EXAMPLE: PAT ROBERTSON CLAIMS GOD TOLD HIM BUSH WILL BE RE-ELECTED. CONCLUSION: THIS MAN HAS A SERIOUS MENTAL PROBLEM.
i think the incidence of schizophrenia has been underreported similar to mad cow disease hearing and acting on voices supernatural or otherwise is cause for further inverstigation perhaps with MRI brain scans to look for obvious holes in the respective brains of prominent christians and those not so prominent but equally as vociferous would be most enlightening vegetarians, christians, or vegetarian christians or otherwise :-/
While it may or may not be true that Pat Robertson does have a serious mental problem, it does not follow that all religious people are schizophrenic or suffering from mental illness. Belief in God is not recognized by any accepted major psychiatric association as an indicator of schizophrenia or any other mental illness per say. Those who act on the basis of "hearing voices of God" in ways that are illegal, immoral, or irrational are deemed to be mentally ill. Sirhan Sirhan claimed that God told him to shoot Robert F. Kennedy, and he was considered mentally ill by the psychiatric community. Your comments are fallacious and an example of all or nothing thinking as well as the "Guilt by Association Fallacy." In fact, most psychologists consider relious belief an aid in establishment of mental health for those needing therapy for mental illness. The following article excerpt is from the BBC News. Clinical basis to religion's role Psychiatrists acknowledge that a mentally ill patient's strong religious beliefs can provide a solid platform for therapy. This is because much therapy will begin with something the patient holds as certain and building from there. Link to above article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/321622.stm
i don't care what's recognized by who. do you think you guys are going to be eager to diagnose yourselves? like 90something percent of people are religious. and the few that aren't, how many have the balls to come out and make this claim? think about it, has your god ever been proven to exist outside your mind? you guys really do have a problem.
YOU: i have voices in my head, not from myself. DOC: hmm that sounds like a serious mental illness. i'll give you some medicine to help, but if it's severe, you may need to be hospitalized. YOU: but wait, don't you hear them, too? DOC: from who? who is the other person? YOU: jesus christ. DOC: oh ok, you're fine. i hear him, too. praise the lord.
Ad hominem, in the vein of poisoning the well fallacy. Description of Poisoning the Well Fallacy This sort of "reasoning" involves trying to discredit what a person might later claim by presenting unfavorable information (be it true or false) about the person. This "argument" has the following form: 1. Unfavorable information (be it true or false) about person A is presented. 2. Therefore any claims person A makes will be false. This sort of "reasoning" is obviously fallacious. The person making such an attack is hoping that the unfavorable information will bias listeners against the person in question and hence that they will reject any claims he might make. However, merely presenting unfavorable information about a person (even if it is true) hardly counts as evidence against the claims he/she might make. This is especially clear when Poisoning the Well is looked at as a form of ad Homimem in which the attack is made prior to the person even making the claim or claims. The following example clearly shows that this sort of "reasoning" is quite poor. Before Class: Bill: "Boy, that professor is a real jerk. I think he is some sort of eurocentric fascist." Jill: "Yeah." During Class: Prof. Jones: "...and so we see that there was never any 'Golden Age of Matriarchy' in 1895 in America." After Class: Bill: "See what I mean?" Jill: "Yeah. There must have been a Golden Age of Matriarchy, since that jerk said there wasn't." Examples of Poisoning the Well 1. "Don't listen to him, he's a scoundrel." 2. "Before turning the floor over to my opponent, I ask you to remember that those who oppose my plans do not have the best wishes of the university at heart." 3. You are told, prior to meeting him, that your friend's boyfriend is a decadent wastrel. When you meet him, everything you hear him say is tainted.
is an old man. Maybe his hearing is going bad. It could have been that God told him that Bush will be re-infected, rather than re-elected.