MUCH TRAUMA RISES FROM RELIGIOUS FAITH AND IT THREATENS MORE TRAUMA

Religion is not benign. If it can be, it has another side. Two sides means it is as safe as a chip pan and should be rejected or accepted with caution and safeguards. Certainly that means religion should be very careful to avoid undue influence. It should get out of schools and stop child initiation rites such as baptism and holy communion. Leave these things for adults who have thought about them.

And remember which side is the biggest one - the harmful one. Just look at the history of believers.

A system that thrives on people looking the other way when they meet its toxic doctrines and history is damaging those who will look right at it.

Some of the results of faith and following spiritual leaders can be indoctrination, anxiety, spiritual terror eg of Satan and Hell and sin, lack of trust, immaturity, sexual hang-ups, inability to absorb what science is saying and inability to tell if your own notions are your notions or from another plane of reality such as heaven or hell. If you say religion has not harmed you, you are lying for everything human harms to an extent. And even if you were telling the truth, the fact remains that giving religion too much influence, too much time and too much money is stupid and wrong. Faith and religion are not good enough to justify that level of support. Your peace comes at a price somebody else has to pay. People suffer so that you can have your religious fantasy and feelings.

The fact remains a day spent learning about science is better than a day spent in prayer. You need truth more than prayer. Prayer did not find the Planet Mars. It did not point to penicillin.

Religion claims to combat evil with prayer.  Prayer is meant to be put in action.  So in essence, when you lift the sword against a dangerous aggressor you are prayer in action.  In Catholicism you see images of St Michael using a sword on the Devil.  In Hinduism you see gods cutting the heads off the dangerous enemies.  However religion defines evil, it does say evil asks for violence.  What about an evil such as a thieving?  Violence is only banned then for it is disproportionate and nobody dies for somebody stole their wages.   It is not banned BECAUSE it is violence.  So it affirms violence.  We perceive that which is why we are traumatised when accused truly or falsely of evil. It is the threat and affirmation of violence.  While this is not violence as in hitting somebody with a brick it definitely seeks to inflict emotional violence.

Why would you want to know if another person is guilty of evil and exactly how? You cannot change a thing about it.  It does not matter if we are talking evil in a general sense or specifically thinking of their actions that we know of.

Do you think the evil has some power to contaminate you?

Do you think the goodness in you has the mysterious power to help overcome it?
 
Depression is an epidemic in these modern times. It is anger turned inwards or against yourself. People need to recognise the anger in them and admit it. But if there is a God, anger is a sin. If God makes all things and holds them in existence, then nothing really happens in spite of God but because of him. Anger would amount to being angry at the way God has planned things. So it is a sin. But it has to go somewhere. God in principle and in practice, leads to people getting depressed or more depressed.

Valerie Tarico points out in the book, Christianity is Not Great that Christians blame those who suffer psychologically from their Christian belief for their problems. They blame the victims. They say that the victims already had these problems in the first place or is not practicing the faith properly and that is why he or she is suffering. Or perhaps he or she is a counterfeit Christian.

Christianity can victimise and still blame the victim. As it uses circular reasoning and anybody can use circular reasoning, it follows that if you don't believe in Christianity then it is your own fault. It is a sin if you don't believe because God wants you to believe.

Tarico tells us that "Religious Trauma Syndrome as a diagnosis is in early stages of investigation". RTS often goes unrecognised. One reason is that the victim has been conditioned to self-blame. Another is how society is culturally Christian which lends credence to the faith and makes people reluctant to blame it. The victims will not be listened to as Christianity is too respected in society. The practice of suffering Christians going to pastors for counselling and not recognised mental health therapists shields the problem from the psychiatric profession.

Finally I wish to say that the clergy system tends to have people with psychological and emotional problems going to clergy before they go to people with expertise.  And there is the no small matter of how Christian doctrine in many respects is harmful.  The stress on forgiveness and how Jesus threatened those who don't forgive needs attention.  It sides in many ways with the abuser.  It adds further trauma to the victim.  They are even told that unless they resolve to love and be good to the person who damaged them, much of the trauma is self-inflicted and cannot be blamed on that person.  The real answer is for the person to concentrate more on the people who love them.  Jesus even condemned that by saying that there is no reward for those who love those who love them.  Clergy pose as therapists in a religious sense and should be subject to legal action for doing harm.  They get away with things a therapist would be fired for.