Warning: curl_setopt() [function.curl-setopt]: CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION cannot be activated when safe_mode is enabled or an open_basedir is set in /home/geekcul1/public_html/brashonline.com/wp-content/plugins/affiliate-mage/classes/rss_php.php on line 134
Warning: curl_setopt() [function.curl-setopt]: CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION cannot be activated when safe_mode is enabled or an open_basedir is set in /home/geekcul1/public_html/brashonline.com/wp-content/plugins/affiliate-mage/classes/amazon.class.php on line 1
Freud: A Determined Atheist or an Illusory Thinker?
Freud: A Determined Atheist or an Illusory Thinker?
The choice of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Man is God
Freud considers that religious decrees are “of human origin”.(1)
He explains his thesis on religions: ‘Religions owe their constraining power to the return of repression; they are reminiscences of disappeared antiquated processes, highly effective, of the history of humanity.’(2)
The explanation of Freud is to recognize religious decrees in their psychological nature as ‘illusions and not in their value of reality’. (3) The basis of the rejection of the existence of God to Freud is founded on the presumption ‘to humanize nature in order to find a father’. (4)
God is the unneeded Super Father
Man projects a representation of the father figure on a “super father”: ‘The invention of God permits Freud to confirm the analogy between becoming the individual and the history of civilization.’ (5) He considers religion as ‘The universal neurosis of humanity subject to Oedipus complex’. (6).
God as a Product of Neurosis
He adds that universal neurosis, created by religion, dispenses of forming an individual neurosis. Freud regards religion as a system of doctrines and promises which helps the individual to “decipher the enigmas of the world and to assure him that a benevolent providence will take care of life and will repair in the hereafter his frustrations.” (7)
Humanity Awaits its Maturity to Get Rid of God
According to Freud, when humanity arrives to adulthood it liberates itself naturally of illusions, being the oldest infantile wishes, of religious belief and there shall be no need of phantasmagorias, establishing itself on reason. (8)
The Freudian Choice
In this manner Freud finds in psychological justifications for his “well thought out choice” arguments to reject the existence of God and religious proposals: ‘This assumption, replaced within the framework of the psychoanalytical theory is the logical consequence of the nature of belief.’ (9)
Freud justifies his choice of denying the existence of God by attributing the roots of religious belief to man’s own psyche:
‘Man of belief and of piety is eminently protected from the danger of certain neurotic affections: the adoption of universal neurosis exempts him from the task of forming personal neuroses. (10)
Freud’s Psychological Justification of Rejection
Freud regards God as “the exalted father”, a symbolic father:
“You maintain that it is the son-father who is all, God is the exalted father, and the desire for the father is the root of religious need. Since then, it seems to be, you have discovered this factor that are the impotence and die-assistance (German: hilflosigkeit: English: helplessness) of humans to whom they
are attributed in general the principal role in the formation of religion, and there you are transposing in terms of die- assistance all that was before paternal complex.’ (11)
The father replaces the mother for the protection of the child against threat and external anguish:
‘In this function (of protection) the mother is taken over by the father, who is more powerful, to whom this function from there onwards, remains reserved during all childhood’. (12)
The Illusion of God and Not of Freud
This image of God is regarded as an illusion by Freud, because it represents the childish projection of the image of a father on a father who is Almighty, an invention of purely human wish:
‘Achievements of the oldest wishes that are strongest and most pressing of humanity; the secrecy of their force is the force of these wishes’. (13)
But Freud has hope for humanity that it will get rid of religion as neurosis of childhood. It is “sufficiently optimistic to suppose that humanity will overcome this neurotic phase, as much as children exceed, by growing, their neurosis, which is similar.”(14)
Religion is Narcotics
He considers religion as narcotics: ‘(Religion) maybe
compared to narcotics.’(15) He considers the God of the philosopher as a “vague abstraction” (16)
The double approach of Freud with respect to religion (as neurotic and psychotic) enables him to plead in favor of the reason that “it does not have there an authority which is higher to him” (17) and of a laic society “to leave God out of use” (18). Freud considers that faith in science is not without shelter of illusions. But he specifies that “scientific illusion
(with respect to religious attitude) is not delirious, it subjects itself and accepts the possible denials imposed by experience. » (19)
Man invents Religion
Man invents God
The evolution of the history of religious belief, according to Freud, is based on projections in form of religious representations invented by man:
‘The gods preserve their triple tasks, exorcise fears of nature, reconcile with the cruelty of destiny- in particular such as is shown in death- and compensate for sufferings and deprivations which are imposed on man by the joint life in the culture… Since God was a single being, relations with him could recover the intimacy and the intensity of the relationship between child and father’. (20)
Once humanity comes out of the infantile phase to arrive at the phase of maturity of the adult where scientific reason reign, it will, according to Freud, get rid of the invented image of the very all-mighty father,
(21) religion will disappear as a neurotic syndrome and universal psychotic, (22) and then man shall be finally liberated of the illusion of God.
No Explanation is Offered
Freud, confronting the enigma of man does not attempt to explain the presence of man, his origin and the purpose of his psyche, especially the presence and origin of “the psychological complex apparatus” that was the subject matter of his life time.
Freud takes for granted the presence and origin of man and does not therefore inquire into such fundamental questions.
Personal conjecture of Freud
The Freudian arguments represent personal views in rejecting the idea of a God. For his choice Freud resorts to psychological assumptions void of realism and empiricism. Athough no evidence can be brought to validate the existence or the non existence of a God Freud could have avoided embarrassing presumptions for a scientist.
______
1. Ruth Menahem, Sigmund Freud 4: 1920-1939, Press
academics of France, Paris, 2000. p. 50.
2. Lou Andréa Salome, “Correspondence with Sigmund
Freud“, Gallimard, Paris, 1978, p. 253. “Return of the
repressed” is “return to cruelty”, according to Freud, is
composed of double contents: the instinctual one and the
sublimated. The instinctual one is violence, cannibalism,
murder and incest, being sublimated is spirituality. Gerard
Huber, Freud: The subject of the law, Michalon Editions,
Paris, 1999.p 58-59.
3. Menahem, p. 50.
4. Ibid., p. 50.
5. Ibid., p. 51.
6. Ibid., p. 51.
7. Ibid, p. 50.
8. Ibid., p. 51.
9. Ibid., p. 51.
10. Sigmund Freud, Future of an illusion, Translation Anne
Balseinte, Jean Gilbert Delarbre and Daniel Hartmann,
University Presses of France, Paris, 1995. p. 45.
11. Ibid., p.44.
12. Ibid., p.24.
About the Author
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |
|
|
504 ATHEIST atheism symbol chain book mens womens Shirt $20.35 |