If I told you that I receive telepathic life counseling from Elvis, you would probably think me delusional and seriously question my mental health. As you should. But replace “Elvis” with “Jesus” and I’m just your average Christian.
So then, is it fair to call religious belief mental illness? In a word, yes. At least according to Stanford University professor, neuroendocrinologist, primatologist and behavioral scientist, Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky. Dr. Sapolsky proposes that religiosity is indeed a form of mental illness, “organized schizophrenia” as he calls it, or more accurately schizotypalism which is a milder form of schizophrenia, but still a diagnosable condition.
Sapolsky points out where schizophrenia is extremely harmful to the individual, a lower, partial level of the same condition clearly has adaptive benefits.
Since the beginning of time, human society has been permeated by irrationality. Today, even with science to explain just about everything where at one time religion offered the best explanation, humans insist on perpetuating absurd beliefs.
Anthropologist Robert Raven noticed schizotypalism present in primitive societies where witch doctors, shamans, medicine men and women exhibited behaviors similar to what we find in mainstream religions, such as talking to the dead and speaking in tongues. Raven observed some of these primitive religious leaders exhibited full blown schizophrenia and, provided the balance was right, were and are highly regarded members of society.
We see these same parallels in modern, so-called advanced societies such as we live in where politicians, celebrities and religious leaders holding similar beliefs and exhibiting similar schizotypal behaviors are also generally revered.