You may be honestly curious, but I don't think this is a very good topic for discussion here. The question "What is the difference between religion and mental i

You may be honestly curious, but I don't think this is a very good topic for discussion here. The question "What is the difference between religion and mental illness?" is something that has been rehashed thousands of times both by famous philosophers and legions of Internet atheists. The short version of one useful answer is "The line is somewhat blurry, and obviously there have been many people who were both religious and mentally ill, but it's usually obvious because most religious people are able to function just fine in society and clearly do not have a crippling mental illness." To go further than that would be pretty far off-topic. I also feel like it's somewhat in bad taste to attempt to debate this in the explicit context of a member here.