Schizophrenia and Prayer

Basically, is there any difference in a diagnosed Schizophrenic, and somebody that Prays every night/morning?


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To start things off, here are a few definitions of Schizophrenia:

http://science-education.nih.gov/sup...r/glossary.htm

A chronic, severe, and disabling brain disease. People with schizophrenia often suffer terrifying symptoms such as hearing internal voices or believing that other people are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts, or plotting to harm them. These symptoms may leave them fearful and withdrawn. Their speech and behavior can be so disorganized that they may be incomprehensible or frightening to others.

http://www.ehealthmd.com/library/sch...CH_whatis.html

People with schizophrenia may hear internal voices not heard by others or may see things that are not really there. These experiences can seem threatening and can make them fearful and withdrawn. They also may have trouble organizing their thoughts and expressing themselves. Their speech and behavior can be so disorganized that they may seem frightening to others.

Basically. I was joking with a friend of mine the other day about Bible "thumpers". And just religion in general, I was opening him up to my world of thinking, and we joked around about politics, the usualy bullshit-pass-the-time-chatter. Well eventually another friend of ours came into the conversation, and he's very, highly religious.

Of course, he threw out a few religious-thumps, and I came back pretty swiftly with

: "Well, you know there is no difference in between a Schizophrenic and somebody that prays every night to God".

This startled him immideately, and he was stunned for quite some time. He then asked, "Well, how do you figure that"? In which I told him, well Schizophrenics generally have thoughts and voices in their heads, and basically believe something is there that they can't prove or can't exactly see, and when they talk about this "imaginary person" usually everyone else around them finds them to be insane. And yet, when a person is praying, it's quite normal.

He got very pissed at this point and told me I was going to hell, etc. When in reality I was just cracking a joke, but regardless I feel that there is substance to that point, it is valid in most of the sense. Maybe schizophrenia isn't the correct term to have used, but it served it's purpose well at the time.



Discuss.