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Religious Trauma Syndrom and Toxic Religion

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
You live without God, but have a peaceful smile about it.

Personally, the notion of 'living without God' doesn't really make sense.
Everyone is living without God.

Whether a belief in something that isn't there can give a life meaning, and what that says about subjective meaning in life are more points of interest to me.

Please note, I understand that perspective doesn't make a lot of sense if you're a believer. But as a non-believer I can't really miss God more than I miss Odin. Neither exist, to my way of thinking.
 

IndigoChild5559

Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
The point is - any mainstream normal religion can cause trauma - not just "cults"

It is a fine line, forcing fact checks on everyone and freedom of speech, freedom to preserve culture.

Krampus was taught to children too.
Actually, involvement in a normal religious congregation is statistically associated with better mental health.
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
  • Use of fear to keep people in line (shunning, hell)
This.
It doesn't affect everybody, like not everybody gets PTSD from war or rape, but extreme fear, no matter how it was induced, can have severe effects on the psyche and even neurology.
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
For some kids, Santa is a big deal. Christmas loses some of its sparkle when that magic is gone.

Same with loss of God, the magic is gone, life feels empty.

View attachment 71514

with time, new beliefs form, a greater appreciation of nature, ability to live with uncertainty, acceptance of what is. With time, you hold the emptiness differently.
View attachment 71515

You live without God, but have a peaceful smile about it.


We all have that hole in the soul. For myself, only God could fill it. God, not religion; you can leave the latter without giving up the former (which never gives up on anyone anyway).

Those sculptures are beautiful btw.
 

Aštra’el

Aštara, Blade of Aštoreth
There has been mention of “Baptist Christianity”.

Baptist Christianity is awesome. I have nothing negative to say about it, as all my experiences within that religion were overwhelmingly positive.

My path has obviously led me elsewhere… through several very different religions, until eventually I developed my own. After emerging from each of those religions, I took something with me… something great, something awesome, any strength, power, wisdom, and beauty that deeply resonated with me, that continues to inspire and motivate me to live how I Will to live and become who I Will to become.

To genuinely immerse one’s self within a religion… requires sacrifice. Discipline. Transformation. As far as most established religions go… it is not on the religion to change for you, to make you feel welcome and accepted. No. It is on you to make the necessary changes and improvements within your own life. To reach new heights… often means giving something precious up. Whether it is time and energy, or modifications to our Weltanschauung and behavior… if you are not willing to do that, then it might not be the path for you.

You can look elsewhere… or you can do as I did, and continue to do. Develop your own! There will still be sacrifice, discipline, and transformation… but the religion will grow and evolve through you, as it is yours and yours alone, to do with as you Will!
 
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idea

Question Everything
Actually, involvement in a normal religious congregation is statistically associated with better mental health.
We all have that hole in the soul. For myself, only God could fill it. God, not religion; you can leave the latter without giving up the former (which never gives up on anyone anyway).

Those sculptures are beautiful btw.

I remember squeezing my arms because I was empty inside, no blood, no heart, numb, empty, a shell - squeezing my arms to convince my mind there was something left under my skin. The detective had to repeat himself several times as it would not register in my brain - a clicking sound, like a record skipping - my mind would not process what was happening.

No God for me, no God sitting back watching priests rape children. Year after year after year, child after child after child.

Better mental health to chalk it all up to just the laws of nature. It would be added pain to think some being could stop all the pain in the world, but doesn't. I justified evil when I was a believer - thought you gained better appreciation through trials, refined.

Those kids aren't refined. They are mentally ill. They don't have a greater appreciation of anything.

I guess I just didn't understand evil before.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
Actually, involvement in a normal religious congregation is statistically associated with better mental health.
There is quite a lot to question there, though.

For starters:

1. How much of that correlation comes from social support as opposed to religious beliefs?

2. What constitutes a normal religious congregation, and what can be done to discern those from abnormal / unhealthy ones?
 

Father Heathen

Veteran Member
For some kids, Santa is a big deal. Christmas loses some of its sparkle when that magic is gone.

Same with loss of God, the magic is gone, life feels empty.

View attachment 71514

with time, new beliefs form, a greater appreciation of nature, ability to live with uncertainty, acceptance of what is. With time, you hold the emptiness differently.
View attachment 71515

You live without God, but have a peaceful smile about it.
Keep in mind that religions are self-appointed, self-serving middlemen who presume to speak on God's behalf, and that their perceptions and portrayals thereof say more about them than it does of any actual god. Belief in a religion isn't a prerequisite for belief in a god.
 

idea

Question Everything
If you can compare it to learning Santa isn't real I am forced to question your perspective on this subject.

You are correct, it is a different order of magnitude.

I have learned effective communication requires talking on a level your audience understands. Believers have not experienced deep levels of pain - they protect themselves with cognitive dissonance, their mind does not fully enter the experience. Have to communicate on a level that does not raise defenses, that is understandable to them.

If you want to win a court case, and we did, don't cry. Convince all you are mentally stable, in full possession of your faculties. No one likes victims. No one likes cry babies. They will not go down the rabbit hole with you, have to compose yourself and talk at a level they can understand
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
I'll start with a few ideas and you can agree or disagree and perhaps add your own criteria.

  • A charismatic authoritarian leader
  • Suppression of questions
  • Use of fear to keep people in line (shunning, hell)
  • Members are required to hold a narrow, rigid set of beliefs
  • Suspicion and disdain for those outside the faith
  • Literal interpretation of religious text
  • Undo control over the lives of members

You will want to take a look at Steven Hassan's BITE model at some point. I will do that soon enough, but first let me go through your list.

1. Leaders are indeed a frequent source of danger, but I don't think that they are particularly central. The existence of significant numbers of people willing to listen to them acritically, that is central. So is the existence of doctrines that fail to allow for and encourage questioning of what their leaders say.

2 and 3. Indeed, suppression of questioning is a very big red flag. So are social shunning (a well known feature of some groups towards former members) and the instillationn of fears.

4. Good point. We may want to consider also whether there is some established protocol for dealing with straying from those beliefs, encouraging the pretense of holding them, and unhealthy displays of pride for following them.

5. Ill will towards those from "outside the tribe" is of course worth watching for, but it can be difficult to usefully characterize. It is only natural to have greater confidence in what is well-known and right at hand. Suspicion of outside groups is not entirely avoidable nor always unhealthy.

6. Literalism can be very harmful, but I think that it is also a very specific flavor of a wider problem: ineffective questioning and course-correction. No doctrine can be healthy without both, except perhaps by accident and for short periods at a time.

As for the BITE Model, those are the initials for "Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotion". I think this PDF provides a fairly useful model for questioning the validity and dangers of groups.

https://freedomofmind.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/BITE-Model-Handout-9-23-16.pdf
 

idea

Question Everything
Keep in mind that religions are self-appointed, self-serving middlemen who presume to speak on God's behalf, and that their perceptions and portrayals thereof say more about them than it does of any actual god. Belief in a religion isn't a prerequisite for belief in a god.

My parents, dad especially, is anti LGBTQ - one of my kids now falls in that category. He Bible thumped in front if me, "God sais its a sin!", and I calmly corrected him - no dad, God said no such thing, it is only your opinion. We went back and forth a few times. "God said!!"... no dad, you - you said - not God- just you - this is just you and your personal beliefs.
 

Colt

Well-Known Member
Among mental health professionals, there is a form of trauma that is recognized and treated. It is called Religious Trauma Syndrome. You can read more about this here: Religious trauma syndrome - Wikipedia

My question surrounds the origins of this pathology, which is basically a toxic religious envirnoment. We would all agree that religions like People's Temple (Jonestown) and the Branch Dividians (Waco) were dangerous toxic religions. But what exactly is it that makes a religion toxic? What exactly is it that it harming the psyches of so many people? Where is the dividing line between a religion that is correlated with mental health, and one that destroys it?

I'll start with a few ideas and you can agree or disagree and perhaps add your own criteria.

  • A charismatic authoritarian leader
  • Suppression of questions
  • Use of fear to keep people in line (shunning, hell)
  • Members are required to hold a narrow, rigid set of beliefs
  • Suspicion and disdain for those outside the faith
  • Literal interpretation of religious text
  • Undo control over the lives of members

The institutionalization of religion has positive and negative consequences.

IMOP this clip covers it better than i can:


"But as religion becomes institutionalized, its power for good is curtailed, while the possibilities for evil are greatly multiplied. The dangers of formalized religion are: fixation of beliefs and crystallization of sentiments; accumulation of vested interests with increase of secularization; tendency to standardize and fossilize truth; diversion of religion from the service of God to the service of the church; inclination of leaders to become administrators instead of ministers; tendency to form sects and competitive divisions; establishment of oppressive ecclesiastical authority; creation of the aristocratic "chosen-people" attitude; fostering of false and exaggerated ideas of sacredness; the routinizing of religion and the petrification of worship; tendency to venerate the past while ignoring present demands; failure to make up-to-date interpretations of religion; entanglement with functions of secular institutions; it creates the evil discrimination of religious castes; it becomes an intolerant judge of orthodoxy; it fails to hold the interest of adventurous youth and gradually loses the saving message of the gospel of eternal salvation.

Formal religion restrains men in their personal spiritual activities instead of releasing them for heightened service as kingdom builders." UB 1955, no copyright
 

Father Heathen

Veteran Member
My parents, dad especially, is anti LGBTQ - one of my kids now falls in that category. He Bible thumped in front if me, "God sais its a sin!", and I calmly corrected him - no dad, God said no such thing, it is only your opinion. We went back and forth a few times. "God said!!"... no dad, you - you said - not God- just you - this is just you and your personal beliefs.
Yep, religion uses god as a ventriloquist dummy by placing words in his mouth, and is where God is made in man's image (a product of the culture upon which egos and emotions are projected upon) rather than the other way around.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
You are correct, it is a different order of magnitude.
It's not a different order of magnitude but an entirely different issue, different subject, different ball game and different ball park.
Learning Santa will never be anything like a grieving child being told a beloved family member who recently passed is now being tortures forever and all eternity without end in a giant lake of fire.
I have learned effective communication requires talking on a level your audience understands.
It also requires attempting to understand those you are communicating with and synchronizing up with topics. You have not made an effort to do this but instead insist the topic is akin to learning Santa isn't real (and I'll point out again is rude and dismissive) and somehow got this idea we're talking about atheism and nihilism amd tried to insert it into the topic. And instead of a simple "my bad" and getting on topic you put forth this little bit if garbage:
No one likes victims. No one likes cry babies. They will not go down the rabbit hole with you, have to compose yourself and talk at a level they can understand
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
My parents, dad especially, is anti LGBTQ - one of my kids now falls in that category. He Bible thumped in front if me, "God sais its a sin!", and I calmly corrected him - no dad, God said no such thing, it is only your opinion. We went back and forth a few times. "God said!!"... no dad, you - you said - not God- just you - this is just you and your personal beliefs.
Leviticus 20:13
1 Timothy 1:10
It's actually listed in the Bible as a capital offense.
 

VoidCat

Pronouns: he/him/they/them
That well sums up any Southern Baptist church I've been to. My last one even threw away literature in the church library if the author was of a different denomination. Amd I can personally attest that nightmares of going to Hell are terrifying and leave a long-lasting impression, and all the damnation, threats of damnation and mountain of stressors from such rigid expectations are just no good for anyone to grow up with, especially as it's prone to leading to self hatred, low self esteem and a lack of confidence (it's all "god's" doing because we're all lowly worms).

My experience was basically the same. The SBC is definitely toxic and always on the border of being a full blown cult. There are some of the churches under their watch I believe are full blown cult.

From what I've seen and went through they are a full blown cult, and have mastered using guilt, shame and fear to keep the flock in line. I'll even go tit-for-tat and "defend" (in a way) Jonestown just to establish the point it's really not much different. They just have an invisible central figure speaking to them through a book.
heres a poem i wrote of Southern baptists...tell me do you find this accurate of the typical southern baptist church? It was how the church i went was like...

Are you the lowest of the low?
Knee deep in sin...
Do you have a hole in your heart?
You are in need of saving,
Of Jesus's healing...
Once we baptize you,
Welcome to the church.
We are all equals here
Made in God's image
But the women do not lead they are not pastors,
And husbands rule over their wives
For Eve was made from Adam,
And tempted him to sin.

A literal interpetation,
Do you have any doubts?
Do you question do you wonder?
Once saved always saved,
If you ever faltered, lead astray,
Then you never truly believed.
So dont ask your questions,
Follow the pastor,
Or there will be fire and brimstone...

Us against them mentality,
Perscution everywhere...
Do not trust unbelievers,
For they are unhappy.
They will always be unhappy without God.
Unless they turn away from sin,
And honor Christ.

When the end comes,
Be ready.
When the end comes,
God will establish his kingdom.
Then all will know the truth
Dont be on the wrong side,
Dont want to be left behind...
This is our hope,
To convert the masses,
Before the end comes.
 
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nPeace

Veteran Member
Among mental health professionals, there is a form of trauma that is recognized and treated. It is called Religious Trauma Syndrome. You can read more about this here: Religious trauma syndrome - Wikipedia

My question surrounds the origins of this pathology, which is basically a toxic religious envirnoment. We would all agree that religions like People's Temple (Jonestown) and the Branch Dividians (Waco) were dangerous toxic religions. But what exactly is it that makes a religion toxic? What exactly is it that it harming the psyches of so many people? Where is the dividing line between a religion that is correlated with mental health, and one that destroys it?

I'll start with a few ideas and you can agree or disagree and perhaps add your own criteria.

  • A charismatic authoritarian leader
  • Suppression of questions
  • Use of fear to keep people in line (shunning, hell)
  • Members are required to hold a narrow, rigid set of beliefs
  • Suspicion and disdain for those outside the faith
  • Literal interpretation of religious text
  • Undo control over the lives of members
Do you mean all in the list as a whole, or just some?
  • A charismatic authoritarian leader
  • Suppression of questions
  • Use of fear to keep people in line (shunning, hell)
  • Members are required to hold a narrow, rigid set of beliefs
  • Suspicion and disdain for those outside the faith
  • Literal interpretation of religious text
  • Undo control over the lives of members
Does this count, in your book? I'm not sure.

A charismatic authoritarian leader
Members are required to hold a narrow, rigid set of beliefs
[Undue] control over the lives of members

Use of fear to keep people in line
Suspicion and disdain for those outside the faith
Literal interpretation of religious text

(Exodus 15:26) [Moses] said: “If you will strictly listen to the voice of Jehovah your God and will do what is right in his eyes and will pay attention to his commandments and keep all his regulations, [then] I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians, for I, Jehovah, am healing you.”

(Leviticus 26:14-18) 14 “‘However, if you will not listen to me or keep all these commandments, 15and if you reject my statutes, and if you abhor my judicial decisions so that you do not keep all my commandments, and you violate my covenant, 16I, for my part, will do the following to you: I will punish you with distress, with tuberculosis and burning fever, making your eyes fail and your life waste away. You will sow your seed simply for nothing, for your enemies will eat it. 17 I will set my face against you, and you will be defeated by your enemies; and those who hate you will tread on you, and you will flee when no one is pursuing you. 18 “‘If even this does not make you listen to me, I will have to chastise you seven times as much for your sins.

(Leviticus 26:27-29) 27 “‘If in spite of this you will not listen to me and you insist on walking in opposition to me, 28I will intensify my opposition to you, and I myself will have to chastise you seven times for your sins. 29So you will have to eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters.

(Deuteronomy 21:18-21) 18 “If a man has a son who is stubborn and rebellious and he does not obey his father or his mother, and they have tried to correct him but he refuses to listen to them, 19his father and his mother should take hold of him and bring him out to the elders at the gate of his city 20 and say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, and he refuses to obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21Then all the men of his city must stone him to death. So you must remove what is bad from your midst, and all Israel will hear and become afraid.

(Deuteronomy 7:3) You must not form any marriage alliances with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons.

(Joshua 23:12-13) 12 “But if you should turn back at all and stick to what is left of these nations that remain with you and you form marriage alliances with them and associate with them and they with you, 13you should know for sure that Jehovah your God will not continue to drive out these nations for you. They will become a trap and a snare and a scourge on your flanks and thorns in your eyes until you have perished from this good land that Jehovah your God has given you.

(Ezra 9:2) They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons. Now they, the holy offspring, have become mingled with the peoples of the lands. The princes and the deputy rulers have been the foremost offenders in this unfaithfulness.”

(Nehemiah 13:1) On that day the book of Moses was read in the hearing of the people, and it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the congregation of the true God,

(Nehemiah 13:3) As soon as they heard the Law, they began to separate from Israel all those of foreign descent.

There's quite a lot more, but these texts give the basic picture.
Would this religion fall into your category of "Religious Trauma Syndrome" - "dangerous toxic religion"?
 
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