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Sci Tech    H2'ed 12/28/21

Neuropsychology of Human Religious Behavior

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Message Abbas Sadeghian, Ph.D.
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The entire story of exodus can be refuted easily, and obviously has no basis in reality. While all Jewish people, Christians and Moslems believe in it. Noah living several hundred years. Jonah living inside of a fish for three days, and the biggest of these baseless claims, is the history of Creation itself a few thousand years ago. There are Babelion artifacts, which shows that this idea was borrowed from Babelions when Jews were slaves in Iraq.

Magical thinking: The idea of miracles is quite similar to the concepts of magical thinking, in clinical psychology. Magical thinking refers to "causal reasoning that often includes such ideas as the ability of the mind to affect the physical world, and correlation mistaken for causation"; for example, in some religions there is a belief that religious leaders, prophets, and saints, have a tendency not to decay after they die. Many of these intact bodies could be found in Europe and Asia (Saint Bernadette in France). However, when their bodies are checked properly, we easily detect different embalming methods. Ironically, the bodies of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, who are founders of communism and are all renowned atheists, are totally intact and have been on public display for decades.

In practice of psychology, magical thinking is specifically used in the differential diagnosis of patients that suffer from Schizotypal personality disorder. The other common denominators among prophets are: (2) Hearing the gods messages with teachings, and orders (auditory hallucinations) (3) Seeing things that other people cannot see (visual hallucinations) (4) Strong sense of mission, and the belief that the person is the only one who has the truth at hand (delusions of Grandeur) (5) The first contacts with god are made at younger ages, mostly before 30 (genetic nature of the illness). If we take all these characteristics and put them in the diagnostic criteria of mental disorders, we can quickly come up with the diagnosis of schizotypal personality, or one of its' different variations.

Those mental health professionals who have worked in state hospitals are quite familiar with a high number of schizophrenic patients, who claim to be God or a prophet of God and stop these claims once they receive the antipsychotic medications. The main exceptions to schizophrenic prophets are those suffering from seizure disorder. In my book, Sword and Seizure; we were able to show how Mohammed's seizure disorder caused him to believe he is a messenger of God and founded a faith which includes 25% of the population of the world.

More astonishing than these beliefs are the behavior of the devout followers of polytheistic religions. For example, if we were in India, we could observe people who would go to a grocery store, buy a can of cow urine, and wash their face with it as well as having a few sips. Considering the fact that 1.4 billion people on planet Earth believe in Hinduism, one wonders what makes a person believe in such an irrational behavior. Recently with COVID killing people all over. I saw a news clip, showing COVID patients of India cover their body in thick layers of caw manure for a divine cure. Each one of these behaviors, drinking the cow's urine, worshipping statues and building pyramids are different forms of magical thinking.

Transformation of a movement to an institution. In dealing with the issue of religion one is always faced with the fact that there is a significant difference between a religion, teachings of its' prophet, and the organized activity of that religion or transformation of a social movement to an institutions or organization.

Since any critical reference to a religion is potentially offensive, it is considered good manners to avoid talking about religious or political beliefs of people. It is quite obvious that if the masses of society do not get involved in political discussions, political activity becomes limited to those with power and money, who do not necessarily have the best interest of the masses at heart. The same concept applies to organized religion. One can make the argument that since the religious drive is instinctual, we should leave it to the individual members of the society to apply their faith to their lives at their own discretion. However, in reality religions do not function that way and in every religion, there is a lot of room for organized religion to gain momentum and power. The potential repressive power of religions could become so strong that it could cause massive and irreversible harm to the society. Examples of runaway power of religion can be seen in most corners of the world. However, the grotesque forms of it are seen in countries of the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

Even in a country as advanced and educated as the USA, a Mormon or a member of a religious cult has a better chance of getting elected to any office than an atheist. If we assume that human religious behavior has organic causes, then we can assume that we would not need a church or a mosque to be religious.

Clergymen and temples: All religions have a group of experts in that religion, whose job is to persuade the followers of that faith to practice certain behaviors and pay their hard, earned money to the temple. This is to ensure that they go to a garden in the skies that has never been seen. In order to be able to sell such a tall tale to millions of people, one cannot be just a crook or a charlatan (Jimmy Baker, jimmy Swaggart), he must really believe in what he is saying. It is the sincerity in the belief, which causes the followers to take the clergy so serious and to follow their lead. The majority of the clergymen of the world are well educated and intelligent, which makes it very difficult to keep them away from politics. They have been quite successful in imposing theocracy on many countries throughout history. Countries which have lived under theocracy, and tasted the brutal methods employed by religions, have a tendency to be less religious. The highest numbers of atheists in the world are in South Korea and France, about 20 percent. Countries like Italy have more atheists than countries like the U.S.

The practice of going to temples is similar to going to restaurants for eating a meal and having a good time, while we know that we do not need to have restaurants to fulfill our need for food. Humans are as capable of cooking on their own, as they are able to worship on their own. In other words, if we are going to be religious anyway, and the source of the religiosity is within our own brain, why do we have prophets, temples, shrines, and the continuous struggle between religion and state? The source or root of organized religion is almost identical in all religions. Religions usually begin as a movement. They are ideas which stand up against established governments and their accepted faith. They defy wealth, power, and regulations of their organized faith of the time.

Although every new religion has a prophet, either the prophet himself, or one of his followers pulls out a sword against the rich and the king and the clergy. If they are successful, there will be an Islam or Christianity. If they are not successful, they are usually devoured by bigger religions.

With time religions have a tendency to lose their intensity and defiance. Religions become more conservative and turn into an institution. When religions are changed from a movement to institutions, they lose their cause and the ability to provide assistance to the members. They begin to interfere with affairs of the state.

Since the church and mosque have an insatiable appetite for money and money comes through members. religious leaders provoke the kings to use their military might to capture new territories and "save or create" new members. Within a short time, the concept of "movement of a religion" turns into the "organized religion".

Gradually, the original revolutionary idea of a new faith turns into a large useless organization, which is expensive to run and hard to tame. Throughout human history there have been many types of organized religions. The power of organized religion is a significant factor in that society. Although, periodically organized religion has had some minor benefits for a society; it is usually a severe drain on the resources of that society. As a rule, the function of a temple is not to be a charity society. The function of a temple is to protect and preserve that given faith. The maintenance expenses of organized religions are probably only second to the expenses of the armed forces of the world. Throughout human history, the best of the human brain and treasures have been wasted on organized religion. The most vivid example of these wasteful behaviors is the murderous practice of making the pyramids of Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of slaves, building a totally useless structure, to make sure that the body of the pharaoh is protected to go to the skies. Considering the fact that grave robbers were able to get to most of these pyramids, speaks volumes about the efficiency of pyramids. Perhaps the only man-made object on planet Earth more useless, and more expensive than the pyramids, is the Sphinx. That odd looking statue was supposed to protect the pyramids. Ironically, when it came to the devilish behavior of grave robbers, Sphinx couldn't do anything neither. If the practice of organized religion was limited to making places of worship to gratify the inner drive of religious people, then it would have been reasonably tolerable. However, those buildings, shrines, or temples are utilized to educate sell a bunch of nonsense and take people's money. It is quite amusing that the all-powerful, all-knowing God cannot take care of his finances and needs money all the time. Although, since the Renaissance in the 15th century, there has been a significant attempt to push the gene of the religion and its derivatives back into the bottle. They do have a tendency to survive, and modify the faith, in order to adapt to the needs of the time.

For example, although it is strongly advised not to modify the writings of the Bible; when referring to creation, we clearly see that a reference to "one day" has been changed to "one period". Before Darwin's teachings of 19th century, all Bibles would refer to seven days of creation, one day was a regular day, from sunrise to sunset. The Bibles which are printed in the last 50 years, mostly refer to a day, as a period. This minor modification makes it possible to defend the idea of creation, against the scientific facts of evolution.

One of those rare occasions when organized religion has been a source of help, rather than hindrance, is with the case of the Amish community and their vast web of churches. Even though the practice of being Amish is badly primitive and defies any logic; the existence of the Amish church has protected the Amish people during the last 100 years. The Amish people were horribly mistreated and taken advantage of during the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century in Europe and Russia.

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I was born and raised in Tehran Iran .I came to the U.S in 1976 to study psychology. With time decided to hang my hat here and became a U.S. citizen.
My areas of interest in psychology were varied. However I mostly worked with (more...)
 

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