The science/religion/respect/disrespect topic has reared its head again here, with some ugly characterizations. This is a big topic but I'll try to be brief.
To start with: I don't think there is a place--or even any rational basis--for referring to perspectives on the world which are broadly embraced within your culture as "mental illness"...whether or not those perspectives are likely to be true. We are products of our cultures, and it is no failing to be influenced by them. There are an awful lot of religious people around, and it isn't "mentally ill" to be one of them, whether or not those beliefs happen to correspond to objective reality.
It is possible for people to be wrong, and not be crazy. It is also possible for people to have other ways of choosing belief than the strictly scientific and material without being somehow "defective".
I am an atheist. I always have been one. But I spent more than 20 years on a long and interesting meander through the Pagan community, and found a great deal of value there despite the fact that I did not and could not ever subscribe to the broadly held superstitions of that community.
Religion isn't just about cosmology. In fact, with the advent of science, that is the least and feeblest of its functions. But as an organizing principle for building community, inculcating values, providing mutual support, and imparting perspectives and ongoing practices which instill a sense of meaning and joy in life, religion provides a far more robust set of tools than does science.
Which is why I have been exploring the concept of rational religion: the development of practices and principles which provide the benefits of religion, from a foundational cosmology of scientific materialism.
More after the jump.
First, I'll grant that it is very difficult for me to respect beliefs in the supernatural generally, and I include all credulity in god/dess(es), supposed miracles, magic, the power of prayer, etc., in that category. I don't believe that an informed person who approaches cosmology from the standpoint of an evidential standard can reasonably conclude that it is likely that these proposed phenomena are real.
I do, however, respect people who say, "That isn't how I look at that stuff. I have faith, and it serves my life in various ways. I do not demand that it be substantiated or scientifically verified." To that, I say: okay. I don't do that, but I can see why you would.
What I CANNOT respect is when people cherry-pick bits of scientific knowledge, wildly conjectural what-ifs, and folklore to try to present "proof" that the supernatural phenomena they believe in are real. For example, people who try to shoehorn their beliefs into "quantum physics" when they don't understand the first thing about it (which happens to be that it's really called quantum MECHANICS).
You know: "Intelligent Design" types. That, I just can't get behind.
But let's be clear: religion isn't just some weird, aberrant wrong track that humans somehow ended up on. All cultures have them: they are as universal to the human experience as laughter and music.
Religion and religious observance clearly perform functions for humans, and given that we have strong evidence that our prehuman ancestors also conducted rituals with symbolic purpose, it's a pretty good bet that religion was evolutionarily beneficial. It helped us to survive to evolve.
In terms of building common social identity, transmission of cultural values, framing of an understanding of the purpose of human life, etc., science simply cannot deliver what religion does...which is why the Richard Dawkins' of the world are wildly off-base in pursuing their theory that if we just wipe away all this religious claptrap and get with the logic and science, everybody will be happy and we'll have no more war and blah blah.
That is false. It is scientifically false. The reasoning, neocortical parts of our brains are the most recently evolved parts of them, and our lives are far more driven by the imperatives of earlier-evolved parts: the "Four Fs" of the reptilian "R-Complex", the social/emotional/connective needs of the limbic brain.
Dawkins and Co. are the kinds of people who are very good at rational thinking, and so they have a tendency to believe that that is the highest and most important thing humans can do. But in truth, it isn't. The highest and best things humans can do also involve our connections to one another, our impulses towards meaning, and beauty, and service. You can get at some of those things through reason and science, but honestly, not at all of them.
The state of religious experience--the "worship state"--is a limbic state: a glowing, nonlinear, immediately present here-and-now experience very similar to that experienced when painting, or dancing, or playing music. And all the religions of the world draw on the same kinds of ritual technologies in order to put their members into that state: these can include special scents, trance-inducing music or chanting, rhythmic percussion, low (and flickering) light conditions, extremes of physical exertion until the body is singing with endorphins (or, conversely, extreme stillness, concentrating only the breath, or only on each footfall, so that past and future fall away), careful manipulation of meaning-freighted symbolic tools, emblems, or revered books, or repetition of carefully prescribed motions which have been passed down from previous generations. Most religious rituals involve some combination of these.
Different religions select different means of Getting There, but the "There", experientially, is the same. It is a feeling of Connection: of the members of the religion with one another, and of each individual with some conception of The Totality of It All, whether the members of the religion in question call it God or the Universe or The Great Wheel or what have you.
The core point being: None of this is crazy. Having that feeling can fill our lives with purpose, and meaning, and joy, and wonder. Doing what it takes to get to that feeling--whatever the stories may be that we tell ourselves the feeling means--is not crazy. It is core to what makes us human. Even if the beliefs that surround such practices--about what they MEAN--do not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Even if in fact, those beliefs are factually untrue. Still not crazy.
This has already gotten quite long, and I need to wrap up. There's a lot more to say on the topic. I've written extensively on it (I'd link, but it's under my real name and then I'd have to kill you).
Let me finish by saying that I didn't intend to offend anyone by writing this, and I don't intend to get into a pie fight in the comments if I did. I think we've had enough of that on this topic today. If we have to clash with one another, let's do it over strategies and policies, not stuff it is inherently impossible to resolve.