Religion As A Disease

Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 2:05 pm

So You Think You’re Healthy? Perhaps Religion Is Making You Sick?

Introduction:

Years ago, at the age of eleven, I was sent to an Anglican boarding school in South Africa, where I stayed until I was eighteen. One Sunday evening a small group of pupils from the school was invited by the Dean of the local Anglican Cathedral to take part in an “evocation of the Holy Ghost” in a Pentecostal (speaking in tongues) experience. I had no idea what this was, but later in the evening the boys were found in the school chapel prostrating themselves in front of the altar in the dark, weeping and crying for God’s forgiveness of their unpardonable and Devil-directed sins (The worst of which, according to the boys, was masturbation).

Little did I know that this was my first experience of what a priest’s manipulation of religious addiction can do to otherwise seemingly sensible and smart young people.

Religion as addiction (or dependency) serves to arouse believers, to placate them, to develop proclivities for other addictions in them, and to create addictive behavior in the so-called faithful which can be extremely dangerous to themselves and others:

“...any religion, philosophy, or belief system can be addictive,
fear-based, and terrorizing, and if it is used to justify changing
the Constitution of the United States and creating a society in
which the laws of that system are also fear-based and terrorizing,
then regardless of the label.....that system is both terrorist
and tyrannical.”

The religions “of the book”, or of revelationary visions, are particularly addictive because of their adherence to their religious texts as, “the word of God” and addicts’ sustained efforts to serve this “God”. Individual accounts of imagined or hallucinatory religious experiences that can never be validated lead to feelings of control, effusion, power over others who have not had these visions, and feeling of elation because they have been “chosen”. The religious texts are very violent, sexually explicit, and exaggerate the the retribution of a vengeful god; they provoke extreme behavior, particularly when they are interpreted literally. Their texts provide the sanction of violence and other base behavior such as the physical abuse of women and children. Personal revelations lead to all sorts of abuse also because of their imagined theistic sources (god told me to do it). Religious addiction promotes both these sources of religious direction.

"’Wolves In Sheep's Clothing’ is a book in manuscript form which
is the result of 17 years experience, observation, and research.
The book exposes and clearly delineates the characteristics and
inner workings of destructive addictive and spiritually abusive
practices operating within many mainline evangelical churches.’
[‘Wolves In Sheep’s Clothing’, by L.M.McClain.]

While the definition of “addiction” is difficult to pin down because of variable interpretations and a lack of clear agreement on a common set of characteristics by medical researchers, there is a series of generally accepted observations used by most analysts. These include what is called the three C’s:

• Behavior that is motivated by emotions ranging
along the Craving to Compulsion spectrum.
• Continued use in spite of adverse consequences and,
• Loss of Control.
(From an article on addiction from the Harvard Medical School: “What is Addiction?: A Perspective”, by Howard J. Shaffer, Ph.D., C.A.S.)

The three C’s outline religion’s addictive behavior in individuals. but there is much more to religion’s addictive behavioral tendencies because religion, itself, promotes a mental diseases.

Booth (Religious Addiction: Obsession with Spirituality,1991) defines religious addiction as;

"using God, a church, or a belief system as an escape from
reality, or as a weapon against ourselves or others in an
attempt to find or elevate a sense of self-worth or well-being" (p. 38)

Behavioral addiction is distinct from chemical dependency such as drug addiction, alcohol addiction and food addiction. It is part of a common type of addiction that includes sexual addiction, control addiction, and addiction to money. The expanding realization that religion is a behavioral addiction has produced a plethora of research articles and books because this is a new discovery, and millions of people need help to assuage this disease.

There is a clear developmental trend as the analytical literature grows agreeing that religions should be characterized as developing addictions and, thus, types of disease. A piece quoted from, "Hawaii and Christian Religious Addiction," by Dr. James Slobodzien at Addictions Recovery Management Services, http://www.geocities.com /drslbdzn/ Behavioral Addictions.html, lists a series of past research publications on the subject (others are available throughout this paper):

“.........Simmonds (1977) reports that there is some evidence to indicate that "religious people in general tend to exhibit dependency on some
external source of gratification" (p. 114). Black and London (1966) found
a high positive correlation between the variables of obedience to parents
and country and indices of religious belief such as church attendance,
belief in God and prayer (p. 39). Goldsen, et al. (1960) showed that people who were more religious consistently showed tendencies toward greater social conformity than did the non religious, a finding consistent with the notion that religious people seek external approval. These results are supported by Fisher (1964 p. 784), who reported that a measure of social approval and religion were strongly associated. Religious people show dependence not only on social values, but also on other external agents. Duke (1964, p. 227) found that church attendance indicated more
responsiveness to the effects of a placebo. In a study of 50 alcoholics, it was found that those who were dependent on alcohol were more likely to
have had a religious background (Walters, 1957, p. 405). Booth (1991)
defines religious addiction as "using God, a church, or a belief system as
an escape from reality, or as a weapon against ourselves or others in an
attempt to find or elevate a sense of self-worth or well-being" (p. 38).”

Abuses and Addiction: Craving to Compulsion and Continuation

Several years ago I lived down the road from a large Catholic Church. Every day on my way to work I passed the church and noticed that there was an elderly woman crossing the road, a Bible clutched in her hands, on her way to this church. There was a traffic light on the corner, and one day I was waiting for the light to change and the woman walked past. I rolled down my window and calling to her, asked what she did every morning. Her comment was “...I cannot do without my church visit and prayers to Jesus each morning, asking for forgiveness for my sins,” and that this act “cleared her mind of guilt,” and, “the discussion with Jesus brightens her day from the start.” I then asked her what happened if she missed a day. “Oh, I have a horrible time, my day must start with my church visit and my discussion with God”, she said.

Personal responses to religious addiction can also produce some very dangerous developmental problems tied to a craving for heightened religious experiences. In the Catholic Church, for example, “corporal mortification” (self injury) is encouraged by priests and by the heavily addicted among the laity.

The Catholic Church has a nunnery in Italy - the “Discalced Carmelite Convent of Saint Theresa,” who make a money for their order making and selling tools of self injury: a discipline (a whip for thrashing one’s back often with small pieces of metal woven into the ends of the whip which resembles a cat-o’-nine-tails,) a cilice, a band for the upper body, leg and the arm, ($7.50 for one band) with barbed spikes worn under clothing, tied around the body, leg or arm, spikes inward, to cause pain while it is worn, sometimes for days, and a spiked cross to be worn against the body. For those who still need clarity of the use of these horrible tools, an incident with the founder (Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, a Catholic priest) of the extremist Catholic secret society, Opus Dei, was described in an Italian Newspaper, Il Giornale in 1937 when the society was first formed (The “I” in the article is his assistant who was told to cover his head with a blanket):

"Soon I began to hear the forceful blows of his discipline (rope whip - my note). I will never forget the number: there were more than a thousand of terrible blows, precisely timed, and always inflicted with the same force and rhythm. The floor was soon covered with blood, but he cleaned it up before the others came in.” (This quote and the information about the tools come from John L. Allen’s book, “Opus Dei - An Objective Look Behind The Myths and Reality of the most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church.”)

Again, these quoted descriptions of extreme behavior which are greatly admired greatly by laity and priests (and not found only in the Catholic church) underscores the religious addictive behavior of those with extreme forms of the disease on a path towards control, penance, fervor and of religious craving for feelings of “god-provided” fervor.

Obsequiousness in laity and priests often leads to a search for greater and greater extremes of individual pain both to “satisfy God” that their repentance is true through penance (the more painful the better), and to search for that elusive form of religious addictive response known as “ecstasy and rapture”. The following quote from Pat Revels explains, unknowingly, the process of extreme religious addictive longing as defined by in many religions as “mysticism“. Extreme forms of Alcoholism or any other addictive behavior (such as longing for more) can be similarly described without using religious jargon.

“The next gifts we receive, if it so pleases God, are ecstasy (Ananda) and
rapture. Both involve love to a very high degree. Ecstasy, being of a lower nature than rapture, is still bound up in our sensuality and emotion. The influx of Divine love (shefa) fills to the point of overflowing all the spaces
where we feel lonely and empty with much needed Water; this travels outward and is felt in the body and senses with equal urgency and significance. If ecstasy is being placed face to face with God, rapture is returning to a state of inseparable oneness with God. This is beyond all description, beyond the senses, intellect, emotions and all things associated with the body and mind. From “What is Mysticism” by Pat Revels.

Religious addiction in this extreme form is more commonplace among believers than acknowledged and is much like drug addiction or alcoholism. It is promoted by church elders, Priests and Pastors, Rabbis, Mullahs, and Imams and by literature passed out by the religious as something to strive for. It remains hidden in some religious societies who regard it as extremism and are embarrassed by it because their addiction is not extreme and their private lives are not dictated by their religious affiliations and feelings.

The extreme religious behavior or religious dependence associated with Hasidic Jews in Israel is often excoriated by reform Jews. For example, in one of my trips to Israel I asked a Jewish taxi driver about the Hasidic Jews when we passed a group of them walking along the sidewalk; he answered by rolling down his window and spitting in the road, and then explained that he was a reform Jew and despised the Hasids who, in his opinion, were so “religious” that they were insane - another inadvertent description of extreme religious addiction.

The Propitiation Of Religious Dependency: The Loss of Individual Control.

The process of encouraged religious dependency is the basis for the religious and sometimes life-long control of all believers by churches, temples and mosques. Today it is found in its most brutal and insidious form in Evangelical and Televangelist churches, and Protestant Christian outreach, including missionary work; “Missionarying - that least excusable of all human trades.” Mark Twain in the North American Review, and fundamentalism in each religion, including non-book religions such as Hinduism and ill-defined religious cults where extreme forms of violence are found and encouraged: this includes bombings, suicide bombers, fasting to death, poisoning, mass suicide, and assassination of religious opponents.

In the U.S. Protestant sects’ newest insidious manifestation is in the “money ministries” or “prosperity gospels” such as those run by Paula White and Joel Osteen. Several of these ministries are currently under investigation by the Federal Senate Finance Committee because of their alleged abuse of untaxed church funds. Their fiscal focus is clearly evident in their collection of very costly personal items: private jets, luxury homes, clothing, plastic surgery, Rolls Royces and so on.

The expanded addiction to money is preceded and reinforced by their apparent religious fervor and dependency, but far more insidious than this is their obvious understanding (covert or overt) that their flocks are addicted to Christianity and can thus be manipulated to give up their worldly treasures to purchase God’s forgiveness.

The Roman Catholic Church has its own form of Christian dependency manipulation in two things: their dictum decrying materialism and evinced by their priest’s three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and the sudden growth of secret societies which include only the rich and powerful who are extremely “conservative and orthodox” and willing to give up large portions of their worldly goods “for Christ”. Examples of these societies include, Opus Dei, Regnum Christi, and Legionaries of Christ.

The manipulation of the faithful by their preachers and fellow believers is not new and has included violence and vice in the past. It is obvious that the most successful preachers understand addictive behavior and are keen to use it to deepen the addictive religious behavior of their faithful followers for their expanded accumulation of wealth. Joel Osteen shows this very clearly: his accumulation of wealth and his huge following are closely related. When he preaches to 25,000 followers, his ability to whip them into a frenzy of uncontrolled religious fervor as religious addicts is seen in their hallucinatory behavior.

“....you’d best grow a stronger spiritual backbone than we’ve
seen in this example from Joel Osteen. Don’t you understand
that there are many men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed
of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial
gain (1 Timothy 6:5) and who are simply using the Church as
a means for their own selfish gain? I don’t recommend you
watch TBN, but if you happen to, take a good close look at the
red faces of many of these so-called prophets. Do you really
think they are drunk with the Spirit?” [From: Apprising Ministries,
‘Joel Osteen: Smile When You Lie’] http://www.apprising.org/
archives/2005/10/joel_osteen_smi.html.”

The examples provided give some small snapshots of religious dependency (addiction) and the 3C’s that identify it and other addictions. There is no doubt (as mentioned in the limited examples of televangelist and other evangelical preaching, particularly in what is called “charismatic” Christianity) that religious hierarchies understand and use the processes of believers’ religious addiction. This process of actively pushing tenets of addiction and its manipulation is for the religious hierarchy’s own ends.

In the same Anglican High School mentioned earlier there was another incident which emphasizes priests knowledge of how to use addiction to manipulate congregants. In this case, however, the use of Christian addiction by a priest went horribly awry. At evensong on a Sunday night the subject of the sermon was “Your Life with Satan and Evil”. The sermon used “blood-and-guts” preaching: “You are all sinners and you make it easy for Satan to sew his evil.” After lights-out in the dormitories that night a sobbing, moaning, crying and the sound of paper being crumpled came from one of the cubicles. On investigation a boy, who was stable, good at his schoolwork, and loved sport, was found trying to paper the walls of his cubicle with newspaper babbling that Satan and his evil spirits were coming through the walls to get him.

This sensitive and unfortunate child had been “pushed” too deeply into his Christian addiction by the sermon which incited fear (known as a “trigger”, which will be discussed a little later). He was sent to a psychiatric facility for a few weeks to help him get over his extreme reaction, but I did not hear whether or not the priest was asked to tone down his sermons in the future.

In, “The Religious Right: Pushing A Deadly Addiction,” Carolyn Baker (www.dissidentvoice .org, May 17, 2005.) wrote:“Spiritual abuse is the manipulation, exploitation, and mistreatment -- mentally, emotionally, or physically -- of another individual or masses of individuals, in the name of promoting spiritual principles or values.” If you superimpose Gerald May’s (1988) statement that addiction is a "state of compulsion, obsession, or preoccupation that enslaves a person's will and desire" over Carolyn Baker’s quoted words what emerges is a picture of, at least, a knowledgeable priestly intervention when one looks at episodes like those targeted in the South African Anglican High School. But on closer inspection, these situations with children are more about child abuse by priests who understand what Christian addiction does to children other than addiction alone, and the conntrol of the children through the imagined power of the priest.

Child abuse among the religious is an epidemic. It has been going on since the beginning of religious belief. It runs the gamut from human sacrifice to torture, from sexual abuse to mental manipulation, from thrashing to the deprivation of food and drink, from socialization exclusion to holding them in small, dark places for extended period of times to expand pliability, from educational deprivation to stunting physical growth, breaking bones, resetting them awkwardly, so that the children will be good beggars, able to exact pity from their targeted victims, and, finally, sexual abuse.

”The sex-abuse crisis that engulfed the Roman Catholic Church during
the past 12 months has spread to nearly every American diocese and
involves more than 1,200 priests, most of whose careers span a mix of
church history and seminary training. These priests are known to have
abused more than 4,000 minors.” (From: “Sex Abuse By Priests Found
To Be Rampant”, by Laurie Goodutein, New York Times News Service.).

“Bindoon, Mt. Cashel, Stephenville, Ballarat, Kinkora, Artane, Bangor,
Kilkenney, St. Joseph’s, Kuper Island, Cape Croker, St. Anthony's -
these are not places of childish amusement, but places where Catholic
priests raped and abused small children over many years with impugnity.”
From a paper, “Roman Catholic Church Violence: Spreading the Word of
God by Force”, by Chris Morton, 2008.

In countries like Thailand girls are bred by families in poverty to sell to the prostitution trade - Buddhist monks not only do not object to this trade, but actively use the child prostitutes and often exacerbate their plight by participating in their purchase by demanding pay backs and tithes for their monasteries from the traders.

Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, said that if he was given a child for seven years he had the child for life. Often cited as brilliant teachers, the Jesuits continuous involvement with children targeted early conversion, often the abuse of the children to frighten them into fear-based acquiescence. They also taught and teach in Catholic schools where their twisted views of history and their addictive religious views become innate in the children they teach. This kind of insidious religious educational abuse is very common among the addicted religious and needs careful secular monitoring today. As John Adams, second President of the U.S. and a founding father said about Jesuits in a letter to Jefferson:

I do not like the reappearance of the Jesuits.... Shall we not have regular
swarms of them here, in as many disguises as only a king of the gipsies
can assume, dressed as printers, publishers, writers and schoolmasters?
If ever there was a body of men who merited damnation on earth and in
Hell, it is this society of Loyola's. Nevertheless, we are compelled by our
system of religious toleration to offer them an asylum. (John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 5, 1816.)

Addictive religion everywhere emulates the Jesuits’ approach to education. The child abuse evident in all religious settings has been applied with very careful thought in clear efforts to enforce religious addiction on children. At some point it is hopeful to see that not all children succumb to this disease and are able to escape when they are able to make their own choices, but the religious persevere and in the United States many of the churches have built universities which continue the child educational abuse through adulthood. In, “The Child’s Song: The Religious Abuse of Children” by Donald Capps, and “Religious Schools V. Children’s Rights” by James D. Dwyer, the educational abuse of children in schools by very ill religious addicts is clearly articulated by careful research. Dwyer states:

“The existing evidence supports the empirical hypothesis that the methods
and content of instruction intrinsic to the religious mission of Catholic and
Fundamentalist schools affect the student in several harmful ways.” (pp 14).

“....the sociopolitical world view that Fundamentalists share involves “racism, antifeminism, anti-intellectualism, and plutocratic politics. They advocate segregation of the races, traditional subordinate roles for women, and non-interaction with those who do not conform to the Fundamentalist ideal - in particular, nonwhites, Catholics, Jews, Atheists, intellectuals, and liberals. And while insisting on their own constitutional (and God-given) right to exercise their religion without state interference, they do not value religious freedom or diversity more generally but rather wish for America to become a Christian theocracy. Consistent with this political outlook, they discourage independent thinking about religious belief and other matters among their members, and instead demand conformity to the ‘clear’ commands of the Bible; Biblical inerrancy is for Fundamentalists ‘an unconscious metaphor for the repression of all individuality.’ For Fundamentalists, the principle battleground for the hegemony of this public and private orthodoxy is children’s schooling.” (pp16-17).

Images of Muslim and Jewish children nodding over their religious texts in religious schools are, by now, well known: all the children wear uniform clothing - the Jewish children in black and the Muslim children in white. Individuality is not encouraged. These schools focus on and expand religious addiction, abuse children and, in their most extreme form they even produce killers. This is the most insidious form of individual and loss of control; incitement to violence as a result of religious dependency. In Washington’s Report on the Middle East, January 6, 1996, pp 59-61 this headline appeared: “Rabin’s Murder Rooted in Zionism’s Violent Legacy.”

“They believe they are God's messengers. Thus Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir, cited the authority of God to explain the murder.” (Ibid)
“By the mid-1990s, even Kahane's violent ideas seemed somewhat mild in the context of the radicalized politics of Israel. A new strain of religious
extremism has been added to the Revisionist ranks. This became obvious
on Feb. 25, 1994, when Brooklyn-born Dr. Baruch Goldstein, a Kahane disciple, walked into the Ibrahim mosque, called the Cave of Machpela by Jews, in Hebron and killed 29 and wounded upwards of 150 Palestinian worshippers.” (Ibid)

After orthodox schooling and propaganda on television commercials, young students in Palestine state their intentions based on their nationalist affiliation to their country, their religious addiction to Allah and the stated rewards for martyrs in heaven from the Quoran:

• “When I wander into Jerusalem I will become a suicide bomber.” proclaims a young Palestinian, age nine or ten.”
• “I come here to say that we will throw them to the quiet sea. Occupiers, your day is near, then we will settle our account. We will settle our claims with stones and bullets.” An 8-year-old boy announces to the child-filled studio audience.
• A 10-year-old girl declared that she wanted to “turn into a suicide warrior” in Jerusalem. Religious Addicts: The Proclivity for Other Addictions - Continued Use and Control Loss.

In this section we will find the individual’s refusal to admit to their addictions, and the proclivity of religious addicts for other types of addiction.

“When Jimmy Swaggart defied the orders of the Assemblies
of God to refrain from preaching for one year, he assured the
public that he was free of moral defect, for, he said, Oral
Roberts had cast out the demons from his body over the phone.
Oral Roberts confirmed Swaggart's report, insisting he had
demons and their claws deeply embedded in Swaggart's
flesh. Now that the rascals were gone, Swaggart and Roberts
asserted, Swaggart could get on with preparing the way for
Christ's return. Evidently, personal responsibility for sin can
be dismissed by blaming it on an external force.”

A clear and common characteristic of addiction is a refusal to take responsibility for a person’s own actions. The quote about Swaggert shows that, according to this measure, he is a Christian addict. But more than this, he is a dangerous addict whose continued “calling” is to manipulate others to join his church and accept his point-of-view.

The danger lies in his spreading of a addictive dogma whose disposition is to blame all personal wrongdoing on satan instead of taking personal responsibility for it. This proclivity to refuse personal responsibility infuses believers with the false fear of evil, as defined by Swaggert’s church, and with a feeling of being unimpeachable if they follow, with addictive fervor, the “teachings” of God as interpreted by the same church.

In addictive terms, these views of religion promulgate feelings of fear and, eventually, of artificial well-being. The pastors of the churches know these feelings well because they preach to promote them: know our God through our teachings and His word (the Bible, the Queran, the Torah) and feel a release from worldly suppression and evil; know where evil comes from and fear it because you are sinners who must love God and who will forgive you if you admit to, and atone for your sins.

Both of these feelings are religious addicts’ triggers, i.e., they are individual inner feelings which “switch on” addictive behavior. Priests, Mullahs, Imams, Rabbis, and Pastors know what the religious addiction triggers are and they push them to manipulate religious addicts to deepen their addiction, and to act the way they want them to act.

In extreme circumstances addictive triggers can force religious addicts to embrace violence on behalf of their gods - we are seeing this in Arab countries today where the fear of Allah’s wrath and the well-being of thinking that members of the Muslim community will enter a heaven as martyrs, is being used by Mullahs and Imams to trigger violent behavior in their Muslim flocks. The issuing of “fatwas” on individuals (such as Salmon Rushdi) and even countries (such as the USA) leads to killings by muslims (the US Trade Centers’ aircraft attacks, the Spanish Rail system bombings, the Glasgow suicide bombing, the continued killings of Sunni by Shiites and vice versa). These addicted religious killers, blind to morality and their safety, have lost individual control completely and are subsumed into mass addiction and hysteria.

Priests, Pastors, Mullahs, Imams and Rabbis use addiction “catalysts” to activate addictive triggers in individuals and in groups where the individual’s behavior is reinforced by a feeling of a common faith in the extolled religious addiction.

Catalysts are found in many forms by religious leaders and believers. Some of these: the smell and sight of burning incense in orthodox churches (copied from ancient Egyptian religious catalysts), the use of music, candles and low light, the overwhelming size of large cathedral-like churches, temples and mosques - the moving force behind the the growth of Gothic cathedrals of Europe, repetition (such as Om in Buddhism, Ram in Hinduism, Jesus saves in some Christian religions, Hail Mary in the Catholic Church), tub thumping religious sermons which can be used to drive a congregation into such a frenzy that individuals faint and have hallucinations, singing, face-to-face evocations of religious transgressions and God’s response to them, the accusation of sinning, a reminding of sinners to repent, faith healing, standing and sitting over and over again, kneeling for long periods of time, repetitious prayers, prayers invoking responses from the congregants, tone of voice, stance, voice fluctuation (shouting to whispering and back again) in sermons or prayers, and fasting. These, and many other catalysts, promote trigger reactions in religious addicts.

The proclivity of religious addicts to become addicted to other behaviors and chemicals is of concern because addictions reinforce each other, often lead to the formation of dangerous splinter cults, create mixed and confusing information for the addicts, and are used by priests to reinforce the accusation of sinning as a catalyst. However, and rather obviously, priests themselves are prone to other addictions.

Some addictions such as sexual addiction, which seem to lead quite directly from religious addiction, can also lead to pernicious behavior such as lying, the sexual abuse of children, physical abuse, the abuse of women, the abuse and theft of church funds to feed the addictive need for materialistic items such as gold dog houses and marble toilet seats, and drugs.

”.....women and young girls who took church vows have been sexually victimized by priests and others in the male-controlled church hierarchy. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which obtained a copy of the report, a "minimum" of 34,000 Catholics nuns -- about 40% of the national total -- have suffered some kind of sexual trauma”, (From: “Confidential Study Reveals Church Abuse Of Nuns”: John T. Chibnall, St. Louis University, co-author of the research summary.)

“....sexually-based writings in the Bible. They are widespread
and found in both the old and new testaments and include incest,
menstruation, masturbation, venerial disease, homosexuality,
rape (individual and group), adultery, indecent exposure, group
sex, exhibitionism, nudity and striptease, prostitution, phallic
worship, abortion, surrogate motherhood, sex and drugs, husband
swapping, the low state of women, bestiality, castration, illegitimacy,
sexual potency, praise of love, devil sex and witchcraft.” From:
“The X-rated Bible”, by Ben Ackerley.

Even addicted religious groups admit to the proliferation of other addictions among Priests, Pastors, Mullahs, Rabbis and congregants and state their concern for the growing number of people involved in these other addictions.

“ACCORDING TO MANY Christian groups, pornography is a
disturbing and increasing problem. A Promise Keepers survey
found that 53 percent of its members consume pornography.
A 2000 Christianity Today survey found that 37 percent of
pastors said pornography is a "current struggle" of theirs.
Fifty-seven percent called pornography the most sexually
damaging issue for their congregations. A Barna Research
Group study released in February 2007 said that 35 percent
of men and 17 percent of women reported having used
pornography in the past month.”

Religious Addiction: Where to Now?

That religious addiction a serious disease explains the widespread nature of religions on earth - the disease has now reached pandemic proportions - the unchecked spread exemplifies the spread of other epidemic diseases, although the non-recognition of religious addiction as a disease has given this disease the chance to go unchecked for a long time - too long.

Some believers have a peripheral interest in their religion. To suggest that they appear to be not addicted to religion or marginally addicted to it is logical. But, while they are not addicted to religion they still have diseases which can be likened to a light attack of flu.

Characteristics of this end of the spectrum are congregants with a low regard for their Priests, Pastors, Mullahs, Imams and Rabbis, who attend services sporadically, if at all, who tend to appear only on high holy days because of guilt, who think that sermons are based on ridiculous old texts, and who are modernists or who, in a particularly religious environment, use an affiliation to religion as both a shield and a stepping stone socially or in the workplace. They are not afraid of the threats of God’s wrath and tend not to accept the depiction's of hell. They are wary of the difference between faith and reason and are concerned about religious addicts’ puerile attacks on science. Many are not really sure that they believe at all but they are both embarrassed and afraid to “come out” as nonbelievers.

These sporadic believers are the best targets for Atheist activists. The lightly infected religious believers often think that they are on the edge of Agnosticism which they define much as Deism or as a non-belief in a specific deity, or a belief in a higher power which could be anything from the universe to a massive burst of energy, to information as the material of everything in the universe. Pushing these “lightly diseased” people into Atheism (discouraging their addiction) is easier than trying to fight the deep and entrenched religious disease of the religious fanatic.

Addictions cannot be cured. Addicts are addicts for life. All that can be done is to keep sufferers away from the addictive catalysts, to get them to understand what their “triggers” are, and to get them to agree to go into different types of treatment. The problem with this approach to religion is the huge number of diseased individuals.

Because religion addiction disease is so widespread it will take vast action to cure it - action by governments and increased and changed education (expanded knowledge treats these diseases by treating their symptoms of stupidity, ignorance and fear). In Europe, for example, the decrease of believers because of changes in, and the expansion of education, are widespread as evinced by shells of churches, boarded up places of faith, and the strong rise in acknowledged Atheism and Freethought.

Religious hierarchies fear the spread of knowledge, the growth of challenging educational opportunities, and freely available pools of information. These items undermine religious traditionalism, help recognize that the holy books are mere myths, and that Priests, Pastors, Rabbis, Imams and Mullahs are all dishonest and ignorant:

“The imbecile priests! The best destiny they can look for is that they and their vile artifices will forever remain buried in the darkness of oblivion”. Quote from Frederick the Great, From: “2000 Years of Disbelief - Famous People With the Courage to Doubt” by James A. Haught).

Religion as an addiction has terrible consequences leading to violence, hatred, the abuse of children, the subjugation of women (including such horrors as female sexual mutilation) and the spending of large sums of money which could be used for other positive purposes. There is a widespread need for medical and social support and the creation of treatment for these very sick people to get them to give up religious affiliations.

A final note is necessary. Many of the members of religious hierarchies are guilty of pushing regious addiction and encouraging the growth and expansion of this disease by, for example, the conscious use of catalysts and triggers to promote religious addiction. These people should be imprisoned for their crimes. There are precedents: for example, in a number of western countries if AIDS victims purposely pass on their disease by not informing their sexual partners of their disease they can be arrested for attempted murder and if their victims die from the disease, murder charges follow. There is no reason why members of religious hierarchies who cause and manipulate their victims to accept faith instead of reason, religious addiction and disease instead of truth and health, should be arrested and charged with appropriate crimes.

Addressing the serious problem of religious addictive disease, worldwide, is not new. What is new is the realization, following empirical, studies that religion is an addiction. However, the language of the criticism of religion often uses words which accord with the terms used to describe religious addiction such as “catalyst” and “trigger” and to develop a “healing” process beyond religious disease. Let me end with a quote from Sam Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation” which illustrates this:

“One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns - about ethics, spiritual experience, and the inevitability of human suffering - in ways that are not fragrantly irrational. We desperately need a public discourse that encourages critical thinking and intellectual honesty. Nothing stands in the way of this project more than the respect we accord religious faith.

“I would be the first to admit that the prospects for eradicating religion in our time do not seem good. Still, the same could have been said about efforts to abolish slavery at the end of the eighteenth century. Anyone who spoke with confidence about eradicating slavery in the United States in the year 1775 surely appeared to be wasting his time, and wasting it dangerously.

“The analogy is not perfect, but it is suggestive. If we ever do transcend our religious bewilderment, we will look back on this period in human history with horror and amazement. How could it have been possible for people to believe such things in the 21st century? How could it be that that they allowed their societies to become so dangerously fragmented by empty notions about God and Paradise? The fact is that some of your most cherished beliefs are as embarrassing as those that sent the last slave ship sailing to America as late as 1859 (the same year that Darwin
published “The Origin of the Species”).

“Clearly, it is time we learned to meet our emotional needs without
embracing the preposterous. we must find ways of invoking the power
of ritual and to mark those transitions in every human life that demand
profundity - birth, marriage, death - without lying to ourselves about the
nature of reality. Only then will the practice of raising our children to
believe that they are Christian, Muslim or Jewish be widely recognized
as the religious obscenity that it is, And only then will we stand a chance
of healing the deepest and most dangerous fractures in our world.” (pp 87-88)

Just Arrived Joined: Aug 22, 2006 Posts: 3

Quote:

So You Think You’re Healthy? Perhaps Religion Is Making You Sick?

Fats, Thanks for this interesting and informative topic. It was somewhat desultory and lengthy, however; so I’ll try to give a general impression.

Much of these phenomena about religion can be explained by a memetic interpretation. This science (often called pseudo-science) gives a splendid all-round explanation of the weird behavior you cited. I won’t attempt an explanation of the study, but refer you to the 1976 ground-breaker, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.

In a nutshell, a meme (any contagious piece of information that can replicate itself in the fashion of a gene) can grow into a pernicious memeplex, must like a computer virus into a brain tumor, and dominate the thinking process of the host. If allowed to germinate unchecked, the host (now called a membot) will devote his/er entire existence to the replication of the memeplex.

It’s a horrible thing to contemplate, but think of a poor monk who is induced to isolate himself on top of a mountain with nothing more to live on than a daily meal, a bible and a prayer stool. A life is sacrificed. It’s a “selfish meme” in that it cares nothing about the host, like a tapeworm. The memeplex can even encourage the membot to commit suicide for the sake of memeplex replication, in which case we have a memboid. This occurs when the memeplex can gain many converts at the expense of a petty individual. Suicide bombers in Baghdad, for example.

I'd be glad to pursue this subject with you. My book, Mirror Reversal , about memetics and religion, has a funny story about glossolalia, speaking in tongues. Just search on “glossolalia” on Search Inside on Amazon.

This is a perfect example of how a powerful memeplex, like religion, can get a membot to do just about anything.


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