On the Transhumanist and Psychiatric part of debate (continued from previous)

Continued from previous:

B

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1h ago

"The problem is that we don’t know nearly enough about human genetics to do this reliably."

Is this the only problem?

Suppose "we" could take out a fetus with a known genetic disease (hereditary on genes, or due to trisomy). Suppose we could remove the faulty gene or superfluous chromosome. Before we could do that we would probably be able to engineer what sex (as God did with Eve and with Christ, basically).

Would there not be a problem in the manner that the fetus being human had an immortal soul and God had created it for another genome and perhaps caryotype than "we" would be allowing it to keep.

While the genome might inherently be better as a genome, it may be less fitted for the soul God created.

"If we tweak the genes of a crop of corn and it turns out to produce corn that’s sickly and bitter-tasting, it’s just a failed experiment, but we as a society don’t tend to be too fond of the idea of people becoming “'failed experiments.'”

Are you sure? How many mental diagnoses are experiments in stamping as "folly" what is not so and hoping to allow the person to "grow" from the extra therapy which would remove that bit.

And society seems to be getting on very well with psychiatry, right?

"Also, some philosophies would hold that it’s immoral to “play God” in this way even if we could make it work reliably—but that’s a moot point for now."

Between you and him, well, your concern, you could perhaps gain some from being less shy of defending the faith. I suppose you are confirmed (at least in novus ordo, with whatever doubt some sedes may consider that involves) and the Holy Spirit seems to be in the sacrament of confirmation given so the at least layman can defend and spread the faith (near pun in Latin : diffundere et defendere fidem).

Anthony Zarrella

1h ago

“While the genome might inherently be better as a genome, it may be less fitted for the soul God created.”

You know better, Hans… the soul is not a separate entity that is “intended” for a particular body—the soul is the form of the body (in Aristotelian/Thomistic terms). Catholicism isn’t mind-body dualist.

If your argument held, it would inveigh against any sort of corrective surgery whatsoever.

Cleft palate? Better leave it alone, since God must have created a soul for a body with a cleft palate.

Lasik vision surgery? Better not—God must have intended that person to be near-sighted.

Malformation of the spine? Leave it alone—God’s plan must require a hunchback.

“Are you sure? How many mental diagnoses are experiments in stamping as "folly" what is not so and hoping to allow the person to "grow" from the extra therapy which would remove that bit.”

Again, Catholicism is not fatalistic. There is no dogma of the Church which forbids attempts to fix perceived problems out of a morbid fear that God might not want them fixed.

That’s purely your (apparent) philosophy—not that of the Church, neither modern nor ancient.

“Between you and him, well, your concern, you could perhaps gain some from being less shy of defending the faith.”

I merely don’t choose to make points of contention when they are unnecessary to the completeness of my answer.

I never hesitate to defend the dogmas of the faith when they are at issue—but when my point can be adequately made without causing any conflict between my faith and the beliefs of others, I do so.

Think of Paul’s “altar to the unknown god” sermon on Mars Hill—he deliberately attempted to work within their existing paradigm, because he hoped he would more readily reach them that way. Several of the Saints have done likewise.

There is nothing in Catholic doctrine or even small-t tradition which demands that we always seek out maximum friction between our beliefs and those of the rest of the world.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

35m ago

"You know better, Hans… the soul is not a separate entity that is “intended” for a particular body—the soul is the form of the body (in Aristotelian/Thomistic terms)."

Nevertheless, the human soul is separable, since a thing not inherent in the fact of there being a body, and the spiritual soul is created by God in the moment of conception.

This means, if you tinker with the genome after that, you are offering an immortal soul the genome it was not meant for. Supposing the tinkering involves survival of original human organism (otherwise one could be asking whether clones have no souls or whether a new conception has occurred after a murder).

"If your argument held, it would inveigh against any sort of corrective surgery whatsoever."

Not quite, since correcting one body part is clearly less intrusive than "correcting" the whole genome.

"Cleft palate? Better leave it alone, since God must have created a soul for a body with a cleft palate."

God may have created that soul for the moment the cleft palate was gone - or the surgery may fail, and the "uncleaving" of the palate may result in the patient choking.

"Lasik vision surgery? Better not—God must have intended that person to be near-sighted."

I am, somewhat.

I see a meaning to it.

"Again, Catholicism is not fatalistic. There is no dogma of the Church which forbids attempts to fix perceived problems out of a morbid fear that God might not want them fixed."

Yes, there is. Christ is God. And Christ said sth about "perceiving" problems which aren't there.

Like Pharisees saw a probable proof of demonic possession in the disciples not washing the hands before each meal - when it suited them.

Christ also said sth about forcing someone to submit to a correction not wanted, like [Matthew 23:15].

It is a dogma that Christ knows better than shrinks, therefore that, if shrinks are behaving like Pharisees, they are wrong.

Fatalistic is not the point. It is more obeying shrinks which in my experience shows fatalism.

"Think of Paul’s “altar to the unknown god” sermon on Mars Hill—he deliberately attempted to work within their existing paradigm, because he hoped he would more readily reach them that way."

He started a talk from the unknown god, he did not end it on that note.

"There is nothing in Catholic doctrine or even small-t tradition which demands that we always seek out maximum friction between our beliefs and those of the rest of the world."

I was presenting it as advice, therefore as a matter of prudence, not directly of doctrine.

You seem less shy of seeking friction with me ...

Anthony Zarrella

7m ago

“Nevertheless, the human soul is separable, since a thing not inherent in the fact of there being a body, and the spiritual soul is created by God in the moment of conception.”

You make three distinct claims here:

• The human soul is separable
• The soul is not inherent in the fact of the body
• The soul is created by God in the moment of conception

The third I assent to unreservedly—it is the dogma of the Church.

The first is strictly true, but according to St. Thomas it is not natural for the soul to be separate from the body, and such separation is a violent thing. It is for this reason that even once saved and sanctified after death, we are not truly whole until the bodily resurrection on the last day.

The second is a matter of hot debate among theologians. It is generally considered true (though not a formal dogma) that no human body ever is produced or does exist in a living state without a soul. The debate is over whether this is simply a necessary fact (such that the soul is constitutively necessary to life and therefore “allowing life without a soul” is something self-contradictory and therefore not possible even for God) or whether it is simply that God is voluntarily precommitted to providing a soul for every life that in fact comes into being.

Regardless, though strictly separable, the human soul cannot be meaningfully discussed as distinct from and independent of the body of which it is the form.

“This means, if you tinker with the genome after that, you are offering an immortal soul the genome it was not meant for.

[. . .]

God may have created that soul for the moment the cleft palate was gone”

Yes, and by the same token, He may have created a given soul in anticipation of the genetic defect being fixed. Why is He fully capable of incorporating the fixing of the cleft into His plan, but somehow incapable of doing the same with, say, the elimination of an extraneous third copy of chromosome 21?

“I am, somewhat.

I see a meaning to it.”

As am I—and personally I have no problems being somewhat near-sighted.

But merely because one person feels that he is meant to live with a particular difference or challenge does not mean he is competent to adjudge that all people with that same challenge are divinely foreordained to bear that challenge for life.

“Like Pharisees saw a probable proof of demonic possession in the disciples not washing the hands before each meal”

Not that I recall—they saw it as proof of impiety, but not demonic possession.

[He seems to have been correct at least about Matthew 15]

“Christ also said sth about forcing someone to submit to a correction not wanted, like [Matthew 23:15].”

I see nothing at all about “unwanted correction” there. Christ is admonishing the Pharisees for being eager to gain converts only to lead those converts into the same errors as themselves—but there is nothing about “forcing” anyone to do anything, or correcting something that doesn’t need correcting.

Also, Jesus healed plenty of demoniacs who didn’t want to be healed. We may be able to infer that the person whose will was being suppressed by the possessing demon did want to be healed—but we could likewise infer that the mentally ill person would want to be healed if they were in their right mind.

“It is a dogma that Christ knows better than shrinks, therefore that, if shrinks are behaving like Pharisees, they are wrong.”

It is a dogma that Christ knows better than anyone—the Church, however, has no dogmas that are specifically hostile towards mental health professionals. Again, that’s you, not the Church.

If you don’t feel that you need a shrink for something people are pressing you to get help for, that’s your call. But you’ve no cause to extrapolate outwards and conclude that no one needs a shrink or that no shrinks are correct in their diagnoses and advice.

“I was presenting it as advice, therefore as a matter of prudence, not directly of doctrine.”

And I was telling you that I see it as imprudent.

“You seem less shy of seeking friction with me ...”

Yes, because I know that, with well-known exceptions, we have a common foundation of beliefs. We can argue about what Catholic dogma truly recommends, because we both (again, with known exceptions) agree on what Catholic dogma is and on whether it is correct and binding.

But you’ll notice that I do apply the same principle to you. On those areas in which we know we don’t agree, I steer clear of the issues unless they somehow become directly relevant to the matter at hand. I don’t go out of my way to find excuses to challenge your sede/Bawdenite beliefs if I can just as easily make my point by referencing pre-Vatican-II sources whose authority we both respect.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"The first is strictly true, but according to St. Thomas it is not natural for the soul to be separate from the body, and such separation is a violent thing."

A good reason not to separate the soul from the body type God intended by its genome.

"The second is a matter of hot debate among theologians. It is generally considered true (though not a formal dogma) that no human body ever is produced or does exist in a living state without a soul."

Probable enough. If this is true, clones are not soulless.

If it is true, also, either a soul is given a body not the one God made it for, in genetic tinkering, or one body is killed and another procreated artificially when the genome is changed.

Either way, the genetic tinkering would be a very evil act.

"But merely because one person feels that he is meant to live with a particular difference or challenge does not mean he is competent to adjudge that all people with that same challenge are divinely foreordained to bear that challenge for life."

You have kind of nailed a key difference between corrective surgery and genetic tinkering.

The former is made after someone has felt uncomfortable about, for instance, being nearsighted.

God can certainly have his plan for anyone born with a chromosome less (21 or other) than he was procreated with. But one plan could be to tell us, it was wrong to do so.

If you truly want to have neither killing nor too many with Downs, the natural and totally unviolent way is to encourage girls to marry young, since risk is increasing with age of the mother.

_____________

"Christ is admonishing the Pharisees for being eager to gain converts only to lead those converts into the same errors as themselves—but there is nothing about “forcing” anyone to do anything, or correcting something that doesn’t need correcting."

Actually, while Communist inspired Russian Orthodox have done the first reading, "making a proselyte" is, in Judaism (which is heir to Pharisees) a much more complex process than just gaining a convert.

It involves, as with Sturgeon's [Spurgeon's?] disciples, a kind of moral transformation, and therefore "making a proselyte" involves some moral pressure.

Confer verse 4.

I am also checking the comment on the verse, here:

"Because whilst a Gentile he sinned without a perfect knowledge of the evil, and was not then a two-fold child of hell; but after his conversion, seeing the vices of his masters, and perceiving that they acted in direct opposition to the doctrines they taught, he returns to the vomit, and renders himself a prevaricator, by adoring the idols he formerly left, and sells his soul doubly to the devil. (St. Chrysostom)"

It is called "getting with the game".

"They that teach that it is sufficient to have faith only, do make such Christians as blindly follow them, as these Jews did their proselytes, children of hell far more than before. (St. Augustine, lib. de fide et oper. chap. xxvi.)"

Now, back to you:

"Also, Jesus healed plenty of demoniacs who didn’t want to be healed"

Demoniacs are quite another league than "mental illness", precisely as a man who gets scary by being clean is another thing than not washing one's hands before each meal.

"but we could likewise infer that the mentally ill person would want to be healed if they were in their right mind."

Except that these days so much latitude is given to judging when someone is not so.*

"the Church, however, has no dogmas that are specifically hostile towards mental health professionals."

A good reading of the Bible has, as they are today - and the Bible is dogma with the Church.

"If you don’t feel that you need a shrink for something people are pressing you to get help for, that’s your call. But you’ve no cause to extrapolate outwards and conclude that no one needs a shrink or that no shrinks are correct in their diagnoses and advice."

Again, a fundamentally flawed dichotomy. Shrinks are quite definitely over-used.

Also, why are you considering there is "something" people are "pressuring" me to get help for? If you consider there is something you would even advice me to get help for, it shows you have too great a latitude in the word "mental illness". Like Pharisees comparing eating without washing hands (when outside and no water is offered) to being the state in which someone being clean is a scary surprise.

"Yes, because I know that, with well-known exceptions, we have a common foundation of beliefs"

I am sometimes wondering whether it is broader with me or with people like the questioner.

Anthony Zarrella

1h ago

“A good reason not to separate the soul from the body type God intended by its genome.”

You’re either equivocating on the term “separate” (using it before to describe actual severance and now to describe a mere incongruity) or else pressing a metaphysics which has not been established (that is, that genomic alterations actually produce a new body rather than an alteration to an existing body).

“If it is true, also, either a soul is given a body not the one God made it for, in genetic tinkering, or one body is killed and another procreated artificially when the genome is changed.”

Or the body God always intended it for was the one with the corrected genome—just as you suggested that perhaps God sometimes prepares a soul with the intention that a cleft palate will one day be corrected.

“You have kind of nailed a key difference between corrective surgery and genetic tinkering.

The former is made after someone has felt uncomfortable about, for instance, being nearsighted.”

Not necessarily. I’ll keep coming back to the cleft palate example—corrective surgery is often performed on infants.

Would you argue that this is counter to the will of God, and that these infants must be allowed to suffer until they are old enough to discern for themselves whether they are meant to seek a remedy?

I’m certainly aware of no doctrine or even informal teaching to that effect…

“God can certainly have his plan for anyone born with a chromosome less (21 or other) than he was procreated with. But one plan could be to tell us, it was wrong to do so.”

Maybe. Or maybe not.

We could always speculate that God’s plan could be to teach us not to correct some perceived problem. But it seems folly to me to make a categorical assumption that a certain problem is not to be fixed merely because the means of fixing it involves new technology and alteration of things we once were unable to alter.

If I recall correctly, there were some groups of fundamentalists decades ago who thought the same about vaccines—that it was impious to vaccinate, because if God wanted someone to contract polio or smallpox, we’d be wrong to interfere.

There still are groups today, “Christian Scientists” among them, who believe in shunning all medical care in favor of prayer alone—believing that if God wills that they get better, then medicine isn’t necessary, and if He doesn’t, then medicine will be ineffective and also disobedient.

But neither of those has ever been the position of the Church.

“Actually, while Communist inspired Russian Orthodox have done the first reading, "making a proselyte" is, in Judaism (which is heir to Pharisees) a much more complex process than just gaining a convert.

It involves, as with Sturgeon's [Spurgeon's] disciples, a kind of moral transformation, and therefore "making a proselyte" involves some moral pressure.

Confer verse 4.”

Verse 4 likewise appears to be about hypocrisy not coercion, and I don’t see how “some moral pressure” would change anything.

You appear to be greatly stretching the text to urge your needed meaning against the most plain and obvious meaning.

“I am also checking the comment on the verse, here:

"Because whilst a Gentile he sinned without a perfect knowledge of the evil, and was not then a two-fold child of hell; but after his conversion, seeing the vices of his masters, and perceiving that they acted in direct opposition to the doctrines they taught, he returns to the vomit, and renders himself a prevaricator, by adoring the idols he formerly left, and sells his soul doubly to the devil. (St. Chrysostom)"”

Yes?

Again, I’m not seeing anything affirming that the key error is “correcting those who are unwilling”. I’m still seeing that the problem is leading converts astray by hypocrisy, or even prompting apostasy via moral revulsion.

The lesson is not to make converts when one’s own conduct is drastically off the mark—not that one oughtn’t seek to help those who don’t feel they need it.

“"They that teach that it is sufficient to have faith only, do make such Christians as blindly follow them, as these Jews did their proselytes, children of hell far more than before. (St. Augustine, lib. de fide et oper. chap. xxvi.)"”

Again, teaching that the converts were better off unconverted because their teachers were rotten, not because they were unduly pressured.

“Except that these days so much latitude is given to judging when someone is not so.”

Perhaps so—but abusus usum non tollit.

“A good reading of the Bible has, as they are today - and the Bible is dogma with the Church.”

The Bible is dogma, of course. The Bible as interpreted by Hans is not necessarily.

If a given interpretation of the Bible is neither affirmatively mandated nor even ratified or approved by the Magisterium, then it is not thereby conclusively invalid, but it is mere private interpretation and entitled only to the weight assigned to it by your own discernment.

Personally, I see nothing which specifically vilifies mental health professionals.

“Again, a fundamentally flawed dichotomy. Shrinks are quite definitely over-used.”

Perhaps so, perhaps not.

Regardless, I don’t see any issue on which you could claim the backing of the Faith for your own personal opinion of the matter.

“Also, why are you considering there is "something" people are "pressuring" me to get help for? If you consider there is something you would even advice me to get help for, it shows you have too great a latitude in the word "mental illness".”

I don’t assume there is anything you need help for. I inferred, from your hostility towards the profession, that you had had some negative history with either actual or urged mental health interventions, whether or not such interventions were in fact needed or justified.

No assumptions made from or about your mind or character—merely an inference of probable events from facts and opinions stated.

If you prefer, you may take my statement as employing the “impersonal ‘you’”—i.e., “If a person doesn’t feel that that person needs a shrink for something people are pressing that person to get help for, that’s that person’s call.”

“I am sometimes wondering whether it is broader with me or with people like the questioner.”

Reading between the lines, I suspect you and the questioner do agree more closely on evolution than I do with either one of you. S/he appears to be asking the question as a weak-form reductio against evolution.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"You’re either equivocating on the term “separate” (using it before to describe actual severance and now to describe a mere incongruity)"

I am saying one of the things would happen, either actual severance in the case the tinkering constituted killing and creation of a new person, or incongruity with a pre-made severance from what would have been congruous, since God's intention.

"or else pressing a metaphysics which has not been established (that is, that genomic alterations actually produce a new body rather than an alteration to an existing body)."

I was, as said, open to both possibilities.

Either a new body, an embryo dies and another ensues, or a very radical - too radical - alteration.

"Or the body God always intended it for was the one with the corrected genome—just as you suggested that perhaps God sometimes prepares a soul with the intention that a cleft palate will one day be corrected."

If it had been it would not have been that genome.

You are dangerously close to advocating eugenics, if it could only be done safely.

Already the fact we don't know it involves no killing and after that new person (as second person of two homozygotic twins is a new person, but without survival of first) makes it unsafe - but even if it were safe, it would not be right, because it is a kind of eugenics.

"Not necessarily. I’ll keep coming back to the cleft palate example—corrective surgery is often performed on infants.

Would you argue that this is counter to the will of God, and that these infants must be allowed to suffer until they are old enough to discern for themselves whether they are meant to seek a remedy?"

I would argue that between birth and when they come so to speak of age, parents have authority.

"We could always speculate that God’s plan could be to teach us not to correct some perceived problem. But it seems folly to me to make a categorical assumption that a certain problem is not to be fixed merely because the means of fixing it involves new technology and alteration of things we once were unable to alter.

If I recall correctly, there were some groups of fundamentalists decades ago who thought the same about vaccines—that it was impious to vaccinate, because if God wanted someone to contract polio or smallpox, we’d be wrong to interfere."

And the best argument I can find against certain anti-vaxxers is, the cases of "autism" involved are false diagnoses.

I have heard a rumour of fetal cells involved in vaccines - if correct that would make vaccination a kind of cannibalism, there was an Orthodox woman who refused vaccination on that ground.

You know, the best general argument on this one is, I don't think God wants doctors to be too much in charge.

"But neither of those has ever been the position of the Church."

I'd like to know if antivaccination was condemned promptly or left to individual or per see judgement at first (after it was invented).

"Verse 4 likewise appears to be about hypocrisy not coercion, and I don’t see how “some moral pressure” would change anything."

Without coercion or pastoral, no one would be in a position to impose. Especially heavy burdens.

I may also have recalled a parallel text which for the moment I do not find.

"You appear to be greatly stretching the text to urge your needed meaning against the most plain and obvious meaning."

I am making the argument I have been making for years, and I could at worst have made an error of memory when first making it. I'll try to look it up.

"The lesson is not to make converts** when one’s own conduct is drastically off the mark—not that one oughtn’t seek to help those who don’t feel they need it."

When it comes to demonic possession, there is a point. But when it comes to "washing hands" - and I think such errors are being made by psychiatry today - there is no point.

I'll give you Ellicott on Matthew 15 (while he was probably a Protestant, what he says rings right):

(2) They wash not their hands when they eat bread.—St. Mark (Mark 7:3-4), writing for Gentiles, explains the nature of the tradition more fully. What the Pharisees insisted on was not cleanliness as such, but the avoidance of ceremonial pollution. They shrank not from dirt, but from defilement. If they had been in the market, they might have come in contact with the heathen or the publican. If they ate or drank out of a metal or earthenware cup, the last lip that touched it might have been that of a heathen, and therefore that too needed purification. The pride which led them to stand aloof from the rest of mankind showed itself in this, as in all their other traditions. Indifference to their rules in peasants and fishermen, as such—as belonging to the crowd whom they scorned as the brute “people of the earth”—they could afford to tolerate. What shocked them was to see the disciples of One who claimed to be a Prophet or a Rabbi indulging in that indifference. According to their traditions, the act of which they complained stood on the same level as sexual impurity, and exposed those who were guilty of it to the excommunication of the Sanhedrin, or great Council.

There are people whose excitement in conflict or momentarily uncomfortable position is really pushed "in malam partem" in the interpretation, because of a conflict of values with the person.

"Again, teaching that the converts were better off unconverted because their teachers were rotten, not because they were unduly pressured."

I agree this comment does not per se support me, I gave it for complete honesty.

"Perhaps so—but abusus usum non tollit."

What if 1 in 10 who is in a ward should be there?

What if judges and those locking up as shrinks impose therapies on the wronged party as if it were the wrong party of a conflict?

What I have seen, this is rampant. In other words, we are dealing with a situation in which "Catholics" in the diocese of Paris can take me as "megalomaniac" (as in mentally ill) for claiming to be a writer and preferring to get paid for it over taking another job and losing the time to write, and as "paranoid" for believing Creationism and Geocentrism. POssibly some of them are also so inhto conspiracy that they believe me to be a mind control ultra victim and are using similar tactics to crack me up, so they can start my "recovery" from sth which was not there in the first place.

In so far as they have some symptoms going their way, it may be the failed attempts on their side.

In US, it seems while a certain John Todd may certainly have been ripe for prison, unless the rape was a false charge, putting him in a mental ward would be a way to prevent hearing him to make disclosures about Illuminati.

For instance, I do not believe his claim that he was paying C. S. Lewis conspiracy money. It would have involved him doing so at about 14 or younger, since that is how old he was when CSL died, but I would want to know if he made it up or was lied to (for instance, someone getting somehow presented to him as C. S. Lewis). Of course that mix-up is compatible with him having a demonic possession and missing (having missed before he died) an exorcist for the presence of shrinks - demons being among other things shrewd liars.

But it would also have cleared certain things up if he had before a court been heard for calumny and if freed the charge had rebounded on the network he had been into and which had been fooling him. If that were the case. A bit like I suspect other people defecting from such things have been lied to about what things were, brought to believe the wishful thinking of their power hungry (and in reality a bit more power starved than they would admit) superior conspirators.

When his story was classed as part of a mental disease, we can neither hear him on what he could substantiate, nor on what he would have been either lied to or lying about.

So far - and on the official version, it is too late. Henry Makow has at least made some publicity for an alternative story.

There are minor conspiracies involving incompatibilities on work places and getting "awkward" colleagues out of the way in which conspiring with psychiatry is even more rampant, than in this fairly rare case.

"Personally, I see nothing which specifically vilifies mental health professionals."

I have seen too many behave like pharisees.

Or back up people of higher social standing who were.

"Regardless, I don’t see any issue on which you could claim the backing of the Faith for your own personal opinion of the matter."

Insofar as my judgement on the fact is correct, I have the backing of the faith for what is immoral about it, even if I might have misplaced the Biblical references some earlier on, and not been corrected about Matthew 15 to now, we'll see if I find another reference backing me better.

"I don’t assume there is anything you need help for."

Thank you!

"I inferred, from your hostility towards the profession, that you had had some negative history with either actual or urged mental health interventions, whether or not such interventions were in fact needed or justified."

Correct. But a negative history I had would not necessarily be someone urging me to get help with something.

I could be judging from what has been done to family, to at least one dear friend, and from something in my past.

In fact, there is no one in particular urging me to get help about:

• feeling like a writer (when I write loads, on diverse subjects and with advanced response to other debaters)
• being a Geocentric
• being an Evolutionist
• believing "Pope Francis" is not Pope
• wanting to get support in the form of some readers getting interested enough in something to start getting involved in edition (I think evolution favouring big editors like Harmattan are unrealistic, personally)

But I have more hints raining at me in a week than I can count. Hints like dropping the contact, like suddenly having no time, like seeing an URL under which I specify what language I write in and pretending I had written sth in an unknown foreign language and so on.

I take that as hints, both that they would prefer me to "get help", and that they don't quite respect it is "my call", and also they do not quite dare to argue with me about it. Could it be some secularist prefers having me under (undercover or very discreet) psychiatric observation, as long as I don't give up? Could be.

C. P. Snow felt WW-II could have been avoided if Hitler had been forced under psychiatry in time. Some secularists feel that "fundies" by the fact of even believing Apocalypse, as literally upcoming, could provoke the road to Harmageddon and if not Biblical Apocalypse with Doomsday, at least the kind of thing Dave Consiglio would consider Apocalyptic (including not vaxxing early enough and not reverting climate change early enough).

You get the point?

"No assumptions made from or about your mind or character—merely an inference of probable events from facts and opinions stated."

This is interesting. Your inference presumes that a lot of people at present not in psychiatric coercion in closed wards, people you meet on the street, or over the web, can be hating psychiatry after first (or closely second hand) experience, while everyone else might be presumed to endorse it.

BOTH parts of this are highly interesting. Both how direct experience, in people capable of expressing such a thing, however much bias there is in that, can bring people to hate it, and how everyone NOT having such experience as a default position would endorse and heroise it.

A kind of interesting marketing strategy for a - interesting, not necessarily good - product might be involved.

Btw, I do know some people have good experiences of psychiatry, and I consider for instance that teens tutored by someone of their own faith and sufficiently sympathetic to their type or patients recovering from deep depression are generally fairly well treated. But I don't see these as the majority of people in a ward or people supposed to get therapy (sometimes on court orders, for juvenile delinquents or for suicide attempt survivors).

"I suspect you and the questioner do agree more closely on evolution than I do with either one of you."

True enough. But that is for the other subthread.***

* If I take a comment by Ellicott here ...:

(2) They wash not their hands when they eat bread.—St. Mark (Mark 7:3-4), writing for Gentiles, explains the nature of the tradition more fully. What the Pharisees insisted on was not cleanliness as such, but the avoidance of ceremonial pollution. They shrank not from dirt, but from defilement. If they had been in the market, they might have come in contact with the heathen or the publican. If they ate or drank out of a metal or earthenware cup, the last lip that touched it might have been that of a heathen, and therefore that too needed purification. The pride which led them to stand aloof from the rest of mankind showed itself in this, as in all their other traditions. Indifference to their rules in peasants and fishermen, as such—as belonging to the crowd whom they scorned as the brute “people of the earth”—they could afford to tolerate. What shocked them was to see the disciples of One who claimed to be a Prophet or a Rabbi indulging in that indifference. According to their traditions, the act of which they complained stood on the same level as sexual impurity, and exposed those who were guilty of it to the excommunication of the Sanhedrin, or great Council.

... the problem is, many items of modern "health care" are about "avoiding pollution" (like "fascism, xenophobia, pedophilia, believing in magic" and a few like there, and seeing someone (at least with more than popular instruction) who insists on what group such and such considers as a pollution as "not in his right mind". This was incorporated into the next comment.

** I suppose to under one's own pastoral. C. S. Lewis making converts and sending them to Anglican, Catholic or Presbyterian clergy while not always living an ideal life (a possibly or probably invalid marrige, using condoms in it) is hardly an argument against his apologetics. Also, when the Catholic Church called Henry VIII defensor fidei for "Defense of the Seven Sacraments against Luther", it was not saying he would be adequate as father confessor.

The problem with hypocrisy seems to involve mainly a problem with a pastoral of social pressure rather than going to the priest.

*** See previous.