.

>>Do you have a point, Doug?
>>Did Mr. Doe provide the proof that Ms. Hausman has not?
>No, he didn't provide proof of any kind.  He posted an excellent summary
>of Edmund Cohen's _The Mind of the Bible Believer_ which describes
>some of the adverse effects that Xianity has on its victims.  It's
>possible that you might not find Cohen's analysis convincing (I do),
>but if that's the case, more progress might be made if you attacked
>it, rather than starting off in a different direction.
Probably not. Depends what you're talking about as mental illness,
too. Consider: a lot of people consider guilt to be
unhealthy, but if one was operating from the premise that one
indeed had something to feel guilty about, it might not be so.

There are, though, quite a few things that are generally agreed
upon to be mental illness (e.g. manic depression, schizophrenia,
MPD, etc.) It would be interesting(though of course not conclusive)
to see if the incidence of these was higher among Xians. If it's
not, it would make the case that Xianity caused mental illness
seem rather weak, though, unless you can identify an unambiguous
class of pathology which does seem to have a higher incidence
among Xians.

>>                        Don't believe anything you hear.
>Exactly.  This is why I don't put much stock in statistics.
>I'm sure that if you asked them to, the tobacco industry could
>still provide statistics showing that smoking has no adverse
>affect on health.
Yes, but I also suspect you would find that they had some
sort of sampling error. Given that you seem to believe
statistics to be malleable, it strikes me that it doesn't
do much for the case that Xianity leads to pathology that
you can't produce any statistics to back it up. I can certainly
produce many to show that tobacco smoking leads to pathology.

> I think you're going to have to study a bit
>of psychology to get to the bottom of this Xianity business.  Me,
>I'm no expert in psychology, but it doesn't seem to me that it
>takes much of a genius to figure out that, for example, scaring
>the shit out of people with tales of the eternal fires of hell,
>is going to lead to some pretty screwed up people.
I'm always mistrustful of this sort of reasoning.
You can engage in all the armchair theorizing you want to,
but psychology is far from having good deterministic theories.
Sure, it seems like a reasonable sort of guess that Xianity
will lead to screwed up people, but that doesn't mean that
it DOES. I'm sure I could make up stories why atheism would
lead to screwed up people too, if I chose.


-Ekr


-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Rescorla, DoD#431 (Nighthawk S)              rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu
Former chemist now CM400 mechanic                 ekr@eitech.com(preferred)
                        Don't believe anything you hear.
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc