Is religion a mental illness, a memetic “mind-virus,” or a society-wide delusion we’ve normalised? In this episode, we unpack three competing frameworks — clinical pathology, social contagion, and mass delusion — then lay out the Mystrikal response: compassionate, naturalistic, and relentlessly evidence-first. We criticise ideas, not people. We keep the human in frame.What you’ll learn:• How psychiatry distinguishes shared religious belief from clinical delusion — and where real overlaps occur (psychosis content, scrupulosity, temporal-lobe “hyperreligiosity”).• How memes, incentives, and group dynamics help beliefs spread and entrench.• Why “mass delusion” can explain history’s worst faith-driven harms — yet still misses human meaning if used like a sledgehammer.• The Mystrikism stance: keep the community and meaning, ditch the unfounded claims; build awe, purpose, and ethics on reality, not wishful thinking. Truth over comfort. Compassion over contempt. Communities without superstition. Evidence where miracles used to be. “Awe” without the supernatural. That’s Mystrikism. We don’t medicalise ordinary believers. We target unsupported claims and the harms they enable, and we argue for better, reality-anchored ways to meet the exact human needs.