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I've always had a lot of fear and anxiety from the time I was a kid (unfortunately, wired that way), and when I was fundamentalist, I had a preacher and his wife try to cast the devil out of me. Guess it didn't work. I'm still anxious, lol. Years ago my husband was suffering from a terrible depression and another minister tried to cast the devil out of him.
What we don't understand, we tend to construct supernatural placeholders for. If you can imagine yourself as a goatherd from the bronze age with no understanding of scary stuff like thunder and lightning, epic floods, disease and pestilence, etc., you will tend to make stuff up that eases your fears and makes you feel at least subjectively like you or someone stronger than you is in control.
This not only is the genesis of gods that humans invent, but also, lesser supernatural beings and forces and imagined conflicts between them.
Someone with a fairly minor facial tic or a case of occasional stress-induced Turrette's or something, or even someone who is disoriented and impaired after bonking their head, was outside the explanatory framework of that age, hence the influence of demons or even friendly spirits.
It's amazing that the vestiges of such notions survive to this day, as you point out. In part, I think it's a side effect of the anti-intellectual, science-phobic aspect of fundamentalism, carried to a fever pitch in pentecostal traditions but present in milder forms of fundamentalism as well.
In my background I didn't have that much contact with pentecostalism, other than my first wife dabbling in it for a short time. But even so there existed a deep distrust of psychology and mental health best practices, which is one of the reasons I wasn't clueful enough to insist and stand firm that my first wife get mental health standard-of-care until she became so paranoid and resistant that she wouldn't voluntarily seek it out. The only consolation is that her illness (schizophrenia and BPD) was so severe I doubt it would have ultimately mattered to her final outcomes, though it would have made my children's lives and my life easier by not roping us into codependent roles with her for so long.
All I can say is that the sage advice I consistently got from all quarters of the church with respect to her mental health was to pray it away or to have amateur, ineffective counseling with pastors or elders or to have exorcisms or to wait for her to deteriorate enough to hit personal bottom. Or as I mentioned earlier in this thread, suggesting that we get rid of all frog-like images in our house.
No one ever suggested anti-psychotic medications, antidepressants, cognitive behavioral therapy, intensive inpatient therapy, or any of the other sound advice that I started listening to, too little and too late, when she was finally stark, raving mad.
Forgive me if, in part as a result of these things, I think that religious ideation generally increases rather than decreases human suffering. At least it does if you're not one of the few lucky ones to have no particular struggles. Which brings me to the other fundamentalist trope, one that they don't like to overtly speak but nevertheless practice, which is that Real Christians (whatever precisely those are; they keep moving the goalposts) never suffer. Suffering is always all the sufferer's fault somehow. It is lack of faith, lack of piousness, insufficient prayer or Bible study, secret sin, "giving place" to the devil, impatience with god's endless "testing", etc etc.
Mordant, I couldn't agree with you more. Not only did my time in fundamental Christianity do me no good, it actually did me more harm. I was much more neurotic and fearful than I am now, as a non-believer. At least I realize now that life is what happens to us, sometimes through no fault of our own, and there is no god out there to blame for not protecting us from that. I have a lot more peace now than I did back then. Because even though I still have neuroses, fears, anxiety and the like, I don't feel guilty about it, and I don't feel like I am somehow failing god. Remember what some of our parents used to tell us? Quit crying or I'll give you something to cry about? Thank goodness I don't have THAT burden anymore.
Oh Lordy the tales I could tell as a believer. Since I've been an atheist I haven't had any religious altercations to speak of, except for the occasional message on FB from my uber religious cousin. The less people who know I'm an atheist around here the better. I talked about the drunk friend who is a believer and his insistence that I was wrong and he was right to the point of being obnoxious.....he said "TAke me home, take me home"!! when I disagreed with him. Grow up and realize your drunk a$$ is going to go to your imaginary hell, they are not allowed in heaven.
So I was thinking it would be fun to share some crazy encounters that you had as an atheist or agnostic with a religious person. Personally for me it was this past weekend. My mother in law who is evangelical...ugh...needed to come grab something from my house. Fine whatever. She catches a ride with a fellow evangelical women and of course Im polite so I invite the ride inside my house. When you first walk in my house you encounter my office on the left. In said office I have a bar. On the bar I keep a deer skull I found out while walking through the woods one day, cause its cool. It also helps remind me of the mortality of life and not to let myself drink too much. Deep philosophical blah blah. So the two apparently saw the bar, with the skull....and to top it off I keep candles lit in the office to mask the smell of my damn dog peeing on the carpet during thunderstorms.
So my wife tells me the next day that she just spent an hour on the phone explaining to my evangelical mother in law that I am not practicing "witchcraft and sorcery." The woman seriously called her pastor and he said I was most certainly summoning the devil.......
Ha, ha! Great idea for a thread. But it's a bar! We know what spirits you're really summoning, Jim Beam, Jack Daniels to name just a couple.
PS, thunderstorms are scary. lol Can you train your dog to use a pee pad? They have them for dogs now. They're much more disposable than carpet.
Was out in Saratoga, CA eating with my soul mate at a nice outside cafe when we were approached by a lady who had been asking everyone if they were going to the Steely Dan concert that evening and that she needed a ride to the concert. We happened to be attending the concert so I invited her to ride with us.
On our way up the mountain to the concert venue we somehow got onto the subject of blood centers for animals. This led to the discussion of blood transfusions in general. I am a life long donor and asked her if she donates...she objected defiantly and claimed to be a Jehovah Witness who does not believe in blood transfusions.
I politely asked her to please explain why her religion has an issue with blood transfusions? She could not. She kept rambling out oddities that made no sense. For example their leader says that blood is life. I agreed with her and then said so if he believes that then what issue does he have with putting life saving blood into a human or animal that needs it? She stumbled around trying to answer this and then got really insane and started mouthing off to me in my car half way up the mountain to the concert.
It was very odd to say the least, but certainly not surprising. It seems to be the typical reaction with most people who just blindly follow religions. You try to ask reasonable questions and they can only spout off what they have been taught by the religion or get insanely defensive if they are asked to think and respond with logic to the question.
^^^ I think it is possible to become psycholgically-dependent on a religion. I certainly was. I came up with all kinds of rationalizations for my ridiculous beliefs.
On our way up the mountain to the concert venue we somehow got onto the subject of blood centers for animals. This led to the discussion of blood transfusions in general. I am a life long donor and asked her if she donates...she objected defiantly and claimed to be a Jehovah Witness who does not believe in blood transfusions.
.
Early in my career I worked in the Transfusion Medicine department of our hospital, so I am (unfortunately) quite familiar with J-Wit's refusal of blood transfusions. And it's not just blood, but anything made from blood including RhoGam injections that Rh negative women often need during their pregnancy.
Thankfully if a minor had a life or death need for a transfusion, the hospital could petition the court to be able to save the child. But the pregnant woman could reject the RhoGam and cause the death of her unborn child, and there was nothing we could do.
In college there was this one guy who was very interested in trying to lead me out of atheism. He would often come sit with me at lunch trying to convert me. After Christmas break, he gave me a gift - a bible - as if I had never seen one before.
So I took his bible and spent some time, here and there, going through it and - with a color coded highlight system - marked every murder, rape and other ill deeds done by these so-called holy people.
Was out in Saratoga, CA eating with my soul mate at a nice outside cafe when we were approached by a lady who had been asking everyone if they were going to the Steely Dan concert that evening and that she needed a ride to the concert. We happened to be attending the concert so I invited her to ride with us.
On our way up the mountain to the concert venue we somehow got onto the subject of blood centers for animals. This led to the discussion of blood transfusions in general. I am a life long donor and asked her if she donates...she objected defiantly and claimed to be a Jehovah Witness who does not believe in blood transfusions.
I politely asked her to please explain why her religion has an issue with blood transfusions? She could not. She kept rambling out oddities that made no sense. For example their leader says that blood is life. I agreed with her and then said so if he believes that then what issue does he have with putting life saving blood into a human or animal that needs it? She stumbled around trying to answer this and then got really insane and started mouthing off to me in my car half way up the mountain to the concert.
It was very odd to say the least, but certainly not surprising. It seems to be the typical reaction with most people who just blindly follow religions. You try to ask reasonable questions and they can only spout off what they have been taught by the religion or get insanely defensive if they are asked to think and respond with logic to the question.
Great story.
It's like people have to look for any excuse - except for the obvious one, in order to stick with what they have been told by their religion, because if you actually thought rationally about it, you'd have to recognise that your religion is at fault.
I very often think it must be such a sad way to be - and I don't mean that in a nasty way - I mean that I feel sorry for people like that. There are so many people on this forum that I wish could see clearly, but they never will because it would be like admitting their whole life had been a lie.
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