Religion is not funny.

[Justanatheist]

Probably not as dangerous as mainstream medicine:

"According to a recent study by Johns Hopkins, more than 250,000 people in the United States die every year because of medical mistakes, making it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.Feb 22, 2018"
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...AxAG&usg=AOvVaw0qDWsV61-4Dg8n9TtlbAO_&ampcf=1

I think it would be harder to quantify, but I wouldn't expect the mental health communitie's record to be much better.

There are lies, damn lies and statistics as Churchill would say,

How many millions of lives are saved each year by the medical profession in the US each year and how many of those cases are mistaken diagnosis or botched procedures, sadly we all make mistakes and the medical profession is no exception.

Tell me, if a woman on this forum said she had a lump in her breast, what would be your first piece of advice, pray or visit a doctor?

 

[PoetPhilosopher]

Tell me, if a woman on this forum said she had a lump in her breast, what would be your first piece of advice, pray or visit a doctor?

It's not really the same. In the case of the OP, the woman brought forth a delicate spiritual matter, that also has the potential to be a mental matter.

But since I'm a religious person, you can ignore this post as you promised us prior in this thread you would ignore any posts from religious people.

 

[Justanatheist]

I think sometimes it's moved not for OP intentions but more so predicting where things would end up.

I am not arguing the mods decision just giving my reasons why I put the thread where I did.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

I am not arguing the mods decision just giving my reasons why I put the thread where I did.

I know. I had the same reaction from the few threads I posted recently and figured that's what it could have been.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Hitchens supported the Iraq War and let his lack of restraint and conspicuous anger blind him to reason and nuance, as in his overgeneralizing and simplistic quotes above. He was no paragon of reason or logic; it just so happened that he was a public figure, which by itself doesn't bestow validity on anyone's claims or rhetoric.

Hitchens had a colossal intellect; which he squandered. I believe he was motivated early on in his career by a genuinely subversive, anti establishment character, but in the end he totally lost himself. Beats me how anyone could cite him either as a voice of reason, or as a moral authority.

And he was a bully. Even his friends were afraid of him, Salman Rushdie has admitted as much. I don't really want to knock the guy because I do believe he was on the side of the angels, before his ego consumed him.

 

[Quagmire]

There are lies, damn lies and statistics as Churchill would say,

And then there's evasion..

How many millions of lives are saved each year by the medical profession in the US each year and how many of those cases are mistaken diagnosis or botched procedures, sadly we all make mistakes and the medical profession is no exception.

Nope, in fact they're kind of in the Hall of Fame as far as that goes.

Tell me, if a woman on this forum said she had a lump in her breast, what would be your first piece of advice, pray or visit a doctor?

I would tell her to go to the doctor. Whether she prays or not is her own business, as is whether or not I pray for her.

But to be honest Im not seeing the point of your question: what does what I would do personally have to do with whether or not religion is dangerous, and/or how dangerous compared to the medical community?

 

[Justanatheist]

And then there's evasion..

No I am pointing out that statistics can be and are used to further an agenda.

Nope, in fact they're kind of in the Hall of Fame as far as that goes.

I doubt it, the difference is when a plumber or truck driver screws up it rarely results in death.

I would tell her to go to the doctor. Whether she prays or not is her own business, as is whether or not I pray for her.

Good.

But to be honest Im not seeing the point of your question: what does what I would do personally have to do with whether or not religion is dangerous, and/or how dangerous compared to the medical community?

I did not say religion was dangerous par se, I said it can be dangerous unfortunately the nuance appears lost on some people.

 

[Quagmire]

No I am pointing out that statistics can be and are used to further an agenda.

If John Hopkins has an agenda, painting the medical community in a bad light probably isn't it.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Joh...jUuM5gBAKABAcABAQ&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp

I doubt it, the difference is when a plumber or truck driver screws up it rarely results in death.

Plumbers, no. Truck drivers? Might want to rethink that one.

Edit: also, how many people would you think die each year from getting bad medical advice online from religious people?

Good.

I did not say religion was dangerous par se, I said it can be dangerous unfortunately the nuance appears lost on some people.

You still haven't answered my question.

 

[Justanatheist]

With the OP particular scenario I think another thing that could have been said in addition to see a doctor to encourage her with her belief in god. It wouldn't need to be an either/or scenario but just make the emphasis on going to the doctor while maintaining a common ground of faith to encourage her to go. @Justanatheist

Actually I did not say don't follow religious practises I said see a doctor first, exactly as you have said.

 

[PearlSeeker]

It can (be funny).

 

[Justanatheist]

If John Hopkins has an agenda, painting the medical community in a bad light probably isn't it.

I never suggested he did, I suggested you did. Using the report and the statistics in order to further your agenda.

Plumbers, no. Truck drivers? Might want to rethink that one.

I am not sure if you have Tachographs in the US but I had to deal with thousand of mistakes on tacho's by my drivers and none resulted in deaths.

You still haven't answered my question.

No because you still did not get the nuance, I think were done here.

 

[Revoltingest]

I saw plenty of reason for this thread to be DIR, not least because I did not want the personal insults that get thrown at anyone daring to be critical of religion, and guess what the moment the thread was opened the insults began. Further I did not want the silly, god/prayer/my holy cushion saved me from the devil, and we got those too. So I will keep to my original decision and just ignore posts from the religious in this thread.

Oh and lets not forget the bun fights which have started already.

The believers here will treat us pretty well.

 

[Wildswanderer]

I always used to think of religion as mildly amusing, if people want to live their lives believing in all sorts of weird and wonderful things, that is fine by me, why should I care?

Last night I witnessed a thread develop on here posted by a lady who believes she is being "visited" by a "presence" The lady told us she was already on tablets to stop hallucinations. The advice from many of the religious on this forum? not go and see your doctor as any responsible adult would do but talk of angels and demons and something called a jinn. Calls to pray to whatever god that person believed in. I was astonished and not a little angry.

Can you imagine if a woman came on here and said she had a lump in her breast and posters told her to see a witch doctor! There would be outrage and quite rightly so.

Mental health is a well established science it can help people. Hats off to those religious people who did advise her to see a doctor first.

For me this is an example of how religion can be worrying, it is not always the obvious like flying planes into buildings, anti vaxxing or hating on those like the LGBT community who suffer from religious bigotry, it can often be barely noticeable how religion affects our society.

Religion is not funny, it can be downright dangerous.

27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Religion isn't what most people think it is.

True religion is helping people.
Now, salvation, that's something else entirely.
Helping people would include warning them about communication with demons, of course.
If it was just a mental issue, then she should obviously get help with that.

 

[Quagmire]

I never suggested he did, I suggested you did. Using the report and the statistics in order to further your agenda.

Which gives you a perfect excuse to disregard the findings of one of the most renowned medical universities on the planet.

If using statistics suggests an agenda to you, I'll tell you that using excuses verifies one to me.

I am not sure if you have Tachographs in the US but I had to deal with thousand of mistakes on tacho's by my drivers and none resulted in deaths.

Last year there was something like half a million accidents involving trucks, resulting in about 5,000 deaths.

I can go get the link for you if you like, but I have to warn you, it contains statistics.

No because you still did not get the nuance, I think were done here.

I get the nuance. You're not saying that religion is dangerous you're saying it can be dangerous.

No argument there. Planes flying into buildings and whatnot.

My point is, compared to a lot of other things--- mainstream medicine being one of them --- in the big picture it isn't inherently all that dangerous.

Especially when it comes to the kind of danger you were pointing out: people suggesting prayer instead of getting medical attention.

Thats a rarity here, in spite of the fact that we have quite a few Jehovah's witnesses here.

Should also consider that the fact that the person we're talking about came into a place called Religious forums with her problem, kind of suggest those are the kinds of answers she was looking for, spiritual ones.

The fact that she got mostly medical advice anyway suggests to me that the potential for the kind of danger that you were talking about in your OP is pretty minimal.

I also get why you don't want to answer my question.

You don't really want to have a discussion about any of this, mostly you just want to vent.

The reaction you had to what you saw here last night was an emotional one, and you made a thread about it before you had time to think things through reasonably.

No worries, I just answered the question for you.

 

[Justanatheist]

Which gives you a perfect excuse to disregard the findings of one of the most renowned medical universities on the planet.

If using statistics suggests an agenda to you, I'll tell you that using excuses verifies one to me.



Last year there was something like half a million accidents involving trucks, resulting in about 5,000 deaths.

I can go get the link for you if you like, but I have to warn you, it contains statistics.



I get the nuance. You're not saying that religion is dangerous you're saying it can be dangerous.

No argument there. Planes flying into buildings and whatnot.

My point is, compared to a lot of other things--- mainstream medicine being one of them --- in the big picture it isn't inherently all that dangerous.

Especially when it comes to the kind of danger you were pointing out: people suggesting prayer instead of getting medical attention.

Thats a rarity here, in spite of the fact that we have quite a few Jehovah's witnesses here.

Should also consider that the fact that the person we're talking about came into a place called Religious forums with her problem, kind of suggest those are the kinds of answers she was looking for, spiritual ones.

The fact that she got mostly medical advice anyway suggests to me that the potential for the kind of danger that you were talking about in your OP is pretty minimal.

I also get why you don't want to answer my question.

You don't really want to have a discussion about any of this, mostly you just want to vent.

The reaction you had to what you saw here last night was an emotional one, and you made a thread about it before you had time to think things through reasonably.

No worries, I just answered the question for you.

Glad you agree with me about my main point that Religion can be downright dangerous, hope you feel better after your rant, long day was it?

You must start a thread about your mind reading abilities, will be interesting to know where you think they come from because statistically you will find no one has ever been able to show they existed.

 

[firedragon]

Glad you agree with me about my main point that Religion can be downright dangerous

Do you have any research at all to provide evidence to your claim? If you dont, its just your bias. If anyone agrees with you with no research, they are also bias. If a group of a 1000 people agree with you without any research, they are all bias either to you, or against religion.

So whats the research?

 

[Erebus]

I
Last night I witnessed a thread develop on here posted by a lady who believes she is being "visited" by a "presence" The lady told us she was already on tablets to stop hallucinations. The advice from many of the religious on this forum? not go and see your doctor as any responsible adult would do but talk of angels and demons and something called a jinn. Calls to pray to whatever god that person believed in. I was astonished and not a little angry.

Can you imagine if a woman came on here and said she had a lump in her breast and posters told her to see a witch doctor! There would be outrage and quite rightly so.

Mental health is a well established science it can help people. Hats off to those religious people who did advise her to see a doctor first.

This is a tricky one. I do understand your frustration here and I think "Speak to a doctor" is typically the most responsible answer. Delusions and hallucinations are a complex area though and there is a growing trend (at least in the UK) of being careful not to paint them all as inherently negative. That attitude is by no means universally embraced but there are far more doctors who subscribe to it than there used to be.

For the sake of argument, let's say that there definitely are no ghosts or spirits and that anybody who experiences them must be hallucinating and/or delusional. If that's the case, is taking those experiences away the right thing to do if a person finds them to be positive? Should, "Speak to a doctor" be reserved for people who are suffering?

A little background here: My mum used to work as a psychiatric nurse. Without going into too much detail, she cared for somebody who experienced delusions and hallucinations. After they found the appropriate anti-psychotics, he was eventually cured of them. Then he took his own life.

That man's psychosis had a more positive than negative impact on his happiness. It's not all that common for this to be the case but it certainly can happen and his suicide still haunts my mum. With that in mind, is it appropriate to say that he was suffering from psychosis?

This is why I decided not to comment on that thread at all. There are still plenty of doctors who view delusions and hallucinations as inherently negative and something that has to be eliminated. If somebody were to tell a doctor about hallucinations that bring them happiness, would that doctor prescribe a new medication to cure them? Could the end result of that be the same as the man my mum cared for?

I realise that I've raised a lot of questions here without answering them. That's because I don't have good answers to them. I just don't know where to draw the line on when it's better to cure hallucinations or leave them be.

 

[Justanatheist]

This is a tricky one. I do understand your frustration here and I think "Speak to a doctor" is typically the most responsible answer. Delusions and hallucinations are a complex area though and there is a growing trend (at least in the UK) of being careful not to paint them all as inherently negative. That attitude is by no means universally embraced but there are far more doctors who subscribe to it than there used to be.

For the sake of argument, let's say that there definitely are no ghosts or spirits and that anybody who experiences them must be hallucinating and/or delusional. If that's the case, is taking those experiences away the right thing to do if a person finds them to be positive? Should, "Speak to a doctor" be reserved for people who are suffering?

A little background here: My mum used to work as a psychiatric nurse. Without going into too much detail, she cared for somebody who experienced delusions and hallucinations. After they found the appropriate anti-psychotics, he was eventually cured of them. Then he took his own life.

That man's psychosis had a more positive than negative impact on his happiness. It's not all that common for this to be the case but it certainly can happen and his suicide still haunts my mum. With that in mind, is it appropriate to say that he was suffering from psychosis?

This is why I decided not to comment on that thread at all. There are still plenty of doctors who view delusions and hallucinations as inherently negative and something that has to be eliminated. If somebody were to tell a doctor about hallucinations that bring them happiness, would that doctor prescribe a new medication to cure them? Could the end result of that be the same as the man my mum cared for?

I realise that I've raised a lot of questions here without answering them. That's because I don't have good answers to them. I just don't know where to draw the line on when it's better to cure hallucinations or leave them be.

That is a very interesting perspective on the subject, I too do not know the answers but this is definitely worth consideration.

 

[viole]

I always used to think of religion as mildly amusing, if people want to live their lives believing in all sorts of weird and wonderful things, that is fine by me, why should I care?

Last night I witnessed a thread develop on here posted by a lady who believes she is being "visited" by a "presence" The lady told us she was already on tablets to stop hallucinations. The advice from many of the religious on this forum? not go and see your doctor as any responsible adult would do but talk of angels and demons and something called a jinn. Calls to pray to whatever god that person believed in. I was astonished and not a little angry.

Can you imagine if a woman came on here and said she had a lump in her breast and posters told her to see a witch doctor! There would be outrage and quite rightly so.

Mental health is a well established science it can help people. Hats off to those religious people who did advise her to see a doctor first.

For me this is an example of how religion can be worrying, it is not always the obvious like flying planes into buildings, anti vaxxing or hating on those like the LGBT community who suffer from religious bigotry, it can often be barely noticeable how religion affects our society.

Religion is not funny, it can be downright dangerous.

Yet, it inspired some pretty funny movies.

Ciao

- viole

 

[stvdv]

***THREAD MOVED TO RELIGIOUS DEBATES***​

Thanks, you are the best, now I can reply