Deadly Doctrine: Health, Illness, and Christian God-Talk - Hardcover

Wendell W. Watters

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879757825 ISBN 13: 9780879757823

Publisher: Prometheus, 1992

Synopsis

The Christian religion presents itself as the way to contentment, spiritual health, and salvation. But is this really true? Dr. Wendell Watters offers a powerful argument, based on his many years of clinical experience with individuals, couples, and families, that Christianity's influence actually militates against human development in such vital areas as self-esteem, sexuality, and social interactions. The tragic end result of Christian conditioning is too often antisocial behavior, sexual dysfunction, poor psychological development, anxiety, and even major psychiatric illness.

Christian indoctrination is not simply a problem affecting individuals or single families; the noxious effects of its teachings over nearly two millennia pervade society at large, even those who are not Christians, and in ways that seriously undermine human welfare and the quality of life. Christianity's aggressive pronatalist policies have encouraged large families, despite parents' inability to cope either emotionally or financially. With this the Christian church has formulated rigid sexual roles, forbidding all practices not leading directly to conception. By actually promoting sexual ignorance and irresponsibility, Christianity has allowed the proliferation of such social ills as rape, child molestation, and pornography.

In the face of so much human suffering resulting from Christian doctrine, it is imperative that health care professionals, recognizing the Christian belief system as an addictive disease, develop a religious status examination to help evaluate how notions about life derived from Christian god-talk compromise individuals' healthy functioning. In failing to determine the role of oppressive religious beliefs in mental illness, physicians and other health care workers actually promote Christianity's continued stranglehold on human happiness and self-fulfillment.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Watters, a former professor of psychiatry in Canada, hopes this broad-brush indictment of Christianity will encourage wavering believers to pursue "humanistic" alternatives. Rather than attack any specific branch of Christianity, Watters simply asserts that Christian teachings "are incompatible . . . with sound health." He bases his insight on his 25-year psychiatric career, but, disappointingly, includes few studies in the book. Instead, he delves into the history of Christianity and its doctrines, citing critics who support his thesis. He maintains that prayer and meditation retard human communications skills, that Christian guilt has little influence on behavior, and that authoritarian Christian attitudes toward sexuality lead to phobic responses. His argument would have been more powerful had he concentrated on clinical examples; some of these--such as Watters's accounts of a mother who prayed rather than comforting her distraught son at a family therapy session, and of a man who considers rape less sinful than masturbation--are chilling.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Prometheus
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0879757825
• ISBN 13: 9780879757823
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 204