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[Leafsnail]

The church also hasn't ever really been a place to deal with mental illness.  Certainly there's nothing that could help you with it in scriptures or the average priest's training (heck, if you came to them with that kind of problem they'd probably tell you to seek a therapist).

[Nadaka]

Religion used to provide a way of navigating the social contract and various personal failings, which are now negotiated through drugs and psychotherapy.  The therapist is the new priest.  I realize I may be making myself unpopular by saying this, but I'll take the cathedral over the psychiatric hospital any day.

They also used to burn people at the stake for being odd or perform exorcisms (tied to a bed, starved and verbally abused.).

[Virex]

And right now we shoot people that are deemed "mentally deviant" full of neurotoxins and hope they improve. Some things have improved, but the world isn't great yet...

[Vector]

I'm saying that they're both ways of negotiating a problem, though the problems and practices of both are obviously totally incomparable.  Having had my experiences with both, indirect and direct (I am a very conservative preacher's granddaughter, you know, and the great-granddaughter of a Catholic nun), I'd still rather take "we're sinners all--be good and you'll be taken care of eventually" than "you're fucked up, have some pills"--as the default approach.  But if it were up to me, we'd start treating these things as complementary, rather than fundamentally opposed.  Some people need pills/talk therapy, and some people need to wear out their knees on flagstones and build their shrines, light their candles, chant their prayers.  They're rituals that function in different ways.  Some people are missing a fundamental neurotransmitter, and some people are missing feeling small.  I wouldn't destroy either, because, you know... different people need different things to lead a fulfilling life.

And I'm not trying to say that one is better than the other.  I'm saying that we treat religion the way we do due to our positioning in modernity, and that I do think we are developing a dogmatic approach to science, the provable as the real.  The way these things are taught have their similarities, and the way the uneducated and unthoughtful approach them and the things they say is very, very similar.

People who don't want to think aren't going to magically start thinking just because they're using scientific reasoning they don't understand instead of the religious version.

They also used to burn people at the stake for being odd or perform exorcisms (tied to a bed, starved and verbally abused.).

Read about the eugenics programs set up in the US in the name of good science and a healthy population?  Inpatients were given live tuberculosis strains to check their evolutionary fitness as they entered mental hospitals.  Oh, and there's all the stuff about forced sterilization and, though I shouldn't bring this up again, the US-invented gas chamber intended to kill off the aforementioned odd folks en mass.

People do a lot of stupid shit because they want to, and they'll grab any reason they can to justify it.  It's not the reason's fault for being ready to hand.

[Nadaka]

I am aware of all of that. Psychology advances. The church does not. They will always damn people who are different.

[SalmonGod]

It's not the reason's fault for being ready to hand.

This is exactly what I've been trying to say.  I'm not trying to defend or demonize either side of science vs religion.  Just saying that people are equally capable of abusing both to justify their ends.  Every major religion teaches mainly peace and love, after all.  Any other behavior justified via religion can be exposed as selective interpretation of scripture at best, that is focusing on minor footnotes that reinforce abusive agendas while ignoring everything else that contradicts it.

I am aware of all of that. Psychology advances. The church does not. They will always damn people who are different.

This is incomplete.  Psychology advances according to the direction of those who practice psychology, which is equally capable of being a negative or positive thing.

[Leafsnail]

I'm not sure why you'd compare religion to psychology in the first place given that they're completely irrelevant, though.  As you say, one isn't a replacement for the other, and acting as if psychology is therefore a bad replacement for something it never intended to replace seems like a strawman argument.

[SalmonGod]

Because we're responding to this.

You can't justify anything with science, because it actually has to be....you know, science. You can just make up whatever you want in religion, science and math have rules which are grounded in reality.

Science can be used to justify whatever course of action people believe the information supports.  It's just a tool.  All tools can do good or bad, according to the will of the person wielding it.

[Frumple]

I am aware of all of that. Psychology advances. The church does not. They will always damn people who are different.

Nrghle. I hate actually supporting the religion side, if only because almost every modern practitioner I've seen basically piss on the face of whatever their major spiritual leader is, but I do have to point out that church =/= religion and organized religion =/= the breadth and depth of spirituality. The church does advance, though slowly, and the latter two can be incredibly helpful on a lot of different levels, it's just... well. Most people I've seen who claim religious preference don't even remotely do what's needed to be done to take advantage of that help, to put it lightly.

That doesn't necessarily mean that religion is a flawed and useless thing, but it does seem to implicate that it doesn't have a very good success ratio, so to speak. Psychology seems to do a little better, especially the bits of it that aren't wrapped around big pharma's reproductive organs. I'd take a counselor over most priests any day of the week, but psychiatrists can blow me, in other words.

I'm not sure why you'd compare religion to psychology in the first place given that they're completely irrelevant, though.

No, no, there's definitely connections between the two. The priest most definitely did take the role of counselor and mental health physician in the past, at the very least. Religious practice is definitely slanted toward engendering certain behavioral practices, same as psychology.

It's definitely not a direct correlation, though. Most of the psych. aspects of religion aren't exactly the direct goal, unlike with psychology.

[G-Flex]

I'm saying that they're both ways of negotiating a problem, though the problems and practices of both are obviously totally incomparable.  Having had my experiences with both, indirect and direct (I am a very conservative preacher's granddaughter, you know, and the great-granddaughter of a Catholic nun), I'd still rather take "we're sinners all--be good and you'll be taken care of eventually" than "you're fucked up, have some pills"--as the default approach.

If I were to resort to the church for advice, they'd still me that even the most healthy parts of me are problematic, sinful, and will get me cast into Hell if I don't go to confession enough. I don't see how that's somehow better than modern psychiatry. Also, you're painting both the most positive portrayal of the church as possible while also painting the most negative portrayal of psychiatry as possible, and that's not fair. Psychiatry is often a lot better than "you're fucked up, have some pills" and the church is often a whole lot worse than "we're all sinners, be good". Even considering that their definition of "be good" usually means "deny most aspects of your being as a human, feel terrible about them, and call me in the morning".

Some people need pills/talk therapy, and some people need to wear out their knees on flagstones and build their shrines, light their candles, chant their prayers.  They're rituals that function in different ways.  Some people are missing a fundamental neurotransmitter, and some people are missing feeling small.  I wouldn't destroy either, because, you know... different people need different things to lead a fulfilling life.

I understand the importance of ritual, but there's a big difference between ritualized behavior and dogmatic religious organization. There's also no good reason why ritualized behavior of some form can't be a part of grounded psychiatric methods.

People do a lot of stupid shit because they want to, and they'll grab any reason they can to justify it.  It's not the reason's fault for being ready to hand.

I would claim that religious and dogmatic thinking is especially bad when it comes to these things; at least the scientific method encourages rational criticism of ideas instead of encouraging blind adherence to them.

[Vector]

It's also not fair to portray religion the way it usually is in these threads.  I'm not actually trying to be even-handed.  I'm trying to make a point through shifting the lens--that we've always had witch trials, we still have witch trials, and the excuse for doing so (as well as the trappings) is what's changing.  They may not be permanent fixtures of the human experience, but there's a long history of them!  We used to have catalogs of demons, now we've got the DSM.  Science and religion are kind of value-neutral ways to approach the world.  You may say that science doesn't try to impose value systems, but that's what utilitarianism is.

Also, you're confusing dogmatic religious organization with religion again.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

We used to have catalogs of demons, now we've got the DSM.

Alright, you've completely lost it if you think demon catalogs are comparable to the DSM.

Science and religion are kind of value-neutral ways to approach the world.

Religion is anything but value neutral. 

You may say that science doesn't try to impose value systems, but that's what utilitarianism is.

Utilitarianism is about doing as much good and as little evil as possible in the net system of humanity. Science is purely about what is, nothing more.

[Leafsnail]

Firstly, I feel like the conversation was slightly confused by suddenly changing the topic.  I mean, we went from you defending religion because it's logically the correct thing to believe to something about whether religion works better than psychology.  I dunno, it's just difficult to have a discussion if the person you're talking to brings up an irrelevant point in response.

You may say that science doesn't try to impose value systems, but that's what utilitarianism is.

Firstly, no, it isn't.  Science as a process is in no way linked to the idea of maximising happiness.  Secondly, I feel like utilitarianism can work fine as long as you make sure you don't harm people.  Eugenics or whatever isn't a natural conclusion of it at all.

[G-Flex]

Also, you're confusing dogmatic religious organization with religion again.

You specifically brought up the church in the first place. You specified cathedrals and implied a level of religious organization. What do you expect me to think you're talking about?


And yes, if you think the DSM-IV is in any way comparable to books on demonology, I'm just not sure what to say anymore, and I think your personal judgment is getting clouded about this to the point where you are, quite frankly, saying things you would normally be too well-informed and intelligent to say. Science and utilitarianism aren't the same thing, and to say that science imposes any kind of value system is a bit silly; it exists outside value systems. Yes, scientific principles can be used as the foundation of (or to justify) things both great and terrible, but the scientific process itself does not impose any values, including "utilitarianism". And hell, at least the scientific process is self-correcting and based on peer review, criticism, and functional working models; to say that's as arbitrary or function as religious teachings/demonology is flat-out bizarre.

I know you have your problems with the modern psychiatric establishment. So do I, in far less personal ways. I feel, quite honestly, like you are letting this get in the way of rational thought.

[darkrider2]

The church and science are not opposing forces.

Its just that the church opposes science.