A few days ago, in a post on faith healing, President Dave Silverman of the American Atheists wrote: “We have to accept religion as brainwashing. The (hyper) religious must be recognized as mentally damaged.” He’s not the first to associate religion with mental illness or “mental disorder.”
Bill Maher called religion “a psychological disorder.” At The End of Faith, Sam Harris wrote, “It’s hard to imagine a series of beliefs that are more suggestive of mental illness than those at the center of many of our religious traditions.” Facebook pages claiming that religion is a “mental disorder” have thousands of members. A list of “7 reasons why religion is a mental illness” has been shared with several atheist websites.
It seems clear to me that religion is not a form of mental illness. Considering it, one reflects a shallow view of mental illness and religion. Or, worse yet, a knowing attempt to use mental illness as an insult.
This topic is worthy of long consideration. I have interviewed two atheist activists. Then I compiled five reasons why atheists should avoid this statement.
5 Reasons People Should Not Call Religion A Mental Disorder
A variety of people have compared religion to mental disease. Here are five reasons why people should stop this dilemma parallel.
1. Even If Well-intended, The Equation Fails
I hope that most atheists who consider religion to be a mental illness do not mean it as an insult. And instead, they have a mistaken view of mental illness or religion. Anyway, the fact is that religion is not a form of mental illness.
Atheist and mental health campaigner Miri Mogilevsky made a statement in an email discussion. He said religion and mental illness are separate psychological processes. Religious beliefs may derive from cognitive processes that are essentially adaptive. These include searching for patterns and feeling like a part of something greater than oneself.
People who cannot leave the house without a heart attack or who have an urge to wash their hands hundreds of times a day are having problems. These problems conflict with their ability to live their lives,” Mogilevsky said. Except in serious situations, religion does not work in this way.
Simply put, you can find religious beliefs irrational. But that doesn’t mean they’re a manifestation of a mental disorder.
2. Mental Illness Is Not An Insult To You
Certainly, not all atheists who say that religion is a mental illness do so to insult believers. But some do. This should go without saying. But it’s essential that mental illness should never be regarded as an insult. It is because people with mental illness face widespread stigma.
Calling religion a type of mental disease as a means of insulting believers is crude and wrong. It also often contributes to a culture that marginalizes those with mental illness and identifies them solely by their disorder. Atheists, agnostics, and humanists should actively support all individuals’ dignity. And they should strive to challenge dehumanization rather than contribute it.
3. Religion Is Often Associated with Wellbeing
Religion is not a type of mental illness. It is actually associated with wellbeing in the U.S.
Religion is a lot—a famously indefinable concept. But for our purposes, we can use the word to apply to supernatural belief systems constructed around them, said David Yaden. He is a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center. He is operating in collaboration with the UPenn Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. If that is our concept, religion completely cannot be [categorized] as a mental disorder.
Empiric evidence often points to the opposite conclusion, Yaden said. He referenced the work of Dr. Ken Pargament. When it comes to facilitating mental wellbeing, researches showed that religious people have:
- More positive emotions
- Greater meaning in life
- More pleasure in life
- Better care for trauma
- Are more mentally stable
- And more altruistic and socially linked
- Also not more diagnosed with the mental disease than others
There are various reasons for these correlations—such as the fact that non-religious people often lack access to the kinds of resources that religious groups offer. It is a bit ironic to term religion a mental illness when it is often associated with wellbeing.
Likewise, a study from March this year found that those who hold devout religious beliefs were less fearful of death than those with uncertain ones. And that curiously devout atheists still had little fear of death and the afterlife.
4. This Parallel Prevents People from Trying To Understand and Learn From Religion
Mogilevsky said that labelling religion a mental illness prevents one from finding information on what draws people to religion. He recently wrote a long article challenging atheists who call religion a mental illness. It’s a great way to stop thinking about what we might do to make the modern community more welcoming and inclusive. And what kind of services we lack that people can find in religious communities.
This concern is shared by Yaden, who recently began serving as the assistant chaplain of the Humanist Chaplaincy at Rutgers.
The secular society needs to learn how powerful religion can be in supporting mental health, said Yaden. In a society based on secular values, we need to be very aware of what we wish to pathologize. True rights and freedom require the right to believe what one can do without fear of being labelled ‘ill.’
Indeed, Atheists would do well to remember this, as this false diagnosis is also turning us back.
5. Atheists and Theists Share The Challenges Of Being Human
There is a great deal of suffering in the universe. And atheists and theists are part of that. Instead of creating unfair cheap shots—especially at the cost of a marginalized group of citizens that includes some atheists—we should express compassion towards people who have different experiences and understand them. And, most importantly, we have more in common than it might seem.
Trying to say that religion is a mental illness obscures the fact that all of us—yes, atheists too—regularly indulge in irrational thought, Mogilevsky said. If thinking irrationally is a mental disorder, then we’re all mentally ill. And the term is losing its meaning. We should save that word for cases in which people struggle going through their life.
The Bottom Line
Other research shows that spirituality is helpful to mental health. Focusing on spiritual and religious activities such as meditation or community service instead of focusing on materialism may lead to feeling more fulfilled and satisfied in everyday life.
It seems like there are certain negative connections between religion and mental illness. There is no evidence to support classifying it as an illness, regardless of Freud’s view on the matter.
