A researcher from the University of Oxford and author specializing in neuroscience believes that religious fundamentalism, in all the forms he can have, can be considered as a curable mental illness, can be read on Huffingtonpost.
Kathleen Taylor, who defines herself as a scientific writer, suggested during a presentation on the research of the brain, at the Hay literary festival in Wales, last Wednesday that “one of the surprises would be to see people with certain (radical) beliefs being treated by neuroscience.
“Someone who, for example, chose to” radicalize “by marrying an ideology, a sect, could be ceased to be seen as a person with free will and treated as a person with mental disorder,” said Taylor.
The author continues by saying that she is not only alluding to “candidates for radical Islam”, but that this encompasses all religious beliefs or not.
This is not the first time that Taylor has been studying the processes of mind of a radical. In 2006, she wrote a book on the control of the mind called brain washing. A book that made it possible to explore science to understand the stratagems of persuasion of groups or sects as well as Al-Qaeda.
As such, Taylor says that brainwashing, even extreme, is part of a “phenomenon of persuasion”.
