freud

"We must ask where the inherent strength of religious doctrines lies and the circumstances that give rise to them, apart from all reason. Religious doctrines are not the residue of experience or the final result of reflection. They are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most insistent wishes of mankind. The secret of their strength is the strength of these wishes. We know already that the terrifying effect of infantile helplessness aroused the need for protection --protection through love--which the father relieved, and that the discovery that this helplessness would continue through the whole of life made it necessary to cling to the existence of a father--but this time a more powerful one.

Thus the benevolent rule of divine providence allays our anxiety in the face of life's dangers, the establishment of a moral world order ensures the fulfillment of the demands of justice, and the prolongation of earthly existence by a future life provides the local and temporal setting for these wish-fulfillments. Answers to the questions that tempt human curiosity, such as the origin of the universe and the relation between the body and the soul, are developed in accordance with the underlying assumptions of this system.

RELIGION OFFERS A UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED SOLUTION TO THE CONFLICTS THAT ARISE IN CHILDHOOD IN RELATION TO THE FATHER.

An illusion is not the same as an error, it is indeed not necessarily an error. It was an illusion on the part of Columbus that he had discovered a new sea-route to India. The part played by his wish in this error is very clear. It is characteristic of the illusion that it is derived from men's wishes. A poor girl may have an illusion that a prince will come and marry her. It is possible; some cases have occurred. But her belief is founded on her wish that it will happen and not any evidence.

WE CALL A BELIEF AN ILLUSION WHEN WISH-FULFILLMENT IS A PROMINENT FACTOR IN ITS MOTIVATION REGARDLESS OF THE EVIDENCE OF REALITY.

Religious doctrines cannot be proved, nor can they be refuted. It is not my purpose to estimate the value of religious doctrines as truth. It suffices that we recognize that from a psychological point of view they are illusions. Of course, this discovery will strongly influence our attitude to many religious ideas. We know approximately at what periods and by what sorts of men religious doctrines were formed.

We say to ourselves: it would indeed be very nice if there were a God, who was both creator of the world and a benevolent ruler, if there were a moral world order and a future life, but at the same time it is very that odd that all this is just as we would wish it ourselves. And it would be still odder if our poor, ignorant, ancestors had succeeded in solving all these difficult riddles of the universe."

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"Here Freud probed the origins of human life and the various human creations that enable human beings to cope with their existence. Religion was he argued, a major one of those human creations.

The birth of theistic religion, Freud argued, drew out of the trauma of self-consciousness. For billions of years, Freud observed, the creatures who inhabited this earth did not have a sufficient intellectual capacity to raise questions about the meaning of their lives or indeed to ask whether life possessed any ultimate meaning. They simply lived and died in an endless pattern without knowing that this was either their reality or their destiny.

Finally, however, a creature evolved with a brain sufficient to be self-aware, self-conscious, and to have the capacity of self-transcendence. The shock of mortality and meaninglessness entered history at that moment, Freud contended. Now the world possessed a creature who could anticipate dying, who could understand disaster, and who could view its destiny to be nothing more than decay. This was a traumatic realization, and with that realization, definable human existence was born.

If trauma is sufficiently intense, and if it cannot be dealt with adequately in any other way, then the inevitable human response is hysteria. Religion, Freud contended, was the coping mechanism, the human response to the trauma of self-consciousness, and it was designed above all else to keep hysteria under control and to manage for these self-conscious creatures the shock of existence.

Freud found in all of these theistic manifestations, (the worship of the natural powers: the sun, wind heat, cold, water and storm, to that of a deity figure in the sky controlling them, warning, rewarding and punishing) the suppressed hysteria of a newly self-conscious creature. Defense against hysteria requires that nothing occur that would destabilize the system, for only thus can the angst of self-consciousness be kept in check. The presence of that defense system in human religion was for Freud the sure sign that he had discovered in religion not the manifestation of truth but the manifestation of trauma. Religious truth was said to have been revealed by God and thus its content was not subject to debate. the community authorized to receive this revelation was said to have understood it perfectly and to be able to define it infallibly. Therefore, no one was allowed to debate their interpretations. Religious truth was thus protected by a double immunity.

Real truth, Freud suggested, does not need to be surrounded by such impenetrable barriers. Truth in its objective form can compete and win in debate in the public arena. Religious truth and theistic understandings were shielded from that debate. Religion itself was not an activity in pursuit of truth; it was rather born to be a significant part of the security system of human life.

Only when we recognize this defense mechanism in religion can we grasp the meaning of the constant presence in primitive religion, and certainly still present in Western religion, of an intense, even a killing, anger. Irrational hostility is a symptom of hysteria. Anger has always marked the religious establishment. This is why so many Christian leaders historically have justified such things as the stifling of debate with ex cathedra pronouncements, the persecution of dissenters, the excommunication of nonconformists, the execution of heretics, and the engagement in religious wars. This is also why anger is always just beneath the surface of organized religions in almost every one of its Western manifestations. The preaching of evangelists is marked by finger pointing and face contorting expressions of hostility while they talk about the wrath of God. Anger lies underneath the glee expressed by the preachers of Christian history when they assign unbelievers to hell. Anger is the reason why many religious people act as if they will not enjoy the bliss of heaven if they are not simultaneously allowed to view those not so fortunate writhing before their eyes in the fires of hell. Anger is the reason why the Church throughout its history kept writing creed after creed to clarify just who is in and who is out of this religious enterprise so that religious people would know who their enemies were and could act appropriately against them.

It was Freud's contention that theistic religion was born as the means of dealing with the trauma of self-conscious existence. It was born as a tool designed to keep our hysteria in check. The theistic definition of God as a personal being with expanded supernatural, human, and parental, qualities, which has shaped every religious idea of the Western world, came into existence not through divine revelation, Freud argued, but out of human need.

1. Does Freud believe that people are attracted to religious beliefs because of personal experience and reflection?
2. Where does Freud believe most of the strength of our attachment to religious beliefs comes from?
3. How does our experience as children influence our attraction to religious ideas?
4. Where does Freud think the idea of God comes from?
5. What are the three major benefits we get from belief in God?
6. How does Freud define "illusion"?
7. Why does Freud believe that religious doctrines are illusions?
8. What does Freud think of the people who developed religious ideas to begin with?