Hey Fred

I thought this might help...

JIM CARREY TELLS '60 MINUTES': MORE GOD, LESS PROZAC
Thu Nov 18 2004 1615 ET

Jim Carrey says the anti-depressant Prozac that he took may have helped him at one time, but he's better off without it now. In fact, says the actor, a no-drugs-or-alcohol policy and a spiritual life are the things that make him feel good. Carrey speaks frankly in a rare one-on-one interview with Steve Kroft to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Nov. 21 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

"I was on Prozac for a long time," he tells Kroft. "It may have helped me out of a jam for a little bit, but people stay on it forever." Then he describes being on the medication as not taking away the illness's peaks and valleys, only softening them. "There are peaks, there are valleys, but they're all kind of carved and smoothed out...It feels like a low level of despair you live in where you're not getting any answers but you're living okay and you can smile at the office," he says. "You know, I had to get off at a certain point because I realized that ...everything is okay."

Carrey takes nothing now. "I rarely drink coffee. I am very serious about no alcohol, no drugs," he says, "Life is too beautiful."

During the interview at his home, he invited 60 MINUTES cameras to one of his most beautiful and private spots, his "center of the universe," where he goes to escape the world and where he tells Kroft his feelings about God. "This is where I hang out with Buddha, Krishna...all those guys," says Carrey about a lean-to adorned with candles and a bed built high on his hillside property in Brentwood, Calif.

"I'm a Buddhist, I'm a Muslim, I'm a Christian. I'm whatever you want me to be...it all comes down to the same thing," he tells Kroft. Carrey says he believes they are all the same God and it is this conviction and spirituality that make him happy.

 

That tells me he doesn't understand any of them, and he's making up what he wants to believe. A very popular practice in this day and age.

 

Jim Carrey needs Haldol, not Prozac.

 

I agree. Its a cop out for someone who wants to put no mental energy into their faith. Similar to Miss_Tery but I have to give him a little credit for believing in an intelligent higher power.

 

Stick to yams.

 

Really? If you strip away the mythological/supernatural/dogmatic aspects, the similarities among religions are striking. From Christianity to Confuscianism to Hillel, the ethical standards are basically the same.

I think the argument could be made that it much easier to follow the faith of the majority.

 

They all share the same moral and ethical standards to some degree yes, but that is pretty much where the similarities end. The path to salvation, what salvation is, where and what heaven is (or where God currently resides), what God's characteristics are, polytheism, monotheism.....sorry but basically the same is not what I would use to descibe them. The theological differences (outside of the universally accepted Apostles Creed stuff) between the Protestant faiths alone will make your head spin

As far as following the faith of the majority, I can see where you are coming from if someone does so blindly. But when you have studied Christianity as well as other religions in depth, accepting it is a much more difficult task as opposed to a religion that has been dumbed down like Islam.

 

Any religion can be dumbed down. How many "bumper sticker" Christians do you know? How about about "bumper sticker" pagans, buddhists, wiccans and humanists? Any belief system can be simplified to the point of irrelevance.

The afterlife theology is the great divide. No argument there. What is it about Christianity that convinces you, not on an emotional level, but on an intellectual level that it is the "Truth?"

 

By dumbed down I refer to the typical atheist argument that Christianity was created by men as a means of control. What group would create a religion that requires so many leaps of faith? Contrast that with Islam that has taken the Judeo/Christian tradition and sanitized it.

Nothing has me convinced it is the truth. I have simply looked at most of the major theological questions that have been posed over time, put them through an educated and scientific thought process, and found that there is nothing credible that disproves any of it.

 

I would never argue that religion was created to control. In some cases has that been the end result? Yes.

I think any religion can be traced back to one primitive and nearly universal question, "Why?" Humans need to understand the whys of life, the world, existence. The hope that seems to be human nature that this isn't all there is gives rise to the theology of the "afterlife." Again, it answers another basic question of, "Is this all there is?"

Funny how similar paths can diverge so completely. The more I studied, the more I questioned and the more I saw how "incredible" all of the supernatural and grand theological trappings were.