In Reply to: Re: Deadly Doctrine posted by Yvonne on May 12, 2005 at 03:34:06:
Yvonne, I didn't take your post as an attack against me. Nor was I being defensive. I was merely pointing out that you had come to a conclusion about the book without having read it. If the quotes I provided resonated with you, then perhaps you will find the book will add to your knowledge in this area. At the very least, it will give you another perspective.
In one of your posts to Susie in this thread you say,"Personal experience is extremely valid." The author of this book bases his thesis on 25 years of personal clinical experience as a psychiatrist. I'm not sure if he's still alive, but when the book was published in 1992 he was Professor Emeritus in Psychiatry at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. I provided only the first 4 paragraphs of the introduction, but perhaps the final few paragraphs will clarify where he is coming from. If you take the time to read the book, you may very well find that it is well thought out and reasoned. Here's the final pars. of the intro:
"This book does not deal with the machinations of Christian doctrine on the social level, however; readers interested in the possible relationship between religious belief and man's inhumanity to man (and to woman) on a social, global level are referred elsewhere.
"Nevertheless, the bloody legacy of Christianity to the history of Western culture is directly relevant to my argument in this book, for it represents one attempt to make sense out of clinical observations made over a twenty-
five year career as a psychiatrist working with individuals, couples, and families who have manifested a wide range of psychiatric, emotional, and interpersonal problems. As existing theoretical models of human behavior (psychoanalysis, systems theory, and learning theory, for example) reached the limits of their
explanatory power, I was moved to go beyond these conceptual approaches and to examine our society itself in order to determine the lessons people
learn about life from its structural givens, as well as what they pick up in the cultural nourishment they assimilate. It soon became evident that in the social woodwork of the Western world, the cross of Jesus Christ had been
carved deeply over the past two thousand years, and that even people who never darkened a church door were strongly affected by many teachings of
Christianity, often without even knowing it.
"This book is written in the hope that it will stimulate others interested in human well-being to explore further the thesis that those social attitudes derived directly or indirectly from Christian doctrine are incompatible with
healthy human development. Despite seven years of personal analysis, my training as a psychoanalyst, and a quarter century of experience as a psychiatrist,this was a difficult issue for me to pursue. My early upbringing was in the Anglican (Episcopalian) faith, and many of the messages emanating from that institution still reverberate at some level of my being. From the dimly remembered past come the words of Second Peter, Chapter II, Verse 1: "But there were false prophets also among my people, even as there shall be false prophets among you, who privily shall bring upon themselves quick destruction." There is some truth to the old saying, "You can take the boy out of the church, but you cannot take the church out of the boy who continues to live inside the man."
"Evidence that religion is irrelevant would not move me to write a book; there are already many excellent works on that topic. However, evidence that religion is not only irrelevant but actually harmful to human beings should be of interest, not only to other behavioral scientists, but to anyone who finds it difficult to live an unexamined life. Finally, the argument advanced in this volume should stir the political decision makers, who complain about the high cost of health care even while continuing to subsidize that very institution that may be actually making the public "sick."
"Traditional believers tend to cling to their religious systems with a tenacity not demonstrated in the area of scientific research. Addictive belief systems become so much a part of the identity of some people, that it is often impossible to determine where the individual being stops and the religious group-think starts. At the same time, the humanity of other believers has not been completely stifled by their religious indoctrination; and I consider many in this group to be my friends. I earnestly hope that our personal relationship is strong enough to withstand the possibly alienating effect of this book, that the strength of the human bond we share will enable us to agree to disagree about existential matters."
I heartily share that last point with regards to my posts on this board. There are some who frequent this board that I'm able to carry on a congenial discussion with even though we disagree about existential matters. Rocky Top immediately comes to mind, but there are others. You are probably one as well, though I haven't really intereacted with you and so don't know where you stand existentially. There are others who I simply ignore because of their tone and/or agenda.