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Psychology of Prophets: Who's craziest?

MikeSun5

Trigger Happy Pacifist,
Joined
Apr 18, 2009
Messages
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I was talking with some friends about what would happen if the commonly known prophets from antiquity were diagnosed by modern psychologists. Nowadays, if someone reports hearing God's voice or meeting his angels, they're not taken to a church, they're taken to a hospital. So this got us thinking about which prophet was the craziest in terms of mental illness (of course this assumes that all the stories in the religious texts are true).

My vote for craziest prophet goes to Moses. Already a murderer before even leaving Egypt, he suffered from severe hallucinations. During one particularly bad episode, he held an entire conversation with a shrubbery that had caught fire. He got lost (and stayed lost) in a desert for decades and he ordered men to kill babies and rape virgins... all of which he claimed was God's path.

Which Prophet of God/Allah/Yahweh/Jehovah do you think would get locked up the quickest if they peddled their same wares in today's society?
 
ahhh .. but the shrubbery that Moses talked to was not too tall and not too expensive!
 
Muhammad might also qualify, since some of the symptoms he reported about the onset of his prophetic trances, as well as how his trances were described by his companions sound in many cases to be like those of temporal lobe epilepsy.
 
My vote for craziest prophet goes to Moses. Already a murderer before even leaving Egypt, he suffered from severe hallucinations. During one particularly bad episode, he held an entire conversation with a shrubbery that had caught fire. He got lost (and stayed lost) in a desert for decades and he ordered men to kill babies and rape virgins... all of which he claimed was God's path.


I think you're missing an important aspect. Moses and many other biblical prophets were very high functioning. They were not only able to complete basic life tasks, but in many cases were compelling and magnetic people who engendered trust and reverence from others.

That makes diagnoses like severe schizophrenia (enough to cause visual and aural hallucinations) very unlikely. Somebody who thought bushes were speaking to him could not have fed himself, let alone led anybody anywhere.

The most likely diagnosis of all of your famous prophets is probably narcissistic personality disorder, or the experimental diagnosis of malignant narcissism.

This diagnosis would mean that Moses didn't actually see or hear any of that stuff. He just had such a need for recognition that he told people he did. His brain may have created delusions to satisfy his ego. He may or may not have believed himself.

Charles Manson, for example, believes himself. L. Ron Hubbard did not.
 
I think you're missing an important aspect. Moses and many other biblical prophets were very high functioning. They were not only able to complete basic life tasks, but in many cases were compelling and magnetic people who engendered trust and reverence from others.

That makes diagnoses like severe schizophrenia (enough to cause visual and aural hallucinations) very unlikely. Somebody who thought bushes were speaking to him could not have fed himself, let alone led anybody anywhere.

The most likely diagnosis of all of your famous prophets is probably narcissistic personality disorder, or the experimental diagnosis of malignant narcissism.

This diagnosis would mean that Moses didn't actually see or hear any of that stuff. He just had such a need for recognition that he told people he did. His brain may have created delusions to satisfy his ego. He may or may not have believed himself.

Charles Manson, for example, believes himself. L. Ron Hubbard did not.

Good points... but I don't think Manson or Hubbard claimed to hear the voice of God. They both were narcissistic for sure, but I think their motivations were different. Hubbard's motivation was money, Manson's was fame.

As for other modern "prophets," Jim Jones' motivation seemed to be more of a political nature, but dudes like Joseph Smith and David Koresh did claim to receive messages directly from God, and they did seem to be motivated only by that.

I just don't see the ego/narcissist angle really working 2000 years ago. It's not like they were getting rich or powerful by preaching like people do today. As a matter of fact, it was a good way to get you killed back then.
 
I just don't see the ego/narcissist angle really working 2000 years ago. It's not like they were getting rich or powerful by preaching like people do today. As a matter of fact, it was a good way to get you killed back then.

And according to the myth, Moses was already a rich and powerful man in Egypt before he got visions from God.
 
Actually, my vote goes to the character of Nephi in the Book of Mormon. He is commanded by God to kill someone named Laban, God's reasoning being:

"It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief."

Nephi if caught, would surely be arrested and convicted of murder, and probably his family too.
 
Mohammed would probably get arrested pretty quickly. Assault with a deadly weapon, incitement to riot, flying a horse through controlled airspace without a flight plan or clearance from a competent air traffic control authority. Then there's the whole pedophilia thing.
 
Jesus might get 30 days community service and timed served for the merchants in the Temple incident. He might be disappointed that he wouldn't get nailed to anything for that but you know, there's just no pleasing some people.
 
Which Prophet of God/Allah/Yahweh/Jehovah do you think would get locked up the quickest if they peddled their same wares in today's society?
Ezekiel. Walking around nude and cooking his food on a campfire made of his own excrement. If it was Ezekiel.
 
Dude, it has got to be Michael. Hollywood railroaded him and he still will not do what he is told.
 
Ezekiel. Walking around nude and cooking his food on a campfire made of his own excrement. If it was Ezekiel.

In Israel maybe but here in Germany that's just called camping (though they have nice little beer gardens so no poo fires required now).
 
I think you're missing an important aspect. Moses and many other biblical prophets were very high functioning. They were not only able to complete basic life tasks, but in many cases were compelling and magnetic people who engendered trust and reverence from others.

That makes diagnoses like severe schizophrenia (enough to cause visual and aural hallucinations) very unlikely. Somebody who thought bushes were speaking to him could not have fed himself, let alone led anybody anywhere.

The most likely diagnosis of all of your famous prophets is probably narcissistic personality disorder, or the experimental diagnosis of malignant narcissism.

This diagnosis would mean that Moses didn't actually see or hear any of that stuff. He just had such a need for recognition that he told people he did. His brain may have created delusions to satisfy his ego. He may or may not have believed himself.

Charles Manson, for example, believes himself. L. Ron Hubbard did not.

I'm not sure if that means much or is that clear.

For a start, Jim Jones also was a very effective and convincing cult leader, but not only he got himself and his whole cult to poison their babies and kill themselves, but it turns out they had been drilling exactly that for a long time. Which isn't exactly the sanest thing to do. Spending years practicing your eventual suicide, as well as the death of everyone who ever trusted you, every day, is the kind of thing that would get you sent to a competent psychiatrist.

Plus, not all schizophrenics are drooling wrecks. Simple schizophrenia, sure, eventually it is, but even that one after a long time. It's a downward path in being more and more broken, than just suddenly being unable to care for oneself. Paranoid schizophrenia on the other hand can leave one an otherwise intelligent and functioning human, but still seeing ghosts or having surrealistic delusions or whatnot on a regular basis.

Second, we're talking relatively rich and powerful people, and past a point even just having a gaggle of trusted people to delegate to would take care of most things. It doesn't matter if you're too crazy to tie your own shoelaces, if you've got people who consider it an honour to tie them for you.

E.g., does it really matter if Moses was sane enough to be able to survive on his own alone, when basically at every step he has his brother doing even the getting his message to the people? And I mean, really, Moses doesn't even have to be coherent enough to convince his followers or the Pharaoh, when he has Aron as a very skilled spokesman taking care of exactly that for him.

And in fact one even has to wonder if such an Aron character wouldn't be the originator of such stuff, if he has a crazy guy that's believed to be a prophet and that he can manipulate or just in whose mouth he can put whatever he wants. How much of the wise stuff would have to be even directly from Moses, and how much can just be at least edited by Aron into something wise(r) sounding than Moses's ramblings.

Third, taking care of oneself is something that some of those figures fail. Being "crazy" doesn't necessarily mean failing every single thing. And if someone's delusions actually get one killed, I'd say that's pretty much the ultimate proof that, yes, they were too crazy to care for themselves.

E.g., that woman who put her arse in a propeller because God told her to, it doesn't matter how rational or able to care for herself was the rest of the time. That's the failure that proves right there and then that she wasn't sane after all.

Now let's look at the example of another mythical character: Jesus. (Mind you, I still don't believe he's historical, but we're playing by hypothetical premises, right?) He talks to God to the extent he's convinced that God told him to go get himself killed by the Romans, and he does just that. Plus some surrealistically delusional episodes along the way, such as his having a major fit at the... currency exchange guys at the temple, who were just there for people coming from other cities (a lot even around Passover) and who needed the exact coinage for the entrance fee. But anyway, I'd say that getting himself not just killed, but killed in the longest, most painful and most dishonourable for his family execution available at the time, is exactly proof that he wasn't able to care for himself enough to keep himself alive.
 
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And in fact one even has to wonder if such an Aron character wouldn't be the originator of such stuff, if he has a crazy guy that's believed to be a prophet and that he can manipulate or just in whose mouth he can put whatever he wants.

Crazy cult leaders tend to do that sort of thing, yes.. :D
 

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