INTENSITY²
Politics, Mature and taboo => Political Pundits => Topic started by: Parts on June 02, 2013, 04:34:18 PM
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A leading neurologist at the University of Oxford said this week that recent developments meant that science may one day be able to identify religious fundamentalism as a “mental illness” and a cure it.
During a talk at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales on Wednesday, Kathleen Taylor was asked what positive developments she anticipated in neuroscience in the next 60 years.
“One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated,” she explained, according to The Times of London. “Somebody who has for example become radicalised to a cult ideology – we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance.”
“I am not just talking about the obvious candidates like radical Islam or some of the more extreme cults,” she explained. “I am talking about things like the belief that it is OK to beat your children. These beliefs are very harmful but are not normally categorized as mental illness.”
“In many ways that could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage, that really do a lot of harm.”
In the introduction to her book, The Brain Supremacy, Taylor noted that scientists needed “to be careful when it comes to developing technologies which can slip through the skull to directly manipulate the brain.”
“They cannot be morally neutral, these world-shaping tools; when the aspect of the world in question is a human being, morality inevitably rears its hydra heads,” she wrote. “Technologies which profoundly change our relationship with the world around us cannot simply be tools, to be used for good or evil, if they alter our basic perception of what good and evil are.”
Link (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/30/leading-neuroscientist-religious-fundamentalism-may-be-a-mental-illness-that-can-be-cured/)
Interesting, I always knew they were sick in the head and that there was a cure :tooledup: but this cure is a new one :zoinks: Just waiting for the fatwa and the death threats to start rolling in
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Curing people of wrong beliefs is not my idea of a better society. I wonder if Kathleen Taylor would have approved of Boris Pasternak's imprisonment? ???
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Curing people of wrong beliefs is not my idea of a better society. I wonder if Kathleen Taylor would have approved of Boris Pasternak's imprisonment? ???
when their 'blind faith' belief system becomes a powerful voting bloc used to get peasants to vote against their own interests....
They need curing.
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God warrior! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3mDLsyn6ns#)
Cure it.
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Certainly the typical fundamentalist would find that embarrassing.
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Problem is no two fundamentalists are the exact same.
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That's a bit of a relief, the idea that there might not be another exactly like her; though there likely is.
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Curing people of wrong beliefs is not my idea of a better society. I wonder if Kathleen Taylor would have approved of Boris Pasternak's imprisonment? ???
when their 'blind faith' belief system becomes a powerful voting bloc used to get peasants to vote against their own interests....
They need curing.
Nice of you to be so tolerant of beliefs you don't disagree with. The peasants should be forced to think good thoughts. :viking:
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Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances unless McJ et al determine they know better.
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Curing people of wrong beliefs is not my idea of a better society.
I agree. no matter how dumb people really are they should be allowed to be, As far as them being a voting block yep. but even if all those Christians wern't allowed to vote something just as dumb would replace it. Humanity is doomed, and has been for awile
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nice post
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The only possible cure for such a ubiquitous infection is most certainly a global cleansing fire.
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The only possible cure for such a ubiquitous infection is most certainly a global cleansing fire.
Yellowstone volcano
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Sacrifice some hair clippings to the Yellowstone volcano dude. start a church, enjoy tax exempt status and lure poor suckers in
I'm thinking this would be a good Idea, just don't have the heart for it though
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Curing people of wrong beliefs is not my idea of a better society. I wonder if Kathleen Taylor would have approved of Boris Pasternak's imprisonment? ???
Generally I would agree with that but when those wrong beliefs are taken to the point that they injurious to others(killing,beating, ect.) well what do you do?
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Carol Christ, a feminist theologian who got rid of her own oppressive beliefs stated that people who got away from the oppressive religion they grew up in where wise to fill the religious gap with a belief of their own. One they choose for, and one that is wholesome for them.
Being religious, when you are a religious person, stays, she says. Better fill the void with something that is good for you, or without you realising, oppressive patterns may enter your life again.
Kinda makes sense to me.
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The only possible cure for such a ubiquitous infection is most certainly a global cleansing fire.
A friend of mine refers to such disasters as "God's little pruning shears." :zoinks:
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Curing people of wrong beliefs is not my idea of a better society. I wonder if Kathleen Taylor would have approved of Boris Pasternak's imprisonment? ???
Generally I would agree with that but when those wrong beliefs are taken to the point that they injurious to others(killing,beating, ect.) well what do you do?
Your article is very clearly about curing beliefs not addressing criminal wrong doing. Don't even bother trying to conflate the two subjects.
Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances
What sort of test would you devise to determine if a religion is harmful or not Parts? What part of the 1st amendment, or the 14th amendment for that matter, gives you the right to decide which beliefs to cure others of? McJ seems willing to implement it for any group of believers, other than his own I presume*, who get together to vote for policies that they support that he (McJ) determines are against their best interest. People acting in concert to support or oppose government policies are acting in accordance with the redress of grievances clause of the first amendment.
So from what I see you and McJ are willing to entertain the idea of shit canning the prohibiting the free exercise thereof clause and McJ the redress of grievances clause of the 1st amendment. Please address that if you consider me wrong.
A leading neurologist at the University of Oxford said this week that recent developments meant that science may one day be able to identify religious fundamentalism as a “mental illness” and a cure it.
During a talk at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales on Wednesday, Kathleen Taylor was asked what positive developments she anticipated in neuroscience in the next 60 years.
“One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated,” she explained, according to The Times of London. “Somebody who has for example become radicalised to a cult ideology – we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance.”
“I am not just talking about the obvious candidates like radical Islam or some of the more extreme cults,” she explained. “I am talking about things like the belief that it is OK to beat your children. These beliefs are very harmful but are not normally categorized as mental illness.”
“In many ways that could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage, that really do a lot of harm.”
In the introduction to her book, The Brain Supremacy, Taylor noted that scientists needed “to be careful when it comes to developing technologies which can slip through the skull to directly manipulate the brain.”
“They cannot be morally neutral, these world-shaping tools; when the aspect of the world in question is a human being, morality inevitably rears its hydra heads,” she wrote. “Technologies which profoundly change our relationship with the world around us cannot simply be tools, to be used for good or evil, if they alter our basic perception of what good and evil are.”
Link (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/30/leading-neuroscientist-religious-fundamentalism-may-be-a-mental-illness-that-can-be-cured/)
Interesting, I always knew they were sick in the head and that there was a cure :tooledup: but this cure is a new one :zoinks: Just waiting for the fatwa and the death threats to start rolling in
*That appears to be pretty fucking hypocritical for someone who supposedly intended for this site to be about free speech at its inception. :thumbdn:
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Why complicate things? Lead therapy is a tested and well reliable cure :evillaugh:
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Decidedly it is much easier to let go and let god. Go to church and have a pastor interpret gods good word. Whatch the televangelists and tell me how to vote.
Yes, the brainwashed are free to make informed choices. Yes free.
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I think people should be allowed to be stupid. Most people are helplessly stupid. The catch is that stupid people make choices that inflict on the lives of thinking people, which is the case in a "democratic" election, for instance.
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I think people should be allowed to be stupid. Most people are helplessly stupid. The catch is that stupid people make choices that inflict on the lives of thinking people, which is the case in a "democratic" election, for instance.
never is that more evident than here in America where we have a red state/blue state divide.
Nearly everybody voting against heir best interests and voting for the same old people with the same ideas which no longer work. Always voting down party lines. Catering to the rich for campaign financing. And never making a move unless it is personally politically profitable.
In America, I think religious fundamentalism has everything to do with our political system. Our political system has everything to do with our everyday lives.
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People are stupid everywhere. Swedes care very little about religion, yet they voted for a government that is against the interests of 90% or so of the people here both in 2006 and 2010. The government has lowered the taxes a bit but very obviously at the expense of the famous Swedish welfare system. I think I'll be fine with my "old" disability even in the future *touches wood* but many people will not.
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People are stupid everywhere. Swedes care very little about religion, yet they voted for a government that is against the interests of 90% or so of the people here both in 2006 and 2010. The government has lowered the taxes a bit but very obviously on expense of the famous Swedish welfare system. I think I'll be fine with my "old" disability even in the future *touches wood* but many people will not.
if fundies became free thinkers then I think we'd have a shot at a third party in the US. Thus killing our current unaccountable duopoly.
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Personally i'd love it if people abandoned crazy belief systems overnight - but only if it was of their own free will and the underlying causes of them taking up those crazy beliefs were also gone.
The actual technology that could be used to cure religious fundamentalism could also be abused massively to do a whole pile of other nasty things - that kind of high-resolution low-level manipulation of the brain could be used to basically rewire and reprogram the brain in just about any way you imagine - it's pretty obvious how that could be abused.
It's not that unrealistic that a more precisely targeted form of rTMS with high spatial resolution and sufficient computing power could make this a reality - and the complex part is this stuff is also the best hope for curing serious cases of refractory depression too - in other words there's legit medical applications alongside all the 1984 stuff.
i do see the slippery slope.
I sometimes wonder if we are at the end of a slippery slope in human evolution and on the verge of the next phase.
I wonder if we will all be more similar. If that will make us better or worse off?
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Curing people of wrong beliefs is not my idea of a better society. I wonder if Kathleen Taylor would have approved of Boris Pasternak's imprisonment? ???
Generally I would agree with that but when those wrong beliefs are taken to the point that they injurious to others(killing,beating, ect.) well what do you do?
Your article is very clearly about curing beliefs not addressing criminal wrong doing. Don't even bother trying to conflate the two subjects.
Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances
What sort of test would you devise to determine if a religion is harmful or not Parts? What part of the 1st amendment, or the 14th amendment for that matter, gives you the right to decide which beliefs to cure others of? McJ seems willing to implement it for any group of believers, other than his own I presume*, who get together to vote for policies that they support that he (McJ) determines are against their best interest. People acting in concert to support or oppose government policies are acting in accordance with the redress of grievances clause of the first amendment.
So from what I see you and McJ are willing to entertain the idea of shit canning the prohibiting the free exercise thereof clause and McJ the redress of grievances clause of the 1st amendment. Please address that if you consider me wrong.
A leading neurologist at the University of Oxford said this week that recent developments meant that science may one day be able to identify religious fundamentalism as a “mental illness” and a cure it.
During a talk at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales on Wednesday, Kathleen Taylor was asked what positive developments she anticipated in neuroscience in the next 60 years.
“One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated,” she explained, according to The Times of London. “Somebody who has for example become radicalised to a cult ideology – we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance.”
“I am not just talking about the obvious candidates like radical Islam or some of the more extreme cults,” she explained. “I am talking about things like the belief that it is OK to beat your children. These beliefs are very harmful but are not normally categorized as mental illness.”
“In many ways that could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage, that really do a lot of harm.”
In the introduction to her book, The Brain Supremacy, Taylor noted that scientists needed “to be careful when it comes to developing technologies which can slip through the skull to directly manipulate the brain.”
“They cannot be morally neutral, these world-shaping tools; when the aspect of the world in question is a human being, morality inevitably rears its hydra heads,” she wrote. “Technologies which profoundly change our relationship with the world around us cannot simply be tools, to be used for good or evil, if they alter our basic perception of what good and evil are.”
Link (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/30/leading-neuroscientist-religious-fundamentalism-may-be-a-mental-illness-that-can-be-cured/)
Interesting, I always knew they were sick in the head and that there was a cure :tooledup: but this cure is a new one :zoinks: Just waiting for the fatwa and the death threats to start rolling in
*That appears to be pretty fucking hypocritical for someone who supposedly intended for this site to be about free speech at its inception. :thumbdn:
People can think, believe or say what ever they want I am concerned with actions yes the article talks about getting rid of beliefs but what of those that do harm to others because of them? Would it be better to just line the offenders up and shoot them or alter their beliefs concerning harming others? I am looking at it more from the slant of stopping further harm by people who have already caused it and been convicted of it not as a wholesale lets get rid of the fundies or make people vote a certain way.
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The Jesus faith teaches us that god has a plan, therefore why should we be responsible human beings. Also that we all sin so wtf, sin it up, ask Jesus into your heart and its all good.
Fundamentalism is an enabler of sin.
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The Jesus faith teaches us that god has a plan, therefore why should we be responsible human beings. Also that we all sin so wtf, sin it up, ask Jesus into your heart and its all good.
Fundamentalism is an enabler of sin.
Your summary of the fundamentalist view is too broad and simplistic. There are various forms of fundamentalism, some preaching strict holiness in salvation (contrary to what you think they believe).
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The Jesus faith teaches us that god has a plan, therefore why should we be responsible human beings. Also that we all sin so wtf, sin it up, ask Jesus into your heart and its all good.
Fundamentalism is an enabler of sin.
Your summary of the fundamentalist view is too broad and simplistic. There are various forms of fundamentalism, some preaching strict holiness in salvation (contrary to what you think they believe).
i know. I just don't like to go to the place where the media has preached the western civilized white how radical Islam is.
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Curing people of wrong beliefs is not my idea of a better society. I wonder if Kathleen Taylor would have approved of Boris Pasternak's imprisonment? ???
Generally I would agree with that but when those wrong beliefs are taken to the point that they injurious to others(killing,beating, ect.) well what do you do?
Punish the actions, not the thoughts - we REALLY don't want to have thoughtcrime.
That is what I mean make it part of the punishment of people convicted of these things because of their beliefs to keep it from reoccurring I would not be for doing it proactively before the fact
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People can think, believe or say what ever they want I am concerned with actions yes the article talks about getting rid of beliefs but what of those that do harm to others because of them? Would it be better to just line the offenders up and shoot them or alter their beliefs concerning harming others? I am looking at it more from the slant of stopping further harm by people who have already caused it and been convicted of it not as a wholesale lets get rid of the fundies or make people vote a certain way.
As Gareth stated if the actions concern you than punish them for what they DO. But you did not post an article about crime and punishment. You posted an article about definiong religious fundamentalism as mental illness. As far as your assertion about the beliefs of those who do harm Parts tell me about the successful efforts to rehabilitate habitual criminals, gang members, serial murderers, pedophiles. How well have those worked out?
Decidedly it is much easier to let go and let god. Go to church and have a pastor interpret gods good word. Whatch the televangelists and tell me how to vote.
Yes, the brainwashed are free to make informed choices. Yes free.
Or you can read your Union voting guide and allow the Union to decide who you vote for. People are free to join churches. People are free to leave churches. People are free to determine what they consider their best interest to be.
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People can think, believe or say what ever they want I am concerned with actions yes the article talks about getting rid of beliefs but what of those that do harm to others because of them? Would it be better to just line the offenders up and shoot them or alter their beliefs concerning harming others? I am looking at it more from the slant of stopping further harm by people who have already caused it and been convicted of it not as a wholesale lets get rid of the fundies or make people vote a certain way.
As Gareth stated if the actions concern you than punish them for what they DO. But you did not post an article about crime and punishment. You posted an article about definiong religious fundamentalism as mental illness. As far as your assertion about the beliefs of those who do harm Parts tell me about the successful efforts to rehabilitate habitual criminals, gang members, serial murderers, pedophiles. How well have those worked out?
Decidedly it is much easier to let go and let god. Go to church and have a pastor interpret gods good word. Whatch the televangelists and tell me how to vote.
Yes, the brainwashed are free to make informed choices. Yes free.
Or you can read your Union voting guide and allow the Union to decide who you vote for. People are free to join churches. People are free to leave churches. People are free to determine what they consider their best interest to be.
it is impossible to refute the logic.
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People can think, believe or say what ever they want I am concerned with actions yes the article talks about getting rid of beliefs but what of those that do harm to others because of them? Would it be better to just line the offenders up and shoot them or alter their beliefs concerning harming others? I am looking at it more from the slant of stopping further harm by people who have already caused it and been convicted of it not as a wholesale lets get rid of the fundies or make people vote a certain way.
As Gareth stated if the actions concern you than punish them for what they DO. But you did not post an article about crime and punishment. You posted an article about definiong religious fundamentalism as mental illness. As far as your assertion about the beliefs of those who do harm Parts tell me about the successful efforts to rehabilitate habitual criminals, gang members, serial murderers, pedophiles. How well have those worked out?
Decidedly it is much easier to let go and let god. Go to church and have a pastor interpret gods good word. Whatch the televangelists and tell me how to vote.
Yes, the brainwashed are free to make informed choices. Yes free.
Or you can read your Union voting guide and allow the Union to decide who you vote for. People are free to join churches. People are free to leave churches. People are free to determine what they consider their best interest to be.
They have not worked out very well unless the person wanted it to, this could make them want it too. I feel it would be worth a shot as I am opposed to the death penalty.
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The only possible cure for such a ubiquitous infection is most certainly a global cleansing fire.
A friend of mine refers to such disasters as "God's little pruning shears." :zoinks:
Yes, madam, It's in long ago foretold in the dark depths of the old testament; the end of religion.
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If we could "cure" some of the sicknesses/deficits/mental illnesses/etc that make people more likely to be fundies, that would certainly be super. That could conceivably be done on an individual level, but would also need to be done on a societal level. It wouldn't necessarily be targeting religion. Reducing psychosis, paranoia and extreme obsessiveness, for example, could conceivably reduce religiosity- but would, of course, be fought by the systems outside the individual. In general, finding ways to reduce psychosis/paranoia/obsessiveness/etc are certainly worthwhile goals, and we're still not all that great at any of them, quite frankly.
Religion often provides people with a support system, and often provides them with a sense of hope. Ripping that away without giving something else to replace it would, in some cases, be needlessly devastating.
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Meh, if they kill themselves because they don't believe in God anymore - good riddance! :thumbdn: