Study: Belief in an angry God associated with variety of mental illnesses

[Free Speech Enjoyer]

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[memphis]

l'd hate to go through life thinking that an angry vengeful and omnipotent being was out to get me for all my shortcomings. That sounds like enough to drive anybody into mental illness.

[Del Tachi]

Hmm...causation or correlation?

[Free Speech Enjoyer]

Hmm...causation or correlation?

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[John Dibble]

Why did you feel the need to bold, underline, and enlarge that one section? I think she may be overreaching there given it's a correlational study - without further study, you can't say with any certainty that it's a protective in any way. It might simply be that positive people who believe are more inclined to believe in deities that are in line with their own outlook.

[Free Speech Enjoyer]

Why did you feel the need to bold, underline, and enlarge that one section? I think she may be overreaching there given it's a correlational study - without further study, you can't say with any certainty that it's a protective in any way. It might simply be that positive people who believe are more inclined to believe in deities that are in line with their own outlook.

She wasn't overreaching.  She stressed that her study shouldn't be interpreted to have found a cause for anything.

[DemPGH]

Did not read the whole thing, but if your synopsis and the snippet are representative, sure. People tend to dump their own psychology into their own god and their own religion, I think. So that's surely believable, if it argues what I think it does.

[Vosem]

I don't think I believe in a God, but if he's out there, I'm completely convinced he's the first kind.

[Kamala-Tim 2024]

If there is a God, he's a loving God, but if he was, there wouldn't be war and poverty and all that, so there isn't a God.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The sly subtle web of bigotry that creates the stigmatisation of mental illness is a disgusting thing to witness.

Right-on people are the worst sometimes. The worst.

[The Mikado]

If there is a God, he's a loving God

Why does this follow?  Why is the benevolence of a possible deity just assumed?

[Kamala-Tim 2024]

If there is a God, he's a loving God

Why does this follow?  Why is the benevolence of a possible deity just assumed?

It's not assumed, it's stated: "Love one another as I have loved you."

[The Mikado]

If there is a God, he's a loving God

Why does this follow?  Why is the benevolence of a possible deity just assumed?

It's not assumed, it's stated: "Love one another as I have loved you."

Only if you assume that the only possible God is the Christian one.

[© tweed]

If there is a God, he's a loving God

Why does this follow?  Why is the benevolence of a possible deity just assumed?

It's not assumed, it's stated: "Love one another as I have loved you."

Only if you assume that the only possible God is the Christian one.

that was on the tee for you, it is almost an indignity to respond.

[John Dibble]

Why did you feel the need to bold, underline, and enlarge that one section? I think she may be overreaching there given it's a correlational study - without further study, you can't say with any certainty that it's a protective in any way. It might simply be that positive people who believe are more inclined to believe in deities that are in line with their own outlook.

She wasn't overreaching.  She stressed that her study shouldn't be interpreted to have found a cause for anything.

When she says that its "almost protecting against psychopathology" she's indicating an interpretation. It's contradictory to saying the study shouldn't be interpreted to have found a cause for anything.

[ZuWo]

I don't understand the juxtaposition of a "loving and forgiving" God on the one hand and a "punishing" God on the other hand. From my understanding of the Bible the Christian God clearly encompasses both aspects. Additionally, I highly doubt that there are even people who first and foremost believe in an "angry" God. There are Christians who overemphasize the aspect of punishment (just like there are Christians who choose to entirely ignore it), but if you consider yourself a Christian you can hardly ignore God's message of love.

[Kamala-Tim 2024]

If there is a God, he's a loving God

Why does this follow?  Why is the benevolence of a possible deity just assumed?

It's not assumed, it's stated: "Love one another as I have loved you."

Only if you assume that the only possible God is the Christian one.

Oh, there are others - do you want them (I'm assuming you won't take Abrahamic religions)?

[John Dibble]

I don't understand the juxtaposition of a "loving and forgiving" God on the one hand and a "punishing" God on the other hand. From my understanding of the Bible the Christian God clearly encompasses both aspects. Additionally, I highly doubt that there are even people who first and foremost believe in an "angry" God. There are Christians who overemphasize the aspect of punishment (just like there are Christians who choose to entirely ignore it), but if you consider yourself a Christian you can hardly ignore God's message of love.

I'm pretty sure the study is talking about people who emphasize one over the other, primarily. The people who emphasize "loving and forgiving" may also not believe in hell or just don't think about the other side of things much.

Also, people surveyed were not necessarily all Christians.

[The Mikado]

If there is a God, he's a loving God

Why does this follow?  Why is the benevolence of a possible deity just assumed?

It's not assumed, it's stated: "Love one another as I have loved you."

Only if you assume that the only possible God is the Christian one.

Oh, there are others - do you want them (I'm assuming you won't take Abrahamic religions)?

The reason I bring it up is that religions that posit gods who aren't friendly towards or even actively hostile towards humanity do exist and have existed.  The Greek Pantheon spent most of the time it had any active connection with humanity in antagonistic or hostile acts, from Zeus' fury at Prometheus granting man fire to starting the Trojan War to end powerful demigods and other humans with godlike powers and keep man in his place.  The Greeks had a concept of "hubris," pride that you were in some way better than the Gods, that was punished by Nemesis in brutal and unfair ways: Athena challenged Arachne to a sewing competition and when Arachne won with a wonderful tapestry chronicling various divine abuses of power and acts of divine injustice, Athena transformed her into a spider.  When Niobe claimed that her 14 kids were more impressive than Leto's 2, the twins Apollo and Artemis massacre all of the Niobids.  The Greek gods were to be appeased and feared, not loved, and that makes sense.  If you believe in divine entities that are actively hostile to you and the rest of humanity, the question of why evil and bad things exist in the world becomes simple.

The Greeks are one-upped by the Babylonian gods, who flood the world and wipe out mankind because humans were too noisy and they couldn't get any sleep.  If there were such a thing as a god or goddess, it'd be so much more powerful than we are that it'd be to us what we are to an ant, and just as I don't feel particularly guilty about stepping on an ant, I doubt a god would feel particularly guilty about destroying a person.  In fact, much like cruel children who use magnifying glasses to burn ants to death, I'd be shocked if a god didn't torture people for His/Her own amusement.

[Beet]

1. I have heard it asserted that the Roman gods were just the Greek gods in different form, the Greek gods were just Egyptian gods in different form, and the Egyptian gods were just Mesopotamian gods in different form. Analyze this statement.

2. Why must we ask whether or not there is suffering in the world? Yes certainly, religions which posit Gods that must be worshiped and obeyed because they are right (Abrahamic religions) have this problem, but only because of the contradiction between an all-powerful righteous God and the existence of suffering. But if we do not posit an all-powerful righteous God, then there is no need to explain suffering. Suffering itself, only exists in relation to its opposite, pleasure. Hence to explain suffering, one would need to explain pleasure. The reason why we focus on suffering is that we wish we would not have to suffer, not because its existence is particularly mysterious.

[John Dibble]

1. I have heard it asserted that the Roman gods were just the Greek gods in different form, the Greek gods were just Egyptian gods in different form, and the Egyptian gods were just Mesopotamian gods in different form. Analyze this statement.

The Roman and Greek gods are clearly quite similar, and given the proximity of Greece and Italy it wouldn't be unusual for a close variation of one religion to come about as populations migrate and interact. That said, the mythology as well as the theology of the Greek/Roman and Egyptian religions were very different and though the former may have been influenced by the latter a some point they are clearly not the same. There are similarities in what types of gods where present, but the most of the themes were common to life in the ancient world regardless of where you were in particular. I can't comment on the Mesopotamian gods being the same as the Egyptian ones, since I'm not familiar with that mythology.

[DemPGH]

1. I have heard it asserted that the Roman gods were just the Greek gods in different form, the Greek gods were just Egyptian gods in different form, and the Egyptian gods were just Mesopotamian gods in different form. Analyze this statement.

It's possible to argue that they are all repackaged, but it's easier to argue that evolution is at work here again. When human beings could not explain the nature of things while having a driving desire to do just that, they invented gods and God, all of whom are similar. Multiple gods and mini-gods ended up in one God with a host of saints as a type of corporate consolidation of sorts.

And study of ancient humans will verify this. Humans have always, by nature of their being human, possessed a wonderful imagination, and a desire to not only know everything - but to know it now. So they invented all these gods. 30,000 years ago humans sculpted fish gods, lion gods, and other deities. Well into Medieval times the Anglo-Saxons approached deifying the boar.

2. Why must we ask whether or not there is suffering in the world? Yes certainly, religions which posit Gods that must be worshiped and obeyed because they are right (Abrahamic religions) have this problem, but only because of the contradiction between an all-powerful righteous God and the existence of suffering. But if we do not posit an all-powerful righteous God, then there is no need to explain suffering. Suffering itself, only exists in relation to its opposite, pleasure. Hence to explain suffering, one would need to explain pleasure. The reason why we focus on suffering is that we wish we would not have to suffer, not because its existence is particularly mysterious.

I think the short answer is, why would God "love his children" yet inflict them with everything from arthritis to fibromyalgia to cancer? What parent would do that to his / her child? Suffering as a matter of fact is the result of a very, very imperfect creation. Reality says it's a product of our condition as great apes. Not to mention the children who are raped, born with AIDS, are starving, while others are not and live in comfort. In the end, that some societies have made more progress in working out their problems while others have not is the answer.

[afleitch]

1. I have heard it asserted that the Roman gods were just the Greek gods in different form, the Greek gods were just Egyptian gods in different form, and the Egyptian gods were just Mesopotamian gods in different form. Analyze this statement.

The Roman and Greek gods are clearly quite similar, and given the proximity of Greece and Italy it wouldn't be unusual for a close variation of one religion to come about as populations migrate and interact. That said, the mythology as well as the theology of the Greek/Roman and Egyptian religions were very different and though the former may have been influenced by the latter a some point they are clearly not the same. There are similarities in what types of gods where present, but the most of the themes were common to life in the ancient world regardless of where you were in particular. I can't comment on the Mesopotamian gods being the same as the Egyptian ones, since I'm not familiar with that mythology.

The similarities are mostly coincidental; you could say 'sun god a = sun god b', but then again most societies had sun gods with similar properties. Most societies had war gods, like Yahweh who was originally the Caananite war god in their pantheon of gods.

[The Mikado]

1. I have heard it asserted that the Roman gods were just the Greek gods in different form, the Greek gods were just Egyptian gods in different form, and the Egyptian gods were just Mesopotamian gods in different form. Analyze this statement.

The tendency to analogize gods and goddesses of peoples that pagan civilizations encountered to their own gods does not mean that the gods started out the same gods, but syncretic traditions were strong enough that there was a lot of merging going on.  The Carthaginian chief god Baal Hammon reminded the Romans strongly of Saturn (Greek Kronos, father of Zeus/Jupiter and previous king of the Gods), so the Romans just said that the Carthaginians were followers of Saturn.  They were perfectly willing to say that the Babylonian Ishtar was their Aphrodite/Venus or that Marduk was their Zeus/Jupiter, or that, later, the Norse Thor was Zeus/Jupiter and Freya was Aphrodite/Venus.  The Egyptian gods/goddesses were a bit harder to analogize (and the Greeks and Romans both mocked the idea of a god with an animal body like Anubis), but they found considerable followings in Greece/Rome as well.  There's a story that the Romans originally wanted to put a statue of the Jewish God in the Pantheon as "Iao" (Latinization of Yahweh) and were utterly perplexed at how offended the Jews became.

The Romans, besides the willingness to analogize the gods of their subjects to their own, were also willing to take in new gods, though not always happily.  The first major foreign cult in Rome was the Phrygian cult of the Great Mother Cybele, and part of the deal of Cybele worship was that the only people allowed to be priests were eunuchs, something the Romans found very unnerving, especially when their sons started volunteering for the priesthood and willingly endured castration for it.

[Beet]

Thanks for all the good responses!