To answer the “mentally ill” aspect of this thread, I can tell you that the dudes who throw themselves into lion pits are defined clinically as schizophrenic:
We have powerful medicines developed in the last ten years which can effectively treat this condition. If anybody reading this thread can also hear voices like the “I’m now a lion snack” dude, please understand that there is help available. Get yourself checked out.
[quote]tme wrote:
“The man shouted ‘God will save me, if he exists’, lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions,” the official said.[/quote]
Why the hell did he take off his shoes?
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
To answer the “mentally ill” aspect of this thread, I can tell you that the dudes who throw themselves into lion pits are defined clinically as schizophrenic:
We have powerful medicines developed in the last ten years which can effectively treat this condition. If anybody reading this thread can also hear voices like the “I’m now a lion snack” dude, please understand that there is help available. Get yourself checked out.[/quote]
It’s a good thing those medicines weren’t around during biblical times, or all those voices people heard might have been silenced!
[quote]vroom wrote:
It’s a good thing those medicines weren’t around during biblical times, or all those voices people heard might have been silenced![/quote]
It’s possible the experience of auditory and visual hallucinations was actually a precursor to the more “integrated” consciousness we now enjoy. Consciousness, in the sense of attention to one’s environment with the intention of solving problems, or even the process of thinking as we know it, may not have existed as early as a few thousand years ago.
Instead, with environments being mainly static, and the need for decision-making diminished, most people may have been in a similar state to the one you might find yourself in when you’ve walked or driven a route that you know very well.
Ideas (novel ways of looking at problems) may have presented themselves in the form of hallucinations.
[quote]vroom wrote:
It’s a good thing those medicines weren’t around during biblical times, or all those voices people heard might have been silenced![/quote]
LOL You’re completely right vroom!
Shizophrenia is basically just a chemical imbalance in the brain which creates stimuli to the brain that aren’t supposed to be there. It’s like having a bonus to reality. Some people hear mumbling in their minds, some people feel emotions – even violent and forceful emotions – for no reason whatsoever.
There are even cases of visual hallucinations such as lights or colors similar to an acid trip.
If you read Revelations from the bible, it reads like the journal of a schizophrenic caught in the grip of a chemical imbalance episode. I have personally seen many different kinds of odd behaviors from the schizophrenics who are suffering an episode and are brought in to the ER here at the hospital.
Some of them are screaming in fear (until we zap them with medicine), some of them are proclaiming themselves God – it goes the whole spectrum of weirdness around here.
It is sad to read about these poor people who do shit like feed themselves to lions when there is help out there for them. You guys have to realize that it’s not these people’s fault that they are like this… they didn’t do anything to deserve their disease.
And yes, the premise of this thread is funny, and I laughed… but I have to admit that I also feel a little guilty about it. Oh well… since when am I not a jerk anyway? 
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
A mentally ill man that expressed disbelief in god is now a christian?
Enough with these stupid threads picking moronic fights!
[/quote]
Very wise Zap.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
…
If you read Revelations from the bible, it reads like the journal of a schizophrenic caught in the grip of a chemical imbalance episode. …[/quote]
Revelations was written as an attack on the evils of Rome and especially Nero.
It is strange because it is almost like a code.
I find it strange that it is even included in the Bible.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
A mentally ill man that expressed disbelief in god is now a christian?
Enough with these stupid threads picking moronic fights!
Mentally ill? Why? Because he had faith that God would save him?[/quote]
God was obviously not going to save him. Why don’t I go jump off a bridge and see if god saves me?
I guess you’ll now tell me some shit like “that guy was saved because he went to heaven”
[quote]alstan90 wrote:
I guess you’ll now tell me some shit like “that guy was saved because he went to heaven” [/quote]
LOL. I think you are barking up the wrong tree bucko.
[quote]vroom wrote:
alstan90 wrote:
I guess you’ll now tell me some shit like “that guy was saved because he went to heaven”
LOL. I think you are barking up the wrong tree bucko.[/quote]
I don’t know if that was aimed at you or me. Either way you are right.
I have made my doubts about Gods existence perfectly clear many times.
I don’t think that poor guy is sitting under a shade tree in heaven. It never even crossed my mind.