Atheists only please (Jesus, prophet, faith, God, miracle)

[longshanks]

Were the prophets, saviours etc just bonkers/mad ie is there any evidence that suggests these guys were suffering mental dilusions.

[Papersock]

They were probably about as crazy as anyone else in those days, or today...

[robtex]

It is funny you phrased the OP like that. I think most people who are atheist got that way because they have a strong tendency to critical view the world they live in, have a stronger allegiance to evidence over faith realize "I don't know" is the best applicable answer in some cases, and avoid generalities or tidy explanations about things in life in general. The OP would be in itself a tidy explanation when backdropped against :

1) We don't have knowledge of most the prophets who talk to god and historically only a few ever get recognized outside of their own group

2) there is a multitude of motives that can exist with others being things like political gain, financial gain ect ect as opposed to one stock answer as to why people are prophets.

As a footnote, there is no evidence most of the famous prophets suffered from mental illness because

1) most are no longer here
2) our knowledge of medical illness at the time many of them lived as poor.

[longshanks]

Soz i phrase things badly at times.
Its just if there is no god which is what i am inclined to believe based on all ive learnt jesus and mohamed etc can not have been recieving instruction from a god.
So to my mind that means one of two things, either they were suffering mental dilusions or they were working some kind of angle like the miracle tonic sellers of the wild west.
Im working to disprove all religion and any info of this kind is valuable to my cause.

[robtex]

Originally Posted by longshanks

Im working to disprove all religion and any info of this kind is valuable to my cause.

proof if predicated on evidence and belief in God is predicated largely on faith. You may want to read up on fideism and its relationship to both religion and philosophy as a relevant angle to investigate.

[Jaymes]

I'm of the opinion that most visions of deities are hallucinations. You don't have to have a mental illness to hallucinate... it can happen to pretty much anyone. Sometimes when I get tired I hallucinate. Once I actually hallucinated a picture of a giant ice cream cone flashing onto a menu at a movie theater. The only way I knew it didn't happen was by asking people I was with.

So they probably weren't mad, IMO. Just prone to hallucinations. Though I wonder if the ones that repeatedly had hallucinations, voices talking to them, etc, might have had some type of schizophrenia.

[MidnightBlue]

Originally Posted by longshanks

Were the prophets, saviours etc just bonkers/mad ie is there any evidence that suggests these guys were suffering mental dilusions.

I think it's hard to generalize. Some of them, no doubt, were delusional. Others were no doubt outright frauds. But some of them, I think, had mystical experiences (or psychological experiences, if you prefer) that they interpreted as encounters with God because of their cultural background, or -- in rare cases -- in reaction to their cultural background.

I have no problem denying the existence of God and still affirming that some of the prophets had some profound and worthwhile things to say. You have to take them duck by duck.

[longshanks]

Originally Posted by robtex

proof if predicated on evidence and belief in God is predicated largely on faith. You may want to read up on fideism and its relationship to both religion and philosophy as a relevant angle to investigate.

thanks for the heads up i will check it out.

Jaymes thanks for the reply, you have put it in a better way than i did.
Mental illness is very common and i suspect knowledge of such illnesses was very scarce in jesus and mohammeds time.
Where as these days theres all sorts of treatments.
Its like if i was to appear in the middle of london today claiming to be the son of god and his sole representative on earth people and the authorities would quite rightly question my sanity and try and treat the problem.

[rojse]

Although I would not say this in many threads, out of offending most religious people, is it possible that some of the single person visions that occured in the Bible were actually fabrications? After all, what would you stand to gain in terms of uttering falsehoods? You would become famous, you would be able to profit from it in terms of goods and money, you would gain respect. And, after all, who could really say you were lying? Remember, these revelations occured at a time when challenging religions and religious figures was quite dangerous.

I do not dismiss all religious revelations in this way, in fact, I do not dismiss any. But my point is that there may have been an opening for an opportunistic person to gain from doing this. Although we cannot dismiss any private revelations in this manner, we cannot strike out any private revelations from this accusation, either. Many cults have leaders that have fabricated their revelations from God today.