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God and mental illness

4265 Views 19 Replies 10 Participants Last post by  Qk8
I think on my darkest of days I and many others would have liked for there to have been a loving compassionate person, energy, force, etc to come down from the sky and whisk us away from all our troubles. On my worst days (that started my experience of DP) I was in a state of such anxiety, despair, and hopelessness that I simply layed down and hoped that some supernatural being would take pity on me and save me from myself. Of course this idea can be dangerous.

I've found that the more I look at this world the emptier it seems. I see endless suffering that grows worse each day. I may not experience this because I am priviledged but I notice horrible deaths resulting from starvation, disease, terrorist attacks, and other acts of violence. The more I notice this the more I feel disconnected and seperated from a world that seems to have no purpose. It is as if this world is a temporary station where we are whipped, prodded, insulted, and made to feel insecure and doubtful before we begin the slow process of dying.

So I look for an explanation for this suffering. I look to christianity, buddhism, hinduism, and other faiths. I analyze myself and my mind trying to intuit some sort of answer. But nothing comes. I'm reminded at the lack of compassion, purpose, and meaning that surrounds me. I see people grasping at sand trying to desperately make sense of chaos. They need the religion they believe in and I am willing to accept that as reasonable. However, I cant accept any of these religions. I can't get past the obvious delusions and lies that one must tell himself before surrendering himself to the supernatural.

I feel like I need to surrender myself to something that does not exist. Because it does not exist and it seems like a last line of defence then there is no hope. I have no faith in fake gods, and I have no faith in mental health institutions that don't understand this problem. I have no faith in a society that expects me to play by its rules, bite the bullet and become successful so I can buy lots of things and pretend to be happy. But I also have no faith in people who wear robes, study religious texts, and speak of false religious awakenings that play to their desire for happiness.
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I am in agrement with you on a the way you feel about this world. I do not beleive you have read the bible. You can't make an informed decision about God without reading the bible. It also helps to have a guide to teach you the deeper subjects of the bible. If you have read the bible and didn't understaind it get a better translation and read it again. Try the new world translation it is easier to follow than the king james version.
Also look up into the sky some night and see the proof of Gods existence.
How is it people can see mans design and know it is man design but when you see Gods magnificent design you hide in feer and say to yourself, that just is, there is no god?

I will admit that you need a little faith.
I would think that religin would be on the minds of everyone suffering from dp/dr. I think about it every day. My biggest question is how retards and crazys are suposed to follow bible teaching? I ask this because I fall into that catigory. Also I would like to know why it takes over 6,000 years to prove a point. Just end this sick world already! I've learned my lesson, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad and never take LSD.
I am sorry if I sounded like a know it all. I must say I am not a baptized anything. If you feel I have been inconsistent than maybe thats why I am not baptized yet.
I admit that I have read neither the Quran or Torah but maybe if someone came nocking at my door to offer me a copy I would take a look :) .
I have read into Islam,Judaism, Buhdisum, Hindu and even the book of the dead (when I was younger).I have even read a bit of anti Witness material. From what I gather I don't need to read the Quran or Torah because there teachings are false.

I understand there is a lot of hate out there for Jehovahs Witnesses.
This is one of the big points that tell me they are the true religin.
Joh 17:16
Other scriptures 2ti 4:2, 4:3 Jas 4:4 1jo 5:19 Mt 7:20
The Witnesses fruits are the best in the world in my eyes.
The world is obviously against them therefor I beleive they are the truth.

As far as the world only existing for 6,000 years, Witnesses never beleived this. They do beleive however that humans have only existed for 6,000 years. Because we have no record of any human exsistance before 6,000 years ago, I think history is in alignment with the Witnesses.
The bible clearly dates the lineage of our race in the hebrew scriptures.

I personaly think that if Witnesses are not speaking the truth, than there is no truth.

Scattered I did wan't to apologize for the way I worded my response. I am suffering from dp/dr rember.
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On the one hand you're saying to people "you can't claim Christianity is false without reading the Bible first to know what it's all about"; on the other you're telling us that you know Islam and Judaism to be false when you yourself haven't read their scriptures.

This is inconsistent and just double standards.

I understand your point about haveing a duble standerd. From your viewpoint I would say the same thing.
I have done research on many diffrent religions, and personaly feel very certain about the bible.
I said that people should read the bible before comming to a conclusion about God because I was trying to help!
Wandering aimlessly in the depths of religion can be very confusing and even disturbing.

About the 6,000 year thing, there is no PROOF of human life before this time.

I cut this article from a secular website.

the only really reliable recorder of time is man himself! In any kind of natural process that might be used to determine past time, there is always the possibility that the rates may have changed as well as uncertainty regarding its initial condition. It is absolutely impossible to know beyond question that such and such a formation or deposit has an age of so many years, unless that age is supported by reliable human records of some kind.

And it is, therefore, highly significant that no truly verified archaeological datings antedate the time of about 3000 B.C. or even later. Larger dates are, of course, frequently ascribed to various localities and cultures, but they are always based on radiocarbon or other geological methods rather than written human records. There are numerous extant chronologies that have been handed down from various ancient peoples, and it is bound to be significant that none of them yield acceptable evidence that the histories of these or other peoples antedate the Biblical date for the Deluge.

The Bible pictures the dispersal of post-diluvian man from the geographical areas implied also by archaeology and secular history. The most ancient peoples leaving historical records were, of course, the inhabitants of the Tigris-Euphrates valley, the Nile Valley of Egypt, and other near-Eastern areas. This correlates perfectly with the Bible records, which picture the centrifugal movement of tribes out from the first kingdom of Babylon (Babel, Genesis 11:9).

The archaeological testimony is confirmed further by botanical studies. A systematic agriculture was, of course, necessary for the existence of stable and civilized communities and so would be one of the best indices of the beginnings of post-diluvian cultures. The following from a Danish scientist is therefore significant:

Thus, we may conclude from present distribution studies that the cradle of Old World plant husbandry stood within the general area of the arc constituted by the western foothills of the Zagros Mountains (Iraq-Iran), the Taurus (southern Turkey), and the Galilean uplands (northern Palestine), in which the two wild prototypes occur together. We may conclude, further, that wheat played a more dominant role than barley in the advent of plant husbandry in the Old World.?7-117

It is remarkable how many different lines of evidence of a historical nature point back to a time around 3000 B. C. as dating the beginning of true civilization. There have been theories and speculations about earlier periods, but nothing concrete. With reference to Egypt, H. R. Hall, the Egyptologist, states:

We think that the First Dynasty began not before 3400 and not much later than 3200 B.C ? A. Scharff, however, would bring the date down to about 3000 B.C.; and it must be admitted that his arguments are good, and that at any rate it is more probable that the date of the First Dynasty is later than 3400 B.C. than earlier.7-118

Even this date is very questionable, as it is based mainly upon the king?lists of Manetho, an Egyptian priest of about 250 B.C., whose work has not been preserved except in a few inaccurate quotations in other ancient writings. As George A. Barton, of the University of Pennsylvania pointed out long ago:

The number of years assigned to each king, and consequently the length of time covered by the dynasties, differ in these two copies, so that, while the work of Manetho forms the backbone of our chronology, it gives us no absolutely reliable chronology. It is for this reason that the chronological schemes of modern scholars have differed so widely.7-119

Other scholars think that some of Manetho?s lists may actually represent simultaneous dynasties in upper and lower Egypt, which would still further reduce the date of the beginning of the period. The length of the pre-Dynastic period is quite unknown, but there is no necessary reason to regard it as more than a few centuries at most.

In Babylonia, the earliest peoples leaving written monuments were the Sumerians, who were later displaced by the Semitic Babylonians. These people likewise are dated about this time.

Dr. Samuel Noah Kramer, Research Professor of Assyriology at the University of Pennsylvania says:

The dates of Sumer?s early history have always been surrounded with uncertainty, and they have not been satisfactorily settled by tests with the new method of radiocarbon dating ? Be that as it may, it seems that the people called Sumerians did not arrive in the region until nearly 3000 B.C.7-120

The Egyptians and Babylonians were presumably of Hamitic and Semitic derivation, as were most of the other tribes who settled in Africa and Asia. The Japhetic peoples, on the other hand, according to the Table of Nations of Genesis 10 (which Dr. William Foxwell Albright regards as ?an astonishingly accurate document?7-121), migrated largely into Europe, where they became the so-called Aryan peoples, peoples of the language stocks known as Indo-European. Recent linguistic studies have indicated that these languages radiated from a common center, probably in central Europe. Dr. Paul Thieme, Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at Yale, in discussing this evidence, says:

Indo-European, I conjecture, was spoken on the Baltic coast of Germany late in the fourth millennium B.C. Since our oldest documents of Indo-European daughter languages (in Asia Minor and India) date from the second millennium B.C., the end of the fourth millennium would be a likely time anyhow. A thousand or 1500 years are a time sufficiently long for the development of the changes that distinguish our oldest Sanskrit speech form from what we construct as Indo-European.7-122

Since the above date was based somewhat heavily on geopaleontological data, it is likely that it is too high even as it stands.

Studies of ancient agricultures in Europe, based mainly on pollen analyses and radiocarbon datings, point to similar conclusions:

The main results of the age determinations is that the oldest agricultures in Switzerland (Older Cortaillod culture) and in Denmark (younger Ertebolle culture and A-earthen vessel) started almost simultaneously, about 2740-90 B.C. and 2620-80 B.C., respectively.7-123

The same story could be repeated at other places if space permitted. For example, in China, the earliest historical cultures date from somewhat later than this time. The anthropologist, Ralph Linton, says:

The earliest Chinese date which can be assigned with any probability is 2250 B.C., based on an astronomical reference in the Book of History.7-124

The worldwide testimony of trustworthy, recorded, history7-125 is therefore that such history begins about 3000 B.C. and not substantially earlier. This is indeed surpassingly strange if men actually have been living throughout the world for many tens or hundreds of thousands of years! But on the other hand, if the Biblical records are true, then this is, of course, exactly the historical evidence we would expect to find. And it is pertinent to mention, in passing, the worldwide incidence of flood legends, which we have discussed in an earlier chapter. It is not at all unreasonable to conclude that the clear testimony of all recorded human history points back to the stark reality of the great world Deluge, which remade the world in the days of Noah.

This will be my last post in the religious section. If anyone wants to talk religion send me a pm.

Mahalo.
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