Replies

1. God created us with the possibility of having debilitating mental disorders that would cause us to behave in what our religions would declare to be sinful ways.
2. These debilitating conditions include alcoholism, depression leading to self-inflicted wounds or even suicide, anxiety disorders leading to perceived cowardice, epileptic seizures, schizophrenia, etc.
3. We're only now discovering the antidotes to these mental disorders.
4. For centuries people were shunned, excommunicated, burned at the stake, etc. because they were believed to be possessed or demonic or inveterate sinners.
5. Now people have the choice of medicating (rather than praying) their "sins" away or being declared sinful.

This requires some pause for reflection.

This sure sounds like a keyhole-viewed, cynical understanding of both medicine and spirituality.

Depression does have a powerful spiritual side. It is a type of self focused hatred. It also is found in many cases to be susceptible to influence (to the worse or to the better) through physical and chemical means.

Talking about depressions as though they were all one illness is like talking about fevers as though they were all one illness.

Yes I plug for a specific faith asserting it identifies a true God. I also know a lot of spiritual rackets or cults make claims about this same God which are palpably false.

1) God created a physical universe.

2) God created Adam with free will and put all things physical under his authority.

3) Adam abdicated that authority to Satan and Satan corrupted everything.

Q.E.D. You can’t blame the existence of cancer, tornadoes, bot flies, and entropy on God unless you’re thereby affirming a preference for having been created without a will of your own.

Oh, thank you for these questions.

I could write all night.

Demonic possession, when it was thought to have happened, was not considered a fault of the, ah, possessee — unless s/he had called on the demon.

For around 500 years the normal Catholic official wisdom about possession was that one should only conclude that when medical reasons had been ruled out. The failures were in the undeveloped natural philosophies. The theoretical/theological side was pretty much in order.

However, it IS true that there remain some superstitious jerks among Christians.

I would not say that ALL “defects of will” can be medicated away. For example, you're the second person I've encountered today who has based some negative opinions about the Church on ignorance of what the Church officially teaches and prescribes. I don't think there is yet a medicine to address basing judgments on what amounts to poorly substantiated or unsubstantiated rumor.

I WILL say this about the generosity and compassion of the modern scientists dubious about theism generally and Christians specifically:

When my kid was 15 months old, I was told she would die a slow and lingering death as a destructive epilepsy trashed her brain. (At least some of the scientists were wrong on that one. She turns 30 this November.)

At the time I was an Episcopal priest. (I am now a Catholic lay-D00d.) We had recourse to the local pediatric neurology gods, among whom was a certain Dr. Dreyfus. The usual routine was that he would schedule an appointment right slap in the middle of nap time. Then he would be 45 minutes late. Then, when my kid cried as he examined her, he would call her “spoiled.”

So,one day I showed up with my kid, and I had come from “work” so I was wearing my “clericals” (black suit and shirt, backwards collar.) This meant that I got to listen to how Christians in the middle ages thought epilepsy was demonic and were just SEW superstitious and all.

While my kid was, according to him, dying.

I'm sure there is some good, scientific, anti-church explanation about why, when a father's only child is dying it is good to call him a jerk.