BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 12:28 PM

Yes, I know that already, and pointed that out months ago!

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 12:23 PM

She may not be mentally ill; she was just brought up to believe the impossible, so she did. She is mentally ill now, though, if not just from shock.

The majority is always sane, as Nessus, the mad-because-brave Puppeteer pointed out. Sanity is a legal term.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 12:14 PM

I think you should re-read my post. It certainly draws the distinction between, what following what Jesus said, and where people 'go astray', and to what is a valid 'discipleship' of Jesus, and where people just make up their own shit, for whatever they feel suits them...for whatever reason....both religious, and for good measure, political.
Regards,
GfS

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Alice
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 12:01 PM

that should be cognitive "dissonance", not "dissonane"

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Alice
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 12:00 PM

I never said religion is the "cause".

There are many reasons why people start destructive cults. Many cult leaders have narcissistic personality disorder.

Contrary to popular opinion, most people recruited into a cult do not have a mental illness. Rather, they are at a vulnerable time in their life when whatever the cult is offering as bait hooks into the vulnerability of the recruit. The "dark side" of the group is not usually apparent during the recruiting process. Cognitive dissonane and other problems may arise as part of the cult involvement, but cults generally want highly functioning people to exploit. Intelligent, hard working recruits are the most valuable. If someone has problems, they usually get dumped from the group, unless they are a source of income like disability payments, social security, or something like that.

Destructive cults are not all based on religious ideology - some are political, some can be business oriented (follow me and you will become rich), some are based on racism (white supremist, etc.) and many are "therapy" cults, led by psychologists or self proclaimed counselors who create their own idea of therapy and involve a group of people around them. Many cults in America have been called "mom and pop" cults, where there are one or two strong leaders who involve a small group of followers, and the group acts below the radar.

If you want more info on destructive cults, you can PM me.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 10:26 AM

These cases are a problem for both law and religion but neither are the cause. The cause is mental illness.

Mental illness can be caused by either nature or nurture or both.
It could be organic or it could be a learned acquision. For example a normal person can "learn" mental illness as a result of solitary confinment in as little as 90 days.

Religion is no defense for murder but can be instrumental in learning insanity or excusing true insanity as some sort of spritual posession by ignorant church authorities.


For a judge weighing the possibliity of learned insanity from an organic disease, the most humane sentence for those involved in murdering a child is a life sentence to a psychiatric prison hospital with the possibility for parole.

Many psychotics and social psychopaths have a very high self esteem, controling behaviors and claim a personal relationship with god, or the devil.

Their defense is typically "God (or the devil) told me what to do".

The least humane punishment is the death penalty which is too deeply flawed to ever be enforced justly.


A jury trial may give results far afield from law or proof.
Somtimes the law is ignored and a community agreement on punishment or innocence is as simple as "he had it comin" which has been a very successful defense for some admited killers in Texas.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Alice
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 09:17 AM

Here is an excerpt from a more complete description of the cult case of One Mind Ministries at http://www.rickross.com/reference/onemind/onemind14.html


"She insists that her daughter was also a victim and was coerced into starving Javon. "The leader of the cult -- Queen Antoinette -- made the decision. She was the one that said, 'Do not feed him,' and would beat Javon and put him in a back room."

The child was denied food and water and became thin with dark circles under his eyes, according to a statement of charges filed by Detective Vernon Parker. When he stopped breathing, cult members were instructed to pray around Javon's body, according to Parker.

"The Queen told everyone that 'God was going to raise Javon from the dead,'" according to the document. "That resurrection never took place."

Cult member Bynum then rented a silver Chevrolet Impala and drove to Philadelphia with other group members and the corpse, according to Parker. After being evicted from a Red Roof Inn, they lived on the streets before meeting Samuel Morgan, an elderly man who allowed them to stay at his home for one week.

Leaving behind the suitcase, cult members moved on to Brooklyn, where three cult members were arrested on accusations of assaulting an officer who was attempting to retrieve a child involved in a custody dispute from their home.

Javon's body was finally discovered after Baltimore police received a tip from a caseworker with New York's child welfare authority."

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Alice
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 08:54 AM

As I said, the list "does not include the groups in which children were harmed or killed because of the religious ideology about punishment, starvation, sex with children, etc."

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 04:14 AM

Nickhere, I agree with your post, as well.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 04:00 AM

Knowing a bit about the subject, on both sides, here's how I'd call it:
If, in fact, they were 'Christian Science' folks, and believed in a resurrection, The resurrection would apply to those Christians who obeyed the two foremost commandments of Jesus Christ, which were, to believe 'in the One who sent Me, (God), and to LOVE one another, as yourselves', He later expounds on that, as "love one another, as I have loved you'. Quite a few segments(read:denominations), of the Christian faith, seem to circumnavigate those two commandments with 'supplementary' addendums, in their 'dogma'. ie, technicalities, as to Baptisms, assembly, communion, so on and so forth. This is something they do, to 'justify' themselves, and appear 'righteous' to themselves, IN PLACE of obeying to commandment to LOVE! That being said, I personally don't see, how allowing your child to die, and carrying it around in a suitcase, for months, falls into the realm of ..'doing unto others, as you would have them do unto you'. Christian scientist have supplanted obeying the love commandment, with the 'faith healing' focus, as stated above. As to the resurrection of the child, that may happen, but their lack of love, or obeying the commandment to love, if left 'unrepented', would mean that they might not necessarily be in it. So, by their own admission, they have failed to meet the criteria, of what Jesus said would qualify them to be called His own. However, Jesus also said, (referring to children), 'Who so ever should offend one of these, it would be better for him, to tie a millstone around their necks...and it should be better for them to have never been born' Get the idea?
Its very similar to our own Constitution. Stay within the bounds of its guarantees, do not infringe your rights onto someone else's, including the government infringing on yours, and you have freedom, for all. Once you get, umm...'overly self indulgent' with one portion over another, to where it is distorted, you then begin to infringe your WILL over someone else's rights. ....That's a 'no-no'!! It is in there, where all the confusion stars, such as we have seen, in recent years, and increasing, as time goes on. Perhaps a little less 'over reaching' in that area, would clean up, our views on the policies we would impose on other fellow Americans. I hope this will not become a point of contention!
   From all indications, these people should be charged with child neglect, if not murder, or manslaughter, possibly involuntary manslaughter,...in my (sometimes) humble opinion!
Regards,
GfS

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: GUEST,Slag
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 02:11 AM

...and pardon the thread drift, but Donuel! Define what knowledge is. Define absolute knowledge. Aristotelian logic was the begin-all and end-all for thousands of years. Ether HAD to exist. On and on.


We cannot exist without assumptions. Every time you get behind the wheel of your car you have to assume to some degree that the other drivers are going to obey the rules of the road, that they are sane and sober and free of suicidal impulses, etc. and you know THAT ain't true and yet you drive and chat and DO NOT pay attention to every driver as though he may come across the double yellow at you. So much of life is faith and not all of it warranted.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: M.Ted
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 12:49 AM

A shocking number horrible crimes are committed by people of with no particular religious affiliation, though some of us prefer not to dwell on them--

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Kent Davis
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 12:05 AM

Just to clarify a few points:

1. As Bee-dubya-ell has already twice noted, religion would not be a viable defense in this case. The lawyers may turn to that defense in desperation, but it really won't fly. In the U.S., there is no absolute freedom of religion. There is freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly, and there are prohibitions against Congress establishing a national religion or imposing a religious test for public office. There is no religious right to starve one's child to death. Children who have been born can't be legally killed.

2. The cases Alice mentions are cases of denial of consent for medical treatment. They are sad cases, certainly, but they have nothing to do with this case. This case is not about denying consent for care.   

3. Being delusional, in the medical sense of the term, is not the same as being "crazy". In medicine, a person who is delusional has beliefs that are tenaciously held, without legitimate evidence, and in spite of evidence to the contrary. The opinions of people held to be authorities "count" as evidence for purposes of the definition. A person who believes, for example, that reincarnation occurs, or who believes that humans evolved from fish, or who believes Joseph Smith was an honest man, or whatever, is not diagnosed as being delusional, even if the physician happens to disagree with those beliefs. I hope the rationale for this is obvious.

4. Being insane, in the legal sense, is not the same as being "crazy", nor is it the same as being delusional. A person who is insane lacks criminal intent because he does not realize what he is doing. Suppose my wife smiles at the mailman and, based on that, I conclude they must be having an affair. Suppose I then sneak over to his house and kill him. Would I be considered insane? No, because I knew what I was doing. Suppose, however, that I thought the meter-reader was a Nazi soldier come to take my family to the gas chamber. Suppose I killed him, as I thought, to protect my family from imminent danger. Would I be considered insane? Yes, because I did not know what I was doing; I did not realize I was killing an innocent meter-reader; I thought I was saving my family from the gas chamber.

5. The religion angle still looks like a red herring to me, a lawyer's way of confusing the issue.

Kent

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 11:54 PM

"Assumptions are more dangerous and deadly than facts. Facts can be checked but assumptions are kept on faith"

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Alice
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 07:55 PM

Mark Twain was actually an interesting skeptic de-bunker. His comments about faith need to be taken as they were meant, tongue in cheek.

Example, Mark Twain's caustic attack on Christian Science and its founder, Mary Baker Eddy, whom he described as "the queen of hypocrites."

From "The Toadstool Millionaires", chapter 8
Mark Twain was but one of many Americans who, during the post-Civil War expansion of the nostrum traffic, objected to a particular type of effrontery on the part of patent medicine men. Among the "blessings" of 19th-century civilization which Twain's Connecticut Yankee carried back to King Arthur's England was outdoor advertising. Knights went about sandwiched between tabards emblazoned with slogans for prophylactic toothbrushes. Other knights wielded paint-pot and stencil-plate to such good effect "that there was not a cliff or a boulder or a dead wall in England but you could read on it at a mile distance" an urgent appeal to purchase shirts "which were regarded as a perfect protection against sin."

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Nickhere
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 07:55 PM

I think recent events have shown all of us to suffer from mass delusion - i.e we have all believed in the financial system up to now. We have all agreed that a scrap of paper with a few pictures and numbers on it was intrinsically worth 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 or whatever dollars / euros etc., or that those digits and zeros in the computer represented real value.

As long as we all agreed to believe in it, there was no delusion and had I walked into a bank and burned up some stacks of paper pictures, I would have been jailed. And to some extent we all still believe in it. So are we delusional or not? If we all believe in it, it seems to work quite well. If we don't, it doesn't. But our mass belief produces tangible results, equally our disbelief produces tangible results.

Maybe the real question is not whether we are delusional (can we be 100% sure of ANYTHING in this world, or can we argue about it in circles forever) but which 'delusions' are worth bothering with.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 06:46 PM

People also have the right to believe as they wish, String. It is only when they try to foist that belief on others who are, for one reason or another, unqualified to make an informed choice that they become a problem.

And you know it isn't limited to religious faith. How many people around the world believe wholeheartedly in little green men from Mars, or wherever?

Mark Twain got that one absolutely wrong. Faith is believing in anything for which it is not possible to produce PROOF, or DISPROOF.

It is implicit in the definition of faith that you CANNOT KNOW it ain't so.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 06:30 PM

"Faith is believing in something you know ain't so"............Mark Twain

Not everyone will agree with this. But we have the right to discuss it.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 06:14 PM

A simple search on ONE of the items in Alice's list is enough to make you gasp...

so many...

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: GUEST,Slag
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 06:03 PM

One of the key features of an abuse case is the isolation of the victim(s). It is true of spousal abuse, child abuse, crimes against persons and of religious abuse. No wonder Christ told his followers that men who do good, speak truth are like a city on the hill or a lighted candle. Doers of evil hide their works, at least until they have obtained ultimate authority it seems (cf Hitler and ilk).

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Alice
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 05:34 PM

From CHILD Inc, the watch dog group regarding child abuse in religions. The link is in one of my previous posts.


quote:

This is a partial list of churches whose members have let children die since 1980 because of their religious beliefs against medical care:

    * Faith Assembly
    * Followers of Christ
    * Christian Science
    * Church of the First Born
    * Faith Tabernacle
    * End Time Ministries
    * The Believers' Fellowship
    * Faith Temple Doctoral Church of Christ in God
    * Church of God of the Union Assembly
    * Church of God Chapel
    * Jehovah's Witnesses (Their only objection today is to blood transfusions.)
    * Jesus through Jon and Judy
    * Christ Assembly
    * Christ Miracle Healing Center
    * Northeast Kingdom Community Church
    * "No Name" fellowship
    * The Source
end quote

This does not include the groups in which children were harmed or killed because of the religious ideology about punishment, starvation, sex with children, etc.

Alice

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 05:13 PM

Yeah. $30 an hour.

Wow! Sign me up now! Is that, um, Canadian Dollars?

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 05:05 PM

Yes Alice, I did, and IMHO you are correct.


Waco, Texas, involved some people making life and death choices for others, and there was that other one years back, in which the number of deaths by poison, on the instructions of a religious leader, ran into three figures.

Anyone may legitimately make him or her self a martyr, but it is nothing less than murder to force that choice on others in the name of religion, or for that matter, any cause.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Alice
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 04:51 PM

Kent, then you have not learned about the many bizarre religions people have started. In the USA, anyone can start their own religion. Many crimes done in these groups go unreported because the victims are too afraid to go to the law. Did anyone read what I posted?

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Amos
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 04:48 PM

The relationship between religion and delusion is probably that they are both functions of social construction, meshes of agreement about reality and perception. As such they can easily be seen to be intersecting sets, but NOT identical ones.



A

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 04:42 PM

""Had they really believed the child dead would they have carried it around in a suitcase? That seems to me to be the real question in this matter.""

I can't help thinking that any rational human being would be equally bothered by the idea of carrying a LIVE child around in a suitcase.

I don't know about the clinical niceties of their condition, but I would classify them as certifiable nut jobs, without hesitation.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 04:27 PM

dear 'guest'... unsigned posts are NOT allowed in the BS area. Yours may be deleted. Please identify yourself.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 03:53 PM

I chose not to have my boys circumcised (not circumsized, as I tried to type...) and am now sorry, but the data weren't in about AIDS at the time.

Also, secular authorities, at least, exist...

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 03:11 PM

People will do anything if some form of authority they have decided to obey without question tells them to.

Anything.

Consult the records of history for proof of that. It almost defies imagination what has been done by people obeying the authority of...

their leader
their superior officer
their mother/father/teacher
their president
their pastor
their doctor
their lawyer
their gang leader
their boss
their wife or husband
their party leader
their holy book
their political manifesto
their local officialdom
their club policy
their "friends"
etc.

To incessantly blame it all (or practically all) on religion simply indicates that one has a serious emotional problem regarding the issue of religion, and should probably seek some kind of counseling to deal with it.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 03:02 PM

Spleen Cringe, you asked: "Little Hawk, are you offering lessons in this technique?"

Yeah. $30 an hour. Contact me at your convenience. ;-)

As Jack Campin so aptly pointed out, it's not about religion, it's about authority. People do all sorts of destructive and insane things on the basis of obeying some authority...regardless of whether or not that authority happens to be a religious one or not.

And therein lies the problem. Most people are followers, and the people or authority systems they choose to follow can be extremely unreliable.

To quote Dylan again: "Don't follow leaders"

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 02:54 PM

If anyone needed another example to my points, today's Washington Post has an article about those wanting MALE circumcision banned, versus those who consider it required.


an excerpt:

"It is a sensitive issue. Pun absolutely intended.

* * *

How intactivists define circumcision: a cruel, traumatic and unnecessary surgery (the American Academy of Pediatrics says the benefits are not sufficient enough to recommend the procedure) that causes enduring sexual and psychological injury to a helpless infant who can't give his consent.

How much of the medical community defines circumcision: a simple, nearly painless operation that removes an obsolete part of the body that can increase a man's susceptibility to infections and sexually transmitted diseases (circumcision reduces the risk of getting HIV by 60 percent, studies show).

How religion defines circumcision: as a covenant with God, as conveyed to Abraham.

It's a lopsided fight, but each side has doctors and lawyers. Each side has data. Each accuses the other of denial. One side is labeled as a bunch of baby-cutting sex criminals. The other is labeled as sex-obsessed, fanatical loonies who are duping the public.

"We don't want to understand this," says Van Lewis, who has protested infant circumcision in Tallahassee since the '70s and helped make Florida one of 16 states that no longer publicly fund circumcision. "We're living in denial as a nation. Of what we've done to ourselves."

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 02:22 PM

I still remember when Christian Scientists were withholding medical treatment from children.....and there were court battles over their right to do so. I am not sure how far the law now goes to decide 'exactly' what degree of 'faith' is permitted before medical treatment is required.

The whole issue of where regular religious beliefs leaves off and delusion begins is always awkward, because it operates on a continuum! The Heaven's Gate group was almost universally admitted to be delusional cult led by a charismatic personality. The Christian Scientists seem to be borderline, while the Jehovah's Witnesses, with their unusual beliefs about the nature of Heaven, seem to be, legally at least, on the 'safe' side. And Catholics, with belief in transubstantiation, are judged to be quite sane...by most.

All we are really arguing about is the gray areas..... and the details of the argument depend on our individual sensitivities to 'grayness'. And, in almost all debates about subjective issues, we find unstated premises behind folks' overt claims, beliefs and opinions.
   Often, it all depends, as the old saying goes, on "whose ox is being gored". When one person or group sees a potential for a court ruling or new law, even if not directed specifically at them, to interfere with their perceived 'rights' or behavior, they object.
   We see this in debates over gun laws; over red light cameras; over roof color rules in gated communities...and BOY do we see it in debates that might affect religious rights! In guns, traffic laws & roof colors, there are at least obvious standards and reasons to refer to....that can be POINTED at. In religious debates, the ultimate claims are not subject to any test, and have thousands of years of cultural norms as shelters.

In a totally neutral, scientific analysis...(theoretically), of course any non-'provable' belief suffers from some degree of delusion! But the courts and laws are created & administered by humans who almost always have some of the 'un-stated premises' in their own belief systems.

What it all comes down to is similar to the old definition that "a trial is a legal procedure to determine who has the best lawyer".

Until reason is TAUGHT in enough places to replace 'wishful thinking', we will always have these quandaries. The most egregious cases, like this one about this poor child, will get 'justice', and less clear abuse will continue be ignored.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 01:37 PM

Nice point, Don.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 01:12 PM

Muttered aside:

Be it noted that it wasn't Charles Dickens who said "The law is a ass," it was Mr. Bumble, one of Dickens' fictional characters. What an author puts in the mouths of one or more of his characters may or may not reflect the author's own beliefs.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 01:09 PM

To reiterate my point above:

Nobody is arguing, has argued, or will argue that the woman is innocent because she acted based upon her religious convictions. That doesn't fly in US courts. Christian Scientists are not allowed to withold life-saving medical treatment from their children. If they do, they go to prison. Satanists are not allowed to hold human sacrifices. If they do, they go to prison. Muslims are not allowed to kill their sisters for having premarital sex. If they do, they go to prison.

So, stop acting like the finding that the woman is not delusional, but acted upon a religious conviction, is going to keep her from prison. It's not. It's what's going to send her and her cohorts to prison.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 12:37 PM

Just remember that the legal process is NOT about truth; it's about PROOF, under a systematic order of evidence presentation.

A trial court is NOT "a court of justice" but "a court of law", which is a different thing altogether. "Justice" is subjective thing, and the rule of law has as one of its chief aims to arrive at resolution of controversies by as nearly objective means as the rules can contrive.

Many a judge issues--HAS to issue--judgments with which (s)he philosophically would disagree in his/her private capacity.

It is mainly because of the near-universal misunderstanding of the points in the three paragraphs above that so many of our population are contemptuous or dismissive of lawyers and the courts.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 12:19 PM

they are actually arguing in a 21st century court of law that because her delusion (and nobody is saying that the belief that the kid would come back to life wasn't delusional in actual point of fact) was shared, it wasn't delusional in actual point of LAW. That is scary.

And American soldiers who shoot up Afghan wedding parties argue that because they're part of a humungous state-funded bunch of thugs who all think the same way, they aren't murderers.

That's a hell of a lot more scary.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 12:00 PM

I think "the leap" is where we go wrong. That's where the wishful thinking comes onto it. To the extent that it is a chasm we leap over, it does seem to me that the chasm is a wide one.

Personally, I will almost never say "I BELIEVE THAT TO BE TRUE."

I prefer "I THINK that is true"---and only after some serious ruminations from my point of view.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Alice
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 11:58 AM

More from the CHILD Inc web site:

quote
"The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects religious freedom, but does not confer a right to abuse or neglect children. The leading case is Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944), in which the U. S. Supreme Court ruled, "The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or child to communicable disease, or the latter to ill health or death. . . . Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children before they have reached the age of full and legal discretion when they can make that choice for themselves."

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Alice
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 11:56 AM

US courts are still woefully ignorant about destructive cults.

child abuse and deaths in religious cults

"CHILD Inc. reports on and opposes religion-based child abuse and neglect. Some religious groups have justified severe beatings, rejection of medical care, starvation, forced marriages, child labor, slavery, isolation, exorcism rituals, and sexual molestation as religious practices."

snip

"Nevertheless, state and federal governments have created many religious exemptions allowing parents to withhold some medical care from children, almost entirely because of Christian Science lobbying."

Alice

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: GUEST,the sad prophet
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 10:45 AM

God moves in mysterious ways.




(the all time favorite explanation for psychotic delusions)

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 10:28 AM

You may be right, Wesley, but we haven't gotten there yet with this one!

No, just kidding. Of course there is a difference between people who believe in reality and have faith in deity, and those who believe that deity can contradict reality. I have always held that my issues are with the latter, not the former.

My issue with this particular article is that they are actually arguing in a 21st century court of law that because her delusion (and nobody is saying that the belief that the kid would come back to life wasn't delusional in actual point of fact) was shared, it wasn't delusional in actual point of LAW. That is scary.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: john f weldon
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 09:55 AM

In the words of Bob Dylan...

God said "Abraham, kill me a son!"
Abe said "God, you must be puttin' me on!"

(..where'd he get that anyway?..)

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: artbrooks
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 09:50 AM

The case has not gone to trial. The court hasn't decided anything.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 04:41 AM

This isn't about religion, it's about authority. The mother was obeying orders from her leader. No different from one of Our Boys obeying orders to take out an Afghan wedding party.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: GUEST,Slag
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 01:57 AM

Gee, Dickens' spirit has been raised but no one has got around to Hitler yet. Why the delay???

If it's from Obama then it certainly CAN'T be delusional... can it???

There are nut jobs in every human endeavor and for every nut job there are hundreds, if not thousands, who do NOT think; they just follow.

Every great scientist who has discovered a new approach or way of looking at the phenomenon has been branded "delusional" by some colleagues or other faction of mediocrity.

The poor innocent in the luggage might be likened to Schrodinger's Cat. It's status was unknown and unknowable by the delusionals who carried it around. To them, like Schrodinger Cat, it was both alive and dead. They just didn't have sufficient information ( for them, that is) to make the determination. Had they really believed the child dead would they have carried it around in a suitcase? That seems to me to be the real question in this matter.

OK fellas... have at it!

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: mrdux
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 01:12 AM

actually, it is from Dickens:

"'If the law supposes that,' said Mr. Bumble, 'the law is a ass — a idiot.'"

                      -- Oliver Twist

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Amos
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 12:51 AM

"The law is a   ass was not Dickens. It was, I think, Lord Berkeley, iIRC.

Handing out official therapeutic positions codified in an essentially political document, Kent, is the tragedy of trying to make physicists out of psychologists and calling them psychiatrists. I mean that it creates an arbitrary, ill-founded framework of perception which is, itself, delusory in many instances.

Maybe psychiatry itself is a sort of bad-tempered religion... ;>0


A

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 30 Mar 09 - 11:28 PM

I think some folks are missing the point here. The fact that the court decided that "She wasn't delusional, because she was following a religion," is not in any way a finding that favors the woman's defense.

It would be far better for her if she had been found to be delusional. If she were delusional, her actions could be defended on mental health grounds. But "She was following the precepts of her religion," is not a viable defense in this country.

We do not live in a theocracy. Our legal system does not allow abdication of personal responsibility based upon religious belief. That's why her attorney is trotting out the "brainwashing" defense. To get her off, he has to prove that she is mentally impaired. If she did it because of religious belief, he has no defense and she's guilty.

Subject: RE: BS: It's not delusional if it's religious?
From: Kent Davis
Date: 30 Mar 09 - 10:33 PM

Amos,

As a psychologist and as a physician working at a mental health center, I wholeheartedly agree with you that the DSM is, and always has been, political. I never said or implied otherwise.

In answering the question asked in the title of this thread, I first gave the answer the APA would give, when I said, "The definition of the term "delusion", from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual - Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), of the American Psychiatric Association, specifically excludes religious beliefs. So, yes, according to the APA, 'it's not delusional if it's religious'."

When physicians make a diagnosis, they don't normally just make up their own personal definitions, nor do they just follow common informal usage. If a given diagnosis has an "official" definition, they will generally use that definition. The term "delusion" has an "official" definition. A person may be, shall we say, "reality challenged" and yet not meet the standard definition of "delusional".

My PERSONAL answer to the question in the thread title is that the whole dispute is nothing but a legal red herring, that the "religious" angle is nothing but a lawyer's excuse.

Kent