Quickies: Did You Have Any Idea How Sick You Are?

     For believing in God, that is:

     The Atlantic writer Jeffrey Tayler is annoyed at the “educated elite” in our country. Why have they not risen to the occasion and labeled passionate religious belief a mental illness?

     The writer’s disappointment followed the release of an article on The News Nerd entitled “American Psychological Association to Classify Belief in God as a Mental Illness.” In the story, Psychologist Dr. Lillian Andrews had stated: “The time for evolving into a modern society and classifying these archaic beliefs as a mental disorder has been long overdue.”

     Yet the article, it turned out, was a hoax.

     Alas for Mr. Tayler. Indeed, the journalist had already treated religion as a mental illness before this study had seemed to confirm it. Yet, “the hour was not nigh,” he wrote sadly. “Psychologists were not yet ready to diagnose firm belief in God as what it is: an unhealthy delusion.”

     “Yet, would that it were so,” he whined in a piece for Salon. “Imagine, so many Supreme Court justices and Republican politicians, from Antonin Scalia to Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, disqualified in one fell swoop on mental health grounds from holding public office!”

     There you have it: the voice of the oh-so-tolerant Left. Never mind that ninety percent of Americans profess a belief in God, whether or not they claim affiliation with any recognized religious denomination. Never mind that among those nearly three hundred million Americans are many who could beat Jeffrey Tayler at any contest of intellect or comparison of achievements you can imagine. And never mind that a diagnosis of mental illness is sufficient to strip the “sufferer” of every right an American has ever enjoyed.

     Say, how about an APA declaration that intellectual narcissism disqualifies the sufferer from writing opinion-editorial pieces? To say nothing of the obvious inadequacies and delusions of a “professional” writer who apparently doesn’t know the difference between healthy and healthful.

     Here’s the hoax article that thrilled Tayler so. Be sure to read the comments.