The Argument of Religious Motivation versus Mental Illness

In recent months I’ve come across an increasingly used scapegoat by the religiously-afflicted. It’s one that you may be familiar with because it is an associative argument that parallels the debate on gun control in the United States. Proponents of gun rights increasingly assert that it’s not the gun, it’s the mentally ill person behind the gun responsible for the violence.

Three times now in recent weeks I’ve heard the same excuse as it pertains to hateful statements and actions at the hands of religious extremism:  “It’s not religion’s fault, the people who say or commit these egregious acts are mentally ill. You can’t blame the religion.”

First, I cannot deny support of that statement, at least in part. To willfully murder innocent people, or neglect children, or willfully allow individuals to suffer, or to persecute someone based upon their refusal to acknowledge a monotheistic approach to life is definitely a sign of mental incompetence. I don’t have a problem with stating that, because it’s true according to all basic methods of tolerant, human reasoning.

But, I have a problem when mental illness is used to absolve or deny the existence of any religious influence on those actions. Here in the United States, Christians are quick to label acts of violence by Muslims as nothing less than an ideology of Islamic terrorism. Yet, when Christians commit these acts, it has nothing to do with religion, it’s only that the individual is mentally ill. It doesn’t get more Machiavellian.

Let’s be clear, brainwash is a form of mental illness. At the very least, the ideology and the action are tethered by that common association.

There are two parts to this falsehood that religion in no way contributes to mental illness in the cases of extremism. First, the inappropriate and misunderstood use of the transitive property that the Christian ideology uses to generalize all other groups (and that Muslims use to generalize Christians; and that Jews use to generalize Muslims; and so on); and the second part is the argument of mental illness being independent of religion.

Let’s look at the first premise, the misuse of the transitive property.

Religion and violence are not always transitive – meaning that if someone is from Iraq that automatically makes them a Muslim, which automatically makes them a terrorist.

Not all people in Iraq are Muslims. Not all Muslims are terrorists. This is easily discernable. However, using this logic would mean we’d have to take into consideration the following:

Adam Lanza (Newtown killer) and Timothy McVeigh (OKC bomber); both Americans and Catholics, thereby Christians.

James Holmes (Aurora Theater killer) and Dylan Klebold (Columbine); both Americans and Lutherans, thereby Christians.

Jared Loughner (Tuscon killer), Eric Harris (Columbine), and Eric Rudolph (Atlanta Olympics bomber); all Americans and professed Christians.

Using the transitive property by which many Christians judge Muslims, and basically anyone who does not subscribe to Christianity, does this mean that since all of these acts of terrorism were committed by individuals who are all Americans, and all Christians, that all Americans and all Christians are terrorists?

Of course it doesn’t. That sounds completely asinine to us. So why do we find it an acceptable thought process for everyone except us?

Self-righteousness. Denial. Cognitive dissonance. Narcissism. And, fear of their own religiously-forfeited free will.

(Some may argue that some of these individuals were not charged with terrorism. Lose the vernacularism and just look at the raw definition of terrorism:  Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror); are perpetrated for a religious, political or, ideological goal; and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants/civilians).

All of the actions of these Americans in recent years clearly fall within an objective definition of terrorism.

The duplicitous righteousness of one group to use the transitive property against another while not holding themselves accountable to the same is moronically detached from all critical thought.

Next and finally, the scapegoat that these actions are independent of religion, and only a sign of mental illness. Religion and mental illness are also not always transitive, but in the cases of religious extremism they couldn't be more closely connected.

To believe that religious fundamentalism is not connected to actions of the mentally ill, you’d have to believe that the terrorists who flew planes into New York and Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11^th, 2001, acted only out of mental illness and nothing of their actions was religiously motivated.

You’d have to believe that sectarian violence that has gone on between conflicting views of Islam for hundreds of centuries (Sunnis and Shias) is only due to mental illness and not motivated by religion.

You’d have to believe that the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were only due to mental illness, and had nothing to do with religious fear or persecution of pagans.

You’d have to believe that the slaughter of many indigenous Native Americans was done at the hands of thousands of mentally ill Americans and had nothing to do with religious motivation or territorial conquest.

You’d have to believe that the Inquisitions were performed by millions of mentally ill people and had nothing to do with religious motivation.

You’d have to believe that the Crusades were the actions of millions of mentally ill Catholics and not motivated by religious domination.

In other words, you’d have to be completely ignorant of the history of not only our own country, but also of the world. And, I didn’t even touch on the dozens of genocides across the African or Asian Continents.

Make no mistake, religion is just as responsible for these atrocities as are the people who committed them in the name of their religions. One has to sit in a dark closet, blinded by extreme cognitive dissonance to deny this.

Approximately 100 billion people have ever lived in the history of our human civilization. This would mean, according to the many Christian assertions of mental illness being the problem and not religion, that billions of people have been born with mental illness. That just isn’t possible on that scale.

Human beings are not generally born with extreme mental illness on that scale. When history clearly documents the acts mentioned, and some of the ones not mentioned (honor killings, raping and enslaving minors, denying medical treatment in the name of your faith, etc.), there is an indoctrination that brings a common denominator upon the acts and the ideology. What is that common denominator?

Have these billions of people across centuries been born into the same social circumstances? Have they all been physically abused or neglected by the same parents? Have tens of billions of people been outcast by the same society, spanning thousands of miles and cultures across thousands of years?

It’s absurd to believe any of those could possibly be true. The common denominator is an ideology that supports the actions of those particular individuals.

I’d be willing to accept the religious scapegoat of mental illness as long as we include brainwash in the bucket of mental illnesses, but I’m just going to guess that the followers of dogma will never accept the term brainwash. This is why they won’t accept history, reality, or the direct link between religion and mental illness in this argument and among the cases I’ve stated.  

One of the best pieces I’ve read about the righteous assertions of disassociation between action and ideology was stated by Austin Cline. I’ll paraphrase some of his statements.

“Religious believers often hold individuals, being inescapably free and sinful by disposition, responsible for everything that goes wrong, and credit God for everything that goes right.”

Such explanations certainly take the lazy way out of the dilemma between action and ideology. They avert the nurturing of critical thought and their own professed morality.  They limit themselves from being able to intelligently negotiate their lives in today's world.

They render themselves unable to concretely analyze specific situations, so as to sort through how global events are shaped by our own actions, those of others, social systems, chance, and yes, ideology.

Cline says again, and I quote, “This is no less true of those whose popular religion frequently refers to "God's plan," or who turn to prayer automatically when facing the inexplicable, unacceptable, or uncontrollable. One of the primary religious dogmas of American conservatism is Personal Responsibility. It's almost a fetish, it's valued so highly. It's also a fundamental ingredient of American culture, a premise in the teachings that we can be whatever we want, that our fates are dependent only on our own determination, etc. But then the same people promoting this will turn around and tell us that we must pray to God, put our lives in God's hands, etc.”

You have to wonder if those so influenced by dogma completely forget everything they've been saying from one thought to the next.

Perhaps they don't even pay any attention to what they are saying at all - in which case, why should we?