God and Mental Illness

[Straw Dog]

Disclaimer: This is not a thread claiming that God-believers are all mentally ill.

This thread is about how individuals who are actually mentally ill experience God. When a mentally ill individual hears the voice of God in their heads consoling them or telling them to do something, how do they know if its a series of hallucinations or real experiences? Of course others won't confirm it because it's not meant for them to hear and the scientific method won't be useful since "you shall not test the Lord your God". What would be a reliable reality test then outside social and scientific methods?

 

[Erebus]

I don't know any method that would be completely reliable, but anti-psychotic medication could be used. If the voices go away, then you can be relatively certain the voices were the result of mental illness. The problem is if they don't stop, it still doesn't mean it definitely isn't the result of mental illness.

As long as the voices aren't harmful or distressing, there isn't much of a problem though.

 

[Gjallarhorn]

I don't know any method that would be completely reliable, but anti-psychotic medication could be used. If the voices go away, then you can be relatively certain the voices were the result of mental illness. The problem is if they don't stop, it still doesn't mean it definitely isn't the result of mental illness.

As long as the voices aren't harmful or distressing, there isn't much of a problem though.

...or they're on the wrong medication.

 

[Erebus]

...or they're on the wrong medication.

Well yes, but usually you'll be tested on a few different ones to find something appropriate anyway.

 

[Gjallarhorn]

Well yes, but usually you'll be tested on a few different ones to find something appropriate anyway.

...but with that logic you aren't to see if the voices are genuine. You're using them as the key symptom, and trying to mask it with whatever works.

 

[Erebus]

Yeah it is a difficult one. The only way I can think of checking if the voices might be real is if you can't prove they're treatable. It's not great, but right now it's all I got

 

[Barcode]

Well the common measurement psychiatrists use to added patients with schizophrenic episodes and discerning them from let's say, extreme imaginative behavior would be to see whether the said behavior is maladaptive and irrational.

 

[science_is_my_god]

Well the common measurement psychiatrists use to added patients with schizophrenic episodes and discerning them from let's say, extreme imaginative behavior would be to see whether the said behavior is maladaptive and irrational.

That being said, how does one define "maladaptive and irrational?"

I would tend to think we just make general comparisons to other people. If you are different from the rest of us, that means we are "normal" because there are more of us.

Look at any major philosophical, scientific, or revolutionary thinking throughout history. They ALL started off as being straight out of the coo-coo's nest.

If you lived in 1100 AD, you would think that someone proposing that the earth is round does indeed suffer from delusional and irrational thinking.

"Normal" is just a relative term. It is by no means an actual state of being...

 

[PolyHedral]

If you lived in 1100 AD, you would think that someone proposing that the earth is round does indeed suffer from delusional and irrational thinking.

No, you wouldn't, because they'd be citing the Greeks, and anyone even considering the question is going to be more educated than you.

 

[elmarna]

just like "idiot Savants" the fact that they may have never seen or read a bible,Torah,or Quran and spoke verse may have the scientific community looking closely. Other than that I would say it is hard to tell since the world they come from-[how they experience & percieve] is so removed from the standards of "normal" thinking. I believe they can know god & that they can be touched by god.

 

[science_is_my_god]

No, you wouldn't, because they'd be citing the Greeks, and anyone even considering the question is going to be more educated than you.

Lol true. Maybe not a good example. But still, I think you get my point.

 

[Alex_G]

Disclaimer: This is not a thread claiming that God-believers are all mentally ill.

This thread is about how individuals who are actually mentally ill experience God. When a mentally ill individual hears the voice of God in their heads consoling them or telling them to do something, how do they know if its a series of hallucinations or real experiences? Of course others won't confirm it because it's not meant for them to hear and the scientific method won't be useful since "you shall not test the Lord your God". What would be a reliable reality test then outside social and scientific methods?

How would any person in fact experience God? Why a voice in your head would be God rather than any other explanation is going to be down to how that individual thinks and interprets it. Mental health is a real thing, and should be taken as seriously as any other physical injury or disease. Its existence is as real as is meaningful to define with regards to ourselves. Some people hear voices, and is often just one part of a characteristic constellation of things that constitute a diagnosis of a recognised condition, such as schizophrenia or severe depression. I would be highly sceptical that any God like being would ever decide to present themselves in such a way, and with the detrimental effects that seem to so often come hand in hand with people who hear voices.
It is always sensible to ask oneself, what is more likely, that a transcendent being is communicating with this poor individual to his/her own detriment, without clear purpose or obvious concern for their constitution, whilst staying hidden to the majority of the population? This of course without any objective evidence at all. Or might this person, as a mortal creature of the earth be experiencing a disease with one of the worst kinds of debilitation?
I think we are easily fooled by certain things, and a voice, telling you messages, personally relevant and seemingly alien to your own thoughts is got to be one of the top. We crave explanation and meaning, and its seems to be the sort of thing that lends itself too easily to radical interpretation. I think however, if keeping as best an objective attitude as possible, we would find that it holds no closer connection to anything greater than ourselves than Alzheimer’s dementia or a stroke does.
Alex

 

[St Giordano Bruno]

I often see it kind of odd that if a child has an imaginary friend we call it a mental illness but if an adult has an imaginary friend we call it God.

 

[idav]

Disclaimer: This is not a thread claiming that God-believers are all mentally ill.

This thread is about how individuals who are actually mentally ill experience God. When a mentally ill individual hears the voice of God in their heads consoling them or telling them to do something, how do they know if its a series of hallucinations or real experiences? Of course others won't confirm it because it's not meant for them to hear and the scientific method won't be useful since "you shall not test the Lord your God". What would be a reliable reality test then outside social and scientific methods?

Ask god to help speak a language you couldn't know or some sort of advanced knowledge. Oh wait thats for demon possession....God doesn't possess people so the person is wack or mistaken.

 

[Mister Emu]

This thread is about how individuals who are actually mentally ill experience God. When a mentally ill individual hears the voice of God in their heads consoling them or telling them to do something, how do they know if its a series of hallucinations or real experiences?

I assume by mentally ill you mean with a disease that lends itself to hallucination? Because not all mental illnesses would effect the perceived source of a religious experience.

If someone was previously diagnosed with a hallucination inducing mental illness, I'd assume that they'd have to question whether or not they were truly experiencing the divine or it was merely another symptom of the illness.

If you lived in 1100 AD, you would think that someone proposing that the earth is round does indeed suffer from delusional and irrational thinking.

The earth's roundness has been known since ancient Greece. No educated person, even in the middle ages, doubted that.

 

[St Giordano Bruno]

People often dismiss hearing voices as schizophrenia but hearing God's voice is as a different matter altogether; it is called a “religious experience”. I personally don't see any difference, in fact if anything a condition where a person sincerely believes they have heard the voice of God can be far more delusional than just hearing any old down to earth voice.

 

[Hypersonic]

That being said, how does one define "maladaptive and irrational?"

I would tend to think we just make general comparisons to other people. If you are different from the rest of us, that means we are "normal" because there are more of us.

Look at any major philosophical, scientific, or revolutionary thinking throughout history. They ALL started off as being straight out of the coo-coo's nest.

If you lived in 1100 AD, you would think that someone proposing that the earth is round does indeed suffer from delusional and irrational thinking.

"Normal" is just a relative term. It is by no means an actual state of being...

I wouldn't necessarily say irrational but I think "hearing voices" in a silent room would be cause of some concern, at least to me it would. I believe what the other guy is saying is probably more so along the lines of recurring delusions in places where the behavior becomes continuously disruptive as well as uncontrollable.

 

[The Wizard]

Disclaimer: This is not a thread claiming that God-believers are all mentally ill.

This thread is about how individuals who are actually mentally ill experience God. When a mentally ill individual hears the voice of God in their heads consoling them or telling them to do something, how do they know if its a series of hallucinations or real experiences? Of course others won't confirm it because it's not meant for them to hear and the scientific method won't be useful since "you shall not test the Lord your God". What would be a reliable reality test then outside social and scientific methods?

Virtually any person can be put in a condition to experience audio hallucinations or what some people refer to as bicameral instructions. It can be harmful or even dangerous to confuse a voice of God or higher guidance with mental chatter or thought reverberations echoing around in the internal cave... Many have said not to ever interpret any type of higher guidence through anything ever heard internally and I for one follow that myself... Some people cannot filter out those primal bicameral voices or the tendency is much stronger than today's average. Just as the animals instinct to obey their signals, man's evolvement created audio hullucinations for guidance and survival and were no different than if it were a god commanding and compelling them to do things... those signals are a vestige of our past biological guidance system, in today's world it usually equates to schizophrenia.... a worthy book to learn more about this is Julian Jane's, "Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"...imo.

 

[Mister Emu]

People often dismiss hearing voices as schizophrenia but hearing God's voice is as a different matter altogether; it is called a “religious experience”. I personally don't see any difference

If you fail to see a difference, perhaps it is because you are not familiar enough with what constitutes schizophrenia... hallucinations are only one symptom among several. Even if we assume that the experience is not real, a single experience would not be enough to say someone has schizophrenia.