The exact same god.

Biblical figures are heralded as heroes for being willing to kill their kids when they thought god commanded them to.

Science is very good at answering this question.

Hopefully you are not just bring obtuse, but understand the point being made; if it is mental illness, and not religious belief, that is the cause of bad deeds done because one heard a god telling them to do it, then it's not religious belief that is the cause when they hear god tell them to do a good deed either. Can we agree on that?

Doing a good deed is not unless the objector is a sociopath.

I'm hardly being obtuse but this really is a false equivalence.

You brought up arson, not me. But that is irrelevant. The larger point I'm making was spelled out in my prior post. Are you able to understand and validate that?

I'm sure I understand your larger point but I don't want to assume because it is not precise.

Are you referring to someone who hears an audible voice directed to him or her or are you referring to someone who has read the Beatitudes?

If it is mental illness, and not religious belief, that is the cause of bad deeds done because one heard a god telling them to do it, then it's not religious belief that is the cause when they hear god tell them to do a good deed either. Can we agree on that?

If one "hears" a voice, "feels" god, "knows" that god wants them to do something, or if they find "inspiration" in a holy text, does it matter? The point is, if any of these factors are disregarded when the act is malicious and the cause attributed to mental illness, then the same factors must be disregarded when the act is benevolent and the cause attributed to mental illness. Can we agree on that?

Audible hallucinations are symptoms, often with a known cause.

Are you having difficulty with the question?

Strictly speaking, audible hallucinations (when not drug induced) are likely a sign of mental illness.

But audible hallucinations do not necessarily cover the experience when one "hears" a voice, "feels" god, "knows" that god wants them to do something, or if they find "inspiration" in a holy text, which is, I guess, not what you are talking about, but I am.

So I've answered you. Kindly return the favor. If any of these religious factors are disregarded when the act is malicious and the cause attributed to mental illness, then the same religious factors must be disregarded when the act is benevolent and the cause attributed to mental illness. Can we agree on that?

A command auditory hallucination is the product of mental illness regardless of whether the command is to do something "good" or something "bad". I'm no expert but I believe most command hallucinations are to do harm, to oneself or to another.

an indicator when it comes to one's character or moral standing? (yes, or lack of belief)

The evidence suggests that when someone commits arson in response to command hallucinations, the resulting act is more probably, by a great factor, the result of psychosis and not religion. That is the topic at hand.

On a completely unrelated topic, as a general proposition, having nothing to do with hallucinations, belief and nonbelief say very little about one's character.

Is one's religious belief (or lack of) worthless as an indicator when it comes to one's character or moral standing?

I really don't feel like beating that particular horse any longer, especially since we agreed. I thought we were discussing my larger point, no?

I would hope and expect that agreement to extend to other threads.

with a 170 degree angle here.

prima facia evidence of a mental disorder?

Arson per se is a crime, which is a social disorder. It may also be the fruit of a mental disorder. Whatever else it is, it is certainly a disorder.

But feel free to move the goalposts.

"When you talk to God, it is called prayer. When a voice in your head answers you back, it is called schizophrenia."

...if you are Pat Robertson.

really doesn't hear voices (or God) talking to him. He's just making it up for the gullible rubes who are his flock.

Classic Southern Evangelical preachers such as Robertson inevitably incorporate a good deal of showmanship and theatrics into their performance art. It's showbiz, and if you don't have a good gimmick, you're going to end up getting nowhere fast.

Whether its Pat Robertson or the little old lady down the street, if they say god told them something, who are you (who is anyone) to judge whether god is actually communicating with them?

though I tend to a more rational explanation for such things. That being said, it's not too difficult to postulate that most of the founders of religions, in particular the monotheistic religions most of us are familiar with, may possibly have been madmen. And I say that as a Muslim myself. As I said, I tend toward rational explanations of things.

It's a fine line between Prophet and lunatic after all.

although it seems that the line is thickened depending on how many people believe the lunatic.

so the next time someone says god told them to do something we can reject that because it has been proven that that god is a threat ...........

...as your post elucidates.

or if it's really a god?

Now if you hear voices in your head, combined with the ability to walk on water, part the Red Sea, move mountains, etc., then you might be the "real deal" such as it were.

If not.........then you're just nuts.

that one is truly communicating with a god?

schlub, if someone could perform real miracles (such as those cited in various sacred texts), I think that's a pretty decent proof that they've got that "something special" going on.

Or, they're really Dr. Manhattan.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

Armed with a smartphone pre-loaded with an encyclopedia and astronomical software, you would be a revered prophet in biblical times. Take a flashlight and/or laser pointer, you'd be able to summon light without fire. A motorized scooter allows you to glide quickly across streets. Miracles, all of them!

So clearly being able to performing miracles isn't necessarily a guarantee that one is in communication with a god.

What else ya got?

Worship me, or behold these images of people being kicked in the groin, and know how I shall smite thee!"

I suppose you'd have to go with your gut instinct, and that's notoriously finicky. I'm sure lots of folks out there thought Jim Jones was the greatest thing since sliced bread and....that didn't pan out so well for them.

It's impossible to quantify what makes a "prophet" a prophet. I've read that religion is essentially a meme or a mind virus. Once it gets started, and it infects enough people, it's impossible to contain. Personally, I've always wondered where the whole "Jesus is God incarnate" meme started, because to the best of my recollection, he never actually said, "Hey guess what, everybody! Yeah, I'm God." I just chalk that one up to a healthy dose of Greco-Roman culture merging with Jewish Messianic tradition.

As to what would convince me, personally, that a person is in direct communication with the Big Kahuna? Probably nothing. OK, maybe if he or she changed me into a goat and then changed me back and then changed me into an ostrich and then changed me back, that might convince me. Either that, or I'd be really high on some psychoactive drug they slipped in my coffee.

I've always retained a certain degree of skepticism which has served me well when some of my other friends and acquaintances have definitely gone off the deep end when it comes to religion. It's all subjective. For example, when I read The Bible many years ago, I thought, "What a nice bunch of bedtime stories." When I read the Qur'an, I thought, "The truth."

Why? It's entirely subjective and there's no to answer it. Faith is not logical.

But even there, I always make a point to take a close look at everything from a skeptical angle. For example, it is believed that Muhammad (saas) received the Word of God through the Archangel Gabriel, and then recited what Gabriel (as) told him. But if you read from Muhammad's (saas) contemporaries who actually witnessed these events, it's strikingly similar to an epileptic seizure.

So, was Muhammad (saas) receiving word from on high? Or simply having a seizure that caused the linguistic center of his brain to suddenly begin spouting epic poetry?

I wasn't there as an eyewitness to these events, I can't say. But belief is harmless enough provided it doesn't become malignant.

And that we must assume it's not true unless extraordinary evidence is presented to support it.

Yep, that's how I view religious claims, including those from people who claimed a god was speaking to them centuries or millenia ago.

Your premise means you are asking an irrelevant question given my #38. God is not a big person up there who talks to people. Revelation does not come down from heaven, but up from experience. There is in nature and history an ethic to which God continually lures all creation. God speaks from history, nature and common sense, not from a cloud. Religion both senses this stirring and tries to develop institutions which respond to it. As long as you continue to ask questions which posit a big person up there, they cannot be addressed

Actually, that right there answers my question. You believe, as I do, that no gods talk to people. That anything they BELIEVE god is telling them is actually just in their head.

Glad we are on the same page.

by saying, in effect, that belief isn't a bad thing, except when it is?

He was in a mental hospital or something, and he fooled the entire staff into thinking he was a piano virtuoso, but in reality he was just hitting one key over and over again.

Even today, with the right banter and context, large groups of people can be fooled by simple tricks.


Edited to add:

Here it is. I found it:

Andreas Grassl
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Andreas Grassl (born 25 October 1984) is a German man found in England in April 2005, who remained unidentified for a long time due to his refusal to speak, communicating instead through drawing and playing the piano. During the more than four months that passed until he revealed his identity, the mysterious story spawned media attention and speculation across the world, dubbing him the Piano Man.

When Grassl was picked up by police on 7 April 2005, he was wandering the streets in Sheerness, Kent, in England, wearing a soaking wet suit and tie, and he did not answer any questions. Remaining silent, he was presented a pen and paper by Medway Maritime Hospital staff in the hope he would write his name. Instead, he drew a detailed sketch of a grand piano. When they first brought him to a piano, he reportedly played music from various genres (ranging from classical music by Tchaikovsky to pop music by The Beatles) non-stop for four hours, and then was taken away by the hospital staff.

<snip>

On 22 August, the British tabloid newspaper The Mirror reported that the Piano Man had finally broken his silence after more than four months, and that he had been exposed as a hoax. Additionally, the Mirror's source claimed that he did not play the piano properly, but "just kept tapping one key continuously." Hospital staff have maintained that his abilities were not exaggerated.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Grassl

Also:

Piano Man Was a Hoax
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/piano_man_was_a_hoax

anyone who actually knows anything about the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Or so I'm told.

Lubbock County Natural Disasters and Weather Extremes
http://www.usa.com/lubbock-county-tx-natural-disasters-extremes.htm

<snip>

Tornado Index, #16
Lubbock County 303.90
Texas 208.58
U.S. 136.45

<snip>

Other Weather Extremes Events

A total of 9,026 other weather extremes events within 50 miles of Lubbock County were recorded from 1950 to 2010. The following is a break down of these events:

More:
http://www.usa.com/lubbock-county-tx-natural-disasters-extremes.htm

Well, at least they don't have any volcanoes.

If the purpose of this post is ridicule, you can find crazy examples in every nation, group, religion, color or hair style. But snickering says little about the group ridiculed?
But this raises a valid question.

For those who share my perspective, we take a very dim view of anyone who says they had a direct message from God--as if it came right down from some heavenly realm. Granted the Bible is full of such things, but they are stories, metaphors, ways of speaking, and from a very different cultural context. Likewise, when someone says they feel led to do something, discernment is the right response, no matter who they claim gave them the advice.

Instead of taking that claim at face value or discounting it altogether, the intelligent path is to look at the content of what a person says they feel led to do. Setting fire to someone leads to one conclusion, but feeding the hungry may lead to a different conclusion. The same would be true if someone say they are led to take a particular action no matter who suggested they take that step. The judgment has more to do with the content of the impulse than where it came from.

When one operates from the viewpoint of any claim, dealing with the content of that claim is simply common sense. Mentally deranged people say mentally deranged things whether they are religious or not. If this post is just effort to ridicule religion, is part of a continuing game around here.

It seems we are in agreement that the bible or any "holy text", god, or religious beliefs are not indicators of character or moral values, and should not be used as such, but instead, the actions of a person are what matter. Am I reading you correctly?

Yup.

There is continuous barrage of commands to do harm, both internal and external. And let him "cast the first stone" who has never complied with negative thoughts and intention to hurt.

And there is nothing new in social realization that being exposed to ethical speech increases ethical action in the social probability matrix (and vice versa), I read some time ago about South American tribe where "chief" has no other function that to continuously produce ethical speech.

"If I approve of the action, it's acceptable to believe that god commanded it. If I do not approve of the action, it is unlikely (or impossible) that god commanded it."

???

of religion gone bad. The psychiatrically ill just lend themselves beautifully to such purposes.

... Charla Knight said her family had spent years struggling to help 55-year-old Cynthia Lynn Parchman receive long-term mental health treatment for bipolar disorder to avoid the kind of situation Parchman’s found herself in with two arrests in 10 days ...

Parchman was accused of creating a disturbance at the Wal-Mart on 82nd Street and Milwaukee Avenue, according to a Lubbock police report.

Police Sgt. Jonathan Stewart said Parchman kicked an officer who responded to the scene. She was charged with criminal mischief and assaulting a police officer and released from the Lubbock County Criminal Detention Center on $3,250 bail.

Knight said Parchman briefly received treatment at the Covenant Medical Center’s Behavioral Health facility following the Jan. 5 arrest, but was released ...

Pretty lame God if you ask me.

do bad things, often explain it by saying that god is talking to them.

But let's not miss the opportunity to mock her mental illness.

or seeing beings no one else sees. These voices often tell the people hearing them to take some action. How do you tell when it's a legitimate message from God? That's all I was asking.

While many stories have to do with people following what the feel is a message from god, these are considered by most people to be allegorical and not hallucinatory.

This woman is clearly mentally ill, which has been confirmed by her family.

It is sickening to see how some people want to twist someone's medical tragedy into an attack on both the religious and the psychiatrically ill.

But hey, it's a twofer!!

in The King James version of the Bible and got 615 results. And also you just hear it all the time especially in the Christian world. I didn't just make it up, you know? I was just curious.

That doesn't necessarily mean they heard a voice. In surveys, many believe that the bible was written by men but guided by god.

I have rarely heard anyone say they actually heard a voice, though some do. IMHO, often that is a symptom that, when seen in context of the person's other symptoms, indicates a psychiatric illness.

Sorry if I came across as too aggressive. We get a lot of posts in here that conflate religious belief with psychiatric illness. I find this offensive and generally challenge it.

The question is..When someone claims God told them something or another, all you ever have is their word, so how do you determine which people are actually hearing the voice of God and which ones fall into another group, you know maybe they're attempting to con an elderly person out of their life savings or maybe they're delusional or any of the other numerous reasons someone might say God told them something.

Obviously, if some person actually hears voices that no one else hears they suffer from some sort of mental issue. That isn't the point.

health profession?

If not, then I could understand why you might ask this. People trained in the profession have the ability to ascertain whether someone has a psychiatric illness or not. Hearing voices is often a symptom, but rarely seen in isolation.

There are individuals that feel they communicate with god in some way. It would not be that difficult to ascertain whether this is part of a psychiatric illness or not.

In this case, it appears that it clearly is.

Does that answer your question?

it doesn't take a scientist to know that in order for a person to hear something, sound waves must reach the auditory nerve somehow. If someone claims to hear something and there are no corresponding sound waves reaching the auditory nerve, then it must be either a lie or imagined because of some drug induced hallucination or other brain issue.

Anyway, how does a God believer know God didn't tell her to set the fire? God cant tell her whatever he wants to? Maybe I'm wrong and he told her to set the fire. I don't understand.

auditory hallucinations. Deaf people sometimes report hearing voices or other sounds. Someone who is delirious for any number of reasons may hear voices. As you point out, there are certain drugs that can induce hallucinations. None of these are imagined and none of them involve sound waves hitting the ear drum.

Now whether someone actually hears the voice of a god, I have no idea and no way to prove nor disprove it.

People experiencing hallucinations may attribute these to god or spirits or their dog or any variety of reasons, even if they were not religious prior to the experience. It's merely an attempt to make sense out of something that does not otherwise make sense to them.

The problem is that some say that religion is the trigger or use these incidences to make a case for religion being bad.

It's much more complex than that and, imo, shouldn't be used as a tool to bash religion.

the "other brain issues" that the poster mentioned. Did you read?

And you and your father seem to have no difficulty in endlessly touting religion as the trigger for good things that people do and using those instances to make a case for religion being good. Never, in all of those many diatribes, has either of you ever said anything resembling "This shouldn't be used as a tool to praise religion, it's much more complex than that." Apparently things are only "much more complex" when they undermine your agenda, but are perfect simple and straightforward when you think they confirm it.

This is all about the double standard being applied, and you still don't seem to get that.

Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication-- after that it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it can not be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to ME, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

a real zinger back in fourth grade.

This is consistent with God's history of burning bushes and razing cities

need healing?