Psychiatry is a religious community that occasionally includes scientists, but they're largely regarded as delusional or backwards, and derided or ostracized as needed.
You know, I thought about it at length tonight and I totally agree with your assertion. The comparison is ridiculous and absurd and I was way out of line. The downvotes were just.
There is nothing biblical or doctrinal about the DSM/PDR
There is nothing clerical about doctors, nurses, or orderlies, they don't have no ordination kind of ceremonies and they certainly don't wear any kind of distinctive garb that sets them apart, nor are they authority figures who are respected and obeyed by the community. These dudes all have casual temporary jobs, it's not like a vocational calling or life profession, you know.
There is nothing sacramental about psychotherapy (where a person enters a small room and whispers her secrets to a professional and gets helped) and there's certainly nothing Eucharistic about medications. I mean seriously, compare "My Body, My Choice" to "THIS is My Body, which will be given up for You."
Honestly, I write a lot of stuff on HN and send it before I even doublecheck it. Consider this an errata and please do accept my apologies.
There's nothing communal or familial about health care. In contrast to worship and churches, health care is private, secret, done in small offices one-at-a-time; we're separated in hospitals and during plagues due to infection controls
Nobody sings anything ever
Christianity and most other ancient religions are built on millennia of unchanging doctrine, practices, apostolic tradition, and familial bonds, passed on to all children. Medicine and psychiatry invalidate their doctrines every couple of hundred years and reinvent themselves anew. Practices and beliefs from history books are ineffective, barbaric, reviled and abhorrent to moderns.
Most religions rely on donations from the faithful, and few can actually compel such; psychiatry demands tribute and wealthy corporate supporters who can step in and guarantee their solvency, plus the state can usually use laws and punishment to coerce more people into joining and participating.
Well it's not a popular idea. Perhaps you're deeply immersed only in religion, or only in science, and sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees. I forgive you.
But it's a tale as old as time: when any community schisms, and there's a rejection of the "original traditions" the new guys limp along without 'em for a long time, and gradually, piecemeal, they realize they miss those things, or those things were essential to life, and they reinvent them and they put new names on them, but if you examine their essence then you'll see how similar they are to the "old ways".
It happens within Christianity itself! All the time! Protestants spent 500 years rejecting and reviling Catholics, but then they became Mormon, and everything old is new again.
What's happening in the world is a widespread secularization of nations. You know, disestablishmentarianism - the First Amendment. If no religions or allowed, or if all religions are promoted equally, then something will fill the vacuum and become re-established, you can bet your bottom dollar.
Nations who attempt to outlaw and persecute religion get a somewhat bad rep. Nations who legalize all of them are literally a city upon a hill!
The strategy of atheist states is to generally subjugate Church to control by the State. If this cannot be done, that religion must be exterminated. China's a good example, and Mexico did their part. Atheist states by no means would/could eliminate religions; they know what service is done for the masses.
The State has its own flavor of religion, its own rituals and priests, sacraments and sacramentals, liturgies and rites. Look at Old Glory, baseball games, military customs, Congress in session, look at the architecture of DC and try to tell me that that's not the New Secular Athens.
Psychiatry is the moral arm of the state, with temporal and spiritual power, authority, and jurisdiction over the citizenry in regards to our internal forum. Psychiatry is granted the rights to teach doctrine, to coerce sacraments, and to revoke rights. I won't elaborate on the whole picture, because your opinion won't change, but try to open your mind, eh?
I don’t disagree with the fact that all these things (government, psychiatry etc) function similar to how religion used to function, but I do vehemently disagree with the fact that these things are bullshit.
Ever thought that the reason why things never disappear is cause they have a function that’s useful? And maybe the reason why they’re constantly changing is because the people who study them are in a constant process of identifying their useful aspects and isolating those useful aspects from the dead weight: throwing out the bath water and keeping the baby so to speak?
Edit: and most importantly, the fact that they have changed makes them something new that should be re-evaluated on its own.
