Claims of religious mysticism is a threadbare blanket that is used to hide any number of mental health issues and excuse antisocial behaviors.

Anyone who claims a supernatural being is giving them instruction is either dishonest or delusional.

I have never heard a "voice" in my head. Sometimes I rehearse conversations I might have, silently, but the voices are all clearly just thoughts. I would never confuse them with hearing an actual voice.

Sometimes I dream of people talking to me. Occasionally, I wake up thinking that my wife spoke to me. She didn't. She's lying there asleep.

But, I never "hear voices." If I did, I'd be very concerned and probably talk to my doctor about it.

If you're confused between your own thoughts and things you think people are saying inside your head, Occam's Razor suggests that you're not actually hearing someone's voice at all. It all came from your own thoughts, one way or another.

So, hearing "God's voice" in your head is a delusion, just as much as hearing any other voice in your head is a delusion, if you think it came from an external source. Religion is no different. Delusions are delusions.

are making a leap that has no basis in reality. None whatsoever, other than pure faith and willingness to believe. If the person who hears the voices then gets a lot of people to go along with their interpretation, then voila! A new religion is born.

This is also why a lot of religious people completely misunderstand science and the need to prove something is real, or exists, or the medicine is effective, and so on. From a very early age they hear all this stuff about faith and belief and the will of god and all of the other things that go into a religion, with absolutely NOTHING backing up any of that stuff. Then, somewhere in school, some teacher tries to lead them along the path of rationality and the scientific method and it's so far from what they've been told so far that they can't quite get it.

To believe you are speaking to god or that god is speaking to you involves a certain degree of narcissism. God really can take time out from his busy day to talk to you?

If you go to the same church as the person making the claim God is speaking to them, it's true.
If they don't go to your church, they are evil.
Unless you are Trump. God sent Trump as his last prophet and you should follow all his orders.

It was Paul, not Peter on the Damascus road....

So were many artists, scientists and leaders. If people liked what they said and how they said it we rewarded them. If they didn't like it, they locked them up. Today we have medication for some things, but there are still a lot of crazy people, making compelling visions for.the rest of us to admire or use.

Normalcy is overrated. Progress comes from those who are apart from the crowd.

Yeah, what is 'normal'?

What if someone is kookalicious? Quirky? Inna loveable and not annoying sorta way?

And a religionist to boot?

Can that be?

They are more meant to consider what is "normal" or even what is "rational." We are quirky creatures. Atheists may protest this, but they aren't necessarily more rational than religionists. I better hide now.

followers of Christ have indeed, uhm, adulterated the theology.

So then they use parts of Holy Scripture to support, align, condone their behavior as been more readily witnessed now.

I have not one thing agin you in any way, shape or form. I do consider all your words in expressing yourself here. 💙

I doubt any of them were considered mentally ill in their time, so I'd probably have to read their biographies or writings and take a wild guess.

In the Bible, the Psalmist seems bipolar, he often sounds depressed or ecstatic, even in a single psalm.

Some of the prophets hear things or see things they find distressing and try to escape from. Very much like schizophrenia.

Paul experiencing blindness on the road to Damascus matches a thing called conversion disorder.

Turning this around a bit, how do we know that some mentally ill people today are not contacting a higher plane, but are unable to mentally process what they see there?

That 'could' be possible.

But then, in your determination, a person practicing 'Christianity' who 'hears' and 'sees' things with their spiritual ears and eyes is whack?

I 'hear' things and 'see' things in my 'spirit' that come true. A lot. Not immediately, but eventually.

And no, I don't hear actual voices! Sheesh.

Like the stuff that comes to me going into this room of religion.

It's how you express your spiritual experience.

But I think a lot of people on the extreme end of human performance do have mental illnesses, or sometimes it runs in their families. There has been research that confirms this.

I've dealt a lot with mental illness in my own family, so in my world it is no kind of insult. Our culture allows negative stereotypes and jokes about the mental ill that we don't allow for any other group, and certainly not the physically ill.

My opinion that Paul may have had a mental illness is no more of an insult to him or his achievements than my opinion that Isaac Newton may have had autism or Winston Churchill may have had bipolar disorder. I know people with both of those things and see the parallels in their lives. And I think their possible mental illnesses could have contributed to their achievements because it allowed them to see things in a different way.

What. Bc he was knocked over and blinded by 'light'?

This vignette could very well be taken non-literally.

Just sayin'...

The ancient Greeks had a concept of "divine madness," so the episode could have been meant to follow that tradition.

But you do not adhere to that.

Whattabout if 'GOD' had planned all this to lead up to Him? To prepare people for or condition them, if you will, to the idea/ reality of Him?

This in reverse of Mithra, etc. stuff. Notice I dint say 'nonsense' considering He allowed before Christ foreshadowing.

I just ordered a book. From my favorite monastery. I need an assist with this.

Said this b4, I did not participate in any debating clubs in university.

Youse guys and womens are too savvy for me. ☺

The stuff about Mithra seems to be bad scholarship. But other things in Christianity are more clearly based on Jewish (of course) or Greek themes. If you think this was by Divine guidance, I can't prove it isn't.

which is what our Faith teaches.

I have no concrete 'proof' or the type of 'evidence' some insist upon that God exists or that Christ is now in glorified and resurrected physical form.

I simply cannot disavow or discard the Faith I voluntarily attempt to represent all these decades.

That all the 'Sons of God' born on or about the 25th of December to virgins in poor circumstances were planned by Satan to undermine the "True" Messiah the Son of God born on or about the 25th of December to a virgin in poor circumstances.

Truth to be told in the Ancient world, you couldn't throw a rock and not hit a Son of God born on... etc.

celebrated on 07 January according to the Julian Calendar.

The date of this RC 'doctrine'.

This another one 'explanation' of basis of The Incarnation.

BTW, I know really scant about Roman Rite theology and practices.

We communicate as Eastern Orthodox.

If what you hear from "God" is in general agreement with what your social/religious group already thinks, it's from God. If it's radically different, it's a delusion and you'll be ostracized.

Years ago I heard an NPR story about a pastor of a large church who had a revelation allegedly from God: Jesus died to save everyone, not just Christians. The pastor lost most of his parishoners. It wasn't what they wanted to hear.

“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.”

If we found out the President of the United States was talking to god through a hairdryer, the GOP would nominate him for a second term just to "pwn the libtards".

Maybe there's something to that.

disjointed fragments of sentences. I have a mental illness or two and am well aware how easily psychosis can take hold of your entire worldview.

I worry about how people who are "normal" do things I consider crazy, not because they speak directly to God, but because they are told by their preachers and other members of that community. It seems it is true that, "There is no thing a crazy person can do that can't be done by a sane person who believes."

I will go so far to include all people who believe in an "Ideal" be it heaven, a worker's paradise or capitalism. Ideals tend to encourage those who feel that the perfect "End" justifies any means (looking at you American Exceptionalism).

So before anyone goes on about Stalin, please note that there are political and cultural entities that operate as religions without god/s. Communist Russia being one example with Party Hierarchy taking the place of priests.

Let's not leave the Nazi's out of it either. Whilst you might be able to argue that a few members of the upper echelons were not religious, the vast bulk of the Nazi party and the German population believed themselves to be good Christians doing the Lord's work.

Carry on