You are such a troll. Why even post if you arnt going to engage with the topic?

The topic is about extremism, you keep trying to straw man it into mainstream religions. The concept of extremism has been brought into the mainstream. We have spent 10 years and billions on fighting terrorism, and to deny that religious fundamentalism is at the heart of this issue is not even naive, not sure there is a word for it.

Many Christian organizations have done quite a lot to battle extremism, they have acknowledged it exists and that it is a problem. It is strange to me that you are fighting so hard against me on this topic. It shows your purpose clearly, you are only concerned with trolling me personally.

The conclusion of if fundamentalism can or should be treated as a mental disorder is something that should be talked about. In order to really come to a conclusion one would need more than just speculation, so we will not be getting to the heart of this in this thread. It will take empirical data gleaned from studies that incorporate new technologies.

Does raising a child in an environment that promotes uncritical examination of the world AND fosters extremist ideology or unscientific beliefs change the brain of that child in a pathological way which can lead to extremist behaviors?

That is a valid question. Not really something we should make fun of just becuase we hold an idea that god exists, or that we think you should pray, or any other benign concept.

If we had 2 children, one who was raised to appreciate critical thinking, and another that was raised by extremist who never taught that child science or to even question, and we could watch as the brain centers were activated during a particular activity and see the child with critical thinking skills engaging the parts of the brain used to reason, and the other child does not . . . that is educational. That would explain how the expectations of the parents, how the problem solving pressures either applied or not applied directly affect brain development and/or ability . . . well then that would be science worthy of research.

I cannot fathom how this would not be worthy. I do see it is a tender subject, and I can see how many think the ramifications of labeling a disorder can be dramatic, especially if not applied properly. Plenty of examples of such misguided attempts.

That is what makes this subject so important to get correct information. Which is why research is needed.

I have made myself clear. I know anyone honestly reading this will understand my points in context of my examples.

I'm just going to address this one sentence.

The original post was about ONE GUY who made a misogynistic statement. So he thinks that women shouldn't be President, big whoop, he's allowed his opinion. Regardless of if he states that the opinion originated from Religion or whatever.

From this launching pad, you and Redykeulous have assumed he was taught this as a child. You have no proof of that. Where is your vaunted scientific mind? Shouldn't you question that at all? How do you know he was taught this as a child?

Christians have thrown a lot of support behind Palin and Bachmann. If it was a mainstream Christian belief that women shouldn't be leaders, would that be true?

What you have with this one guy is an extreme belief, which we don't know when he developed. If he teaches this to his kids, that's unfortunate, but it's a slippery slope to suggest that it's child abuse. What happens when the state decides it's child abuse to teach your kids that it's okay to a homosexual? What happens when the state decided it's child abuse to teach your kids about evolution? You'd be up at arms! But you see nothing wrong with declaring other people's beliefs to be abusive to children. This is a double standard and it's something that you really need to get your head around. Just because you think you are right, doesn't mean you are. And even if you are right, that doesn't give you the moral authority to force other's to think, believe or act like you do.

WIN YOUR ARGUMENT IN THE ARENA OF IDEAS. Don't make it illegal for your opponents to disagree with you, if the evidence supports you, people will move to your side of the aisle. It might not be as fast as you would like, but it will happen and without the use of force.

I find the use of force to be repugnant. Force should only be used when there is no other option. Declaring some people insane or taking their kids away from them because they don't think the way you think they should is a gross misuse of force.

I agree with you.

Edit: I agree with the post ^

Science is one thing, what you do with it can be another.

Edit further: I presented no double standards, nor did I speak to legislation of any kind, these were only concerns within your own mind reading this discussion, concerns I mentioned and agree are serious and not to be taken lightly.

I will respond to this one thought.

Not necessarily, in fact this is the problem with faith based thinking, it trumps reasoned debate. No objective criteria required. Some ideologies ARE dangerous. We all know that what you teach your child has an impact on there development, and it is a slippery slope to legislate beliefs, and not something I advocate.

Here is an example of a mental disorder we do not lock people up for having, but is clearly an issue with belief as it meets a physical response: Fear.

Phobias can be a learned response, and thus the precedent for mental disorders being created due to a learned response exists.

We DO legislate what a child's education should look like. It should be based on as accurate a model of reality as we can get, and more than one court battle has ended a given practice becuase it was not based on reality.

Spider, in many ways you are abstracting what is being said here, and taking it to extremes yourself. You are imagining a society were everyone is told what to think, but this is exactly what I would battle against. I want a society were everyone is taught HOW to think, not what to think. They can be shown HOW to think and HOW that thinking is accurate and testable.

Magical thinking is dangerous, logical thinking can be shown to be correct. Magical thinking requires appeals to authority.

Thank you for reengaging with the topic and expressing your concerns honestly, it is the only way we can understand one another, and you have brought up some very good points.

Bushid....wrote: "Magical thinking is dangerous, logical thinking can be shown to be correct. Magical thinking requires appeals to authority. "

Maybe a better descriptor for 'magical thinking' might be "Self-Deception".

I do not necessarily see how magical thinking "requires" appeals to authority.

<<Just my two cents worth.>>

This is called a "Begging The Question" fallacy. You are assuming that non-faith based thinking is correct. I believe that people can think for themselves and decide what is right for them, regardless of how they are raised.



Excuse me? Could you explain this, because I'm unsure of what you are talking about. It seems you are claiming that I am "imagining a society were everyone is told what to think", which is something I don't want.



And belief in science doesn't require appeals to authority? Absolutely it does! Only by performing every experiment ever performed by a scientist could you no longer be relying on another's authority.



I think my first post made a very good point. Let's look at the original post, shall we?

"The science of mind (psychology) is finding evidence that there are links between many disorders, autism, Asperger's and schizophrenia for example.

I contend that it's possible the link between those three may find a connection in the brains of people who suffer from extreme religious fundamentalism. I call it RF disorder and it tends to be subject to early onset, possibly due to persistant requsts from authority figures that a child learn to think illogically. "

This is clearly stating that autism, Asperger's (a form of autism) and schizophrenia are all results of "persistant requsts from authority figures that a child learn to think illogically".

I find this incredibly insensitive and disgusting. To add anything else to this thread is to dirty my hands. Sure, maybe she was just joking. I don't think some things are funny to joke about. This thread, with the first post, crossed every line of good taste.

That is NOT an example of begging the question.

Even if Bushido does assume that non-faith based thinking is correct, that was not the point being made, therefore, it cannot be begging the question. He was showing you how your comment regarding evidence was false. The point being made was that faith trumps reason, i.e. that faith-based thinking uses pre-existing belief as the grounds for reasoning, in spite of the evidence. We know that this is the case with extremists. When and if there is an explanation which better explains the way things are, and is supported by fact and observation, those deep in faith-based thinking will reject that explanation if it conflicts with what has been taken upon faith(with what the Bible says). That is not being assumed here spider. Rather, it has been proven time and time again.

Here's why it occurs...

Having faith is completely trusting in the truthfulness of a source. It is having no doubt that the source is truthful. In the case of extreme religious fundamentalism, it is very clear that those who hold such faith for long periods of time have/will/could develop an unshakable conviction in their belief system. As already mentioned, this has proven to be true time and time again, often in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Thus, faith-based thinking often does trump reason and for that alone it can be dangerous. Subsequently, the ground has been given to confidently conclude that your comment regarding supporting evidence moving people(of faith) is false. Rather, it is you who have assumed that evidence moves all people in the same way, in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Funny how that worked.



I find that this claim is in complete opposition to the book upon which your position rests it's laurels. According to the book, upon which your religion is based, people do not decide what is right/wrong for them... the God of Abraham does.

And here's the problem with those who do not read the Bible nor understand it's history and purpouse.


Care to show me supporting evidence for your claim?

Awwwww... here we go again with the presupposition that one is somehow privy to the mental/physical activities of another, as if you know that I've never read the Bible.

Let's take a slightly different tack.

I have no need to show evidence for that claim. Rather, I scoff at the request and choose to keep the thread on topic. I'm really not interested.

It is relevant to the topic.

The topic is religious fundementalism (disorder)...


So you get to assert the religious person's knowledge of the Bible and how it's applied?



You made the claim, and now I get the standard "no need to show evidence" cop-out...

You made a claim, you were challenged on that claim by Peter_Pan69, but now you claim that "I have no need to show evidence for that claim". If you won't back up the claim, then it's a gratuitous assertion and can be refuted by simply saying "Nuh uh!" (blowing a raspberry is entirely optional at this point)

Quick prediction!

creative will do some quick research and then we'll quickly dispell the "blind faith" myth...

The substance of my post is being entirely ignored in lieu of focusing upon an irrelevant and ridiculous point.

And this comment...

--

"So you get to assert the religious person's knowledge of the Bible and how it's applied?"

--

...is indicative of a breach between thought/belief and fact/reality. I mean, I have no idea what you're even talking about here. I've not asserted the religious person's knowledge of the Bible, nor how it's applied. I merely pointed out a contradiction which, really, is irrelevant to the topic but true none-the-less.

Nuh-uhhhhhhhhhh!

Ok then spider. So, I retract the claim and subsequently concede that the God of Abraham does not determine what is right/wrong for people. Nevermind the Ten Commandments, nevermind the Golden Rule, never mind the Garden of Eden and much of the Old Testament

Happy now... you win!



Nevermind the book that the religion is based upon. Jeeez!

The "substance" of you post is entirely dependant on your gratuitous assertion....

Absolutely it is! I stated that people will gravitate to the side with the best reasoning and he said (essentially) that "No they won't agree with the non-faith side, because they are brain washed." In other words, if they go to the non-faith side, it's because they are thinking and if they don't go to the non-faith side, it's because they are brain washed. Either way, his assumption is that the non-faith side is right. This is begging the question.



It was the point of my comment above, so it is relevant.



This "faith-based thinking" is confusing. You realize that people can have faith and still think, right? The Catholic churches default position is that evolution happened and the earth is billions of years old. There are Catholics that believe that way and there are Catholics who don't, but they all share the same faith in Jesus. This clearly shows that your fears that "faith trumps reason" is groundless.



Where is the evidence of this? A few nutjobs? How about the thousands of scientists over the past 2000 years who were also Christians? Or Muslims? Or Jews? Or Hindu? Or Buddhist?



The Bible tells us of the Bereans, who searched the scriptures every day looking to be sure there were no contradictions or problems, so that they would know it was the truth. Christians are told to emulate the Bereans. So at the very least, the statement above is not true for Christians.



Your few anecdotes don't constitute evidence. I've gone over this already with Bushidobillyclub.



I submit the thousands of scientists who were also Christians to disprove this obnoxiously elitist line of thinking.



Evidence absolutely does change people's minds. It won't change everyones' mind, but every Generation, more people will believe. Like when Christian scientists said the Universe had a definite beginning, it took the atheist scientists years to finally agree with the Christians, but it finally happened. Or when a Christian scientist said that the continents drifted to their current positions, it took a generations for atheist scientists to accept the evidence, but they finally did.



If they choose to be Christians, that is a choice in itself. If people become Christian, they still can choose what to believe. There are Christians who believe in an old earth and young earth. There are Christians who believe in the big bang and some who don't. There are Christians who believe in evolution and some who don't. You are trying very hard to make things black and white, when they clearly aren't.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/video/2007/dec/09/video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1hFW_z75IRo

... The above videos are about the unfathomable human abuses, even to toddlers, that have developed in Africa due to the direct affiliation with and influence from the religious bigotry that is passed on to cultures who have little understanding of the history of Western civilization or little to no education regarding the modern world.

In other parts of Africa, Western evangelical missionaries who left their own countries as defeated soldiers in their anti-gay war, have taken their religious extremism as propaganda to the political arena of governments who are struggling between values of human rights and religious moral code that was left to them from the Western colonialism of 100 year ago.

The behaviors noted are ATROCITIES and they are not, strictly speaking, totally the fault of those perpetrating physical harm and mental abuse, for such things have been taught to these people as part of a religion.

Over one hundred years since Western colonialism in Africa and this is what has progressed through religious extremism originally developed by governments to rally support for the colonization effort.

One piece of propaganda certainly took hold and it seems obvious that the "White man's burden" is still a dominating force in the call of the evangelical missionaries to Africa.
Bringing Western religious extremism with its Western bigotry into theologically colonized third world communities and countries seems to make those who cannot force their religious morals into the laws of modern thinking countries feel like they are accomplishing their (un)godly mission after all.

What most of those evangelical missionaries have done should be considered a crime no less worthy of the world’s distain than the crimes of Hitler and Stalin, or more currently the Sudanese government & Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for allowing ethnic cleansing to continue in Sudan.

In my opinion, every country should put a ban on religious missionary visa's and it should be a crime for any religious person from one country to go to another for the purpose of spreading their gospel to the political elite or social elite of that country.
This is how the ‘disorder’ of ‘Religious Fundamentalism’ spreads throughout the world. This is another reason why it needs to be explored. The suicide bombers are another example of religious extremism.

Check out this link:

http://www.atheistmedia.com/2010/05/sharmeen-obaid-chinoy-inside-school-for.html
WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 2010
Inside A School For Suicide Bombers | TED2010


And by the way: I do not suggest that missions of mercy be abandoned? Absolutely not, but let those who have a religious conviction leave it behind when they choose to put their merciful altruistic foot forward.

Which is???

Spidercmb covered it quite well...



let it go....