Religion as Wishful thinking

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Religion as Wishful thinking

• Sigmund Freud
• Hui Ka Yu 06013996

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Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939)

• is commonly referred to as "the father of
  psychoanalysis"
• is best known for his theories of the unconscious
  mind
• some of his theories remain widely disputed

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The presentation is about

• The future of an illusion
• the projection theory of belief in God
• the similar theory of other expects
• criticism
• Totem and Taboo
• the unacknowledged theory of unbelief
• the similar theory of other expects
• criticism

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The future of an illusion

• The projection theory
• of belief in God

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The projection theory of belief in God

• The most definitive statement of Freuds views
• The future of an illusion
• Published in 1927

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The future of an illusion

• Religious ideas have arisen from the same need
  as have all the other achievements of
  civilization from the necessity of defending
  oneself against the crushing superior force of
  nature.

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The future of an illusion

• Religious beliefs are illusion, fulfillments of
  the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of
  mankind. As we already know, the terrifying
  impression of helplessness in childhood aroused
  the need for protection , for protection through
  love, which was provided by the father. Thus the
  benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our
  fear of the dangers of life.

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Freuds thinking

• Atheism
• Religion
• projection of our own unconscious desire
• No reality in the idea of God
• one of the assumptions
• his personal opinion

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Freuds thinking

• God
• father-figure
• a child-like "longing for father"
• Afraid trust his protection
• Protection
• religious beliefs
• Religion
• fantastic structure
• ? a man must be set free if he is to grow to
  maturity

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Freuds structural theory

• Three areas of the personality
• Id
• the area of the human genetic endowment
• the repository of the biologically determined
  instincts

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Freuds structural theory

• Ego
• the conscious mind
• ? attempts to reconcile the instinctual
  demands of the id with the realities of the
  external environment

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Freuds structural theory

• Super ego
• part of the ego
• ? develop during childhood as a sort of
  policeman
• ? controls some harmful products of the id

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Freuds structural theory

• Superego stays around into adulthood as some sort
  of god or authority image
• ? limits the persons freedom and filling life
  with guilt
• ? prevent the person to be a real adult

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Freuds thinking

• Person
• ? faces the ultimate fate of death, the
  struggle of civilization, and the forces of
  nature
• ? feels painful and helpless
• ? returns unconsciously to his own childhood

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Freuds thinking

• ? invents an all-powerful father
• ? the father fulfills his most insistent need
  and desires
• ? emerges belief in a personal God

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Freuds thinking

• Religion
• projection of ones psychology
• the wishful thinking of person when he is
  helpless and seeks for protection

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The projection theoryof belief in God

• the similar theory
• of
• other expects

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Relative approaches to religion

• Feuerbach Marx
• Alfred Adler
• Carl Gustav Jung
• (Sigmund Freud)

Triple Star
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Feuerbach Marx

• Feuerbach anthropological atheism (???????)
• - whishes, fantasies, or the power of
  imagination are responsible for the
• projection of the idea of God and of the
  whole religious pseudo or
• dream world.
• Max Sociopololitical atheism (???????)
• - religion is opium, a means of social
  assuagement and consolation (repression), a tool
  for government to govern people.
• (Freud psychoanalytical atheism (???????) )

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Alfred Adler 1870-1937
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Alfred Adler 1870-1937

• Background
• - practicing physician
• - Jewish descent
• - convinced socialist
• - once collaborated with Freud
• but end in departure

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Alfred Adler 1870-1937

• Approach
• - distressed humanity eternally complete God
• constant inferiority feeling of distressed
  humanity God is eternally complete, is the most
  brilliant manifestation of the goal of
  perfection.
• - man is the center of reality God is an
  idea
• The ultimate reality is man, man is the
  center of reality, it is the function of
  individual psychology to make him the center.
  God is the gift of faith.

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Carl Gustav Jung 1875-1961
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Carl Gustav Jung 1875-1961

• Background
• - A psychiatrst
• - Christian
• - Once collaborated with Freud
• but end in departure

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Carl Gustav Jung 1875-1961

• Approach
• - dissociates from Freud
• Jung dissociates himself from the Freuds
  work on
• religion as illusion, says Freuds standpoint
  is based on
• the rationalistic materialism of the
  scientific views current in the late 19th
  century.
• - psychological-phenomenological
• He is asking not about historical but
  psychological truth only concerned with the fact
  that there is such an idea, but not the question
  whether it is true, the idea is psychological
  truth.

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comments

• Adler and Jung, in their view of relativized
  Freuds critique of religion in important points.
• Even Jungs more friendly approach to religion
  still leaves unanswered question
• is not religion nevertheless merely wishful
  thinking? Dose God exit independently of our
  consciousness?

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Totem and Taboo

• The unacknowledged theory
• of unbelief

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Totem and Taboo

• First published in German in 1913
• The symptoms of savage religion, which means
  religion in its origin, and mental illness are
  similar
• Mental illness and religion can both be viewed in
  terms of failure to cope with unconscious forces

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Freuds thinking

• Freud accepted the theory that Totemism was the
  simplest and earliest form of religion
• Two taboossavages were prohibited from killing
  their totem,and also from marring within the same
  totem clan
• Then, two further anthropological theories were
  marshalled to complete the picture

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Freuds thinking

• The first theory was that originally the totem
  animal was sarcally killed and eaten in a solemn
  annual festival.
• The second was that primitive human beings, as
  they emerged from the pre-human stage of
  evolution, were organized into hordes under the
  domination of one male

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Oedipus complex(?????)

• The central concept in Freuds work.
• The cause of the Totemism
• Male personality development, the essential
  features of this complex are the following
• Around age 3?the boy develop a strong sexual
  desire for his mother?intense hatred and fear of
  his father?supplant him

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Oedipus complex(?????)

• Around age 5?The resolution of the complex is
  supposed to occur?he cant replace his father and
  through fear of castration?identify with his
  father?repress the complex
• The Oedipus Complex is never truly resolved
• The powerful ingredients of murderous hate and of
  incestuous sexual desire within the family are
  never in fact removed

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Details of Totem and taboo

• The dominant father kept all the females to
  himself and either drove away or killed his sons
  when they become old enough to challenge him
• Inevitably, in due course his strength waned, and
  some of his sons were able to rise in revolt
  against him

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Details of Totem and taboo

• They killed and ate their father and so made an
  end to the patriarchal horde.
• After their dreadful deed, their remorse and
  rivalry hindered them from entering into sexual
  heritage that they had craved.

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Details of Totem and taboo

• The end result of their deed was the founding of
  totemism
• The renegade sons instituted a totem feast, in
  which they periodically ate the totem
• In order to make atonement for their patricide.

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Details of Totem and taboo

• They also instituted the practice of
  exogamy(????), whereby they were forbidden to
  marry within the totem clan, which originally was
  a prohibition against marrying their sisters.

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Freud explains the eating of the murdered father
by assuming that

• ?The totem meal, which is perhaps mankinds
  earliest festival
• ?a repetition and commemoration of this
  memorable and criminal deed
• ? was the beginning of social organization, of
  moral restrictions and of religion

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Freud concludes his argument with a reference to
the Oedipus complex

• Brothers filled with the contradictory
  feelings?they hated their father but they loved
  and admired him too?remorse?A sense of guilt?The
  dead father become stronger than the living one

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What Freud did in Totem and Taboo

• Was not just an attempt to explain
  savagereligion?explain the origin and meaning
  of religion
• Present a theory ?explain the origin of the
  divine-father image and guilt in human history

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Totem and Taboo

• Varieties of atheistic humanism

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Freuds main points of religion

• Religion as a cultural phenomenon which can be
  best understood in term of its origins which was
  been recognized as Oedipus Complex
• In 1907,an universal obsessional neurosis
• Psychologically nothing but a magnified father

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Oedipus and Religion

• Oedipus complex
• Freud believed that the sourced of religion
  ,morality, society is Oedipus complex.
• Totem and Taboo
• Freud finds the Oedipus Complex also the origin
  of religious belief.

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The source of religious belief

• The totem religion had issued from the sense of
  guilt of the sons as an attempt to palliate this
  feeling and to conciliate the injured father
  through subsequent obedience.(?????)
• All later religions prove to be attempts to solve
  the same problem, varying only in accordance with
  the stage of culture in which they are attempted

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The origin of religious belief God is at bottom
nothing but an exalted father

• Psycho-analysis and Religious Origins
• An unexpectedly precise result namely that God
  the Father once walked upon the earth in bodily
  form and exercised his sovereignty as chieftain
  of the primal human horde until his sons united
  to slay him.
• It emerges further that this crime of liberation
  and the reactions to it had as their result the
  appearance of the first social ties, the basic
  moral restrictions and the oldest form of
  religion, totemism. But the later religions too
  have the same content

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The origin of religious belief

• Mose and Monotheism(1937-1939)
• Hebrew religion
• Mose was an Egyptian rather than a Jew
• Mose was killed by his followers
• The murder? sense guilt?character of Hebrew
  religion
• murder of the prophet ?similar?the murder of
  father in totemism.

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The origin of religious belief

• Mose and Monotheism
• Return of the repressed
• Four main stages
• Totem animal
• Human hero
• Gods
• One god

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The origin of religious belief

• Thus the grandeur of the primeval father is
  restored in the Law-giver on Mt.Sinai who
  requires absolute subjection to his holy will.
• sin against ?replace? primordial murder
• The result is ethical monotheism, which combines
  belief in one sole God with the moral asceticism
  implied in the duty to obey his righteous will.

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The origin of religion

• Mose and Monotheism
• Christianity
• The reconciliation with God the Father, the
  expiation of the crime committed against him but
  the other side of the relationship manifested
  itself in the Son, who had taken the guilt on his
  shoulders, becoming God himself beside the Father
  religion, Christianity became a Son religion. The
  fate of having to displace the Father it could
  not escape

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The origin of religious belief

• Moses and Monotheism
• Christianity
• Christianity doctrines of original sin and
  salvation through the sacrificial death of Jesus
  Christ.
• The connection between the delusion and
  historical truth is further established by the
  belief that the sacrificial victim was the Son of
  God.

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The origin of religious belief

• Example in Totem and Taboo
• Christianity
• Eucharist(??) as a revival of the old totem
  feast.
• At bottom, however,it is a new setting aside of
  the father, a repetition of the crime that must
  be expiated.

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The evalution on Totemic Theory
Totem and Taboo
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Criticism

• 1) Authropologists
• reject Freuds view on origions of religion
• Because there is not enough evidences to
  supported Freud
• 2) Wilhelm Schmidt
• puts a great challenge to Freuds Totemic Theory
  about the origin of religion

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Criticism

• Reasons
• Many cultures have not yet reached totemic stage
  (pretotemic cultures)
• These pre-totemic cultures have their own
  religion
• Some cultures do not exist to totemic stage
• ?No Totemic Theory can explain for the origin of
  religion

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Criticism

• 3) A scholar Frazer
• Had done a research on totemic tribes
• Only four have the rituals of killing eating
  animals
• Proved that totemism does not occur in the oldest
  cultures
• do nothing on the origin of sacrifice

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Criticism

• 4 )Other scholars
• General development of religion
• Magic ? ideas of taboo ? belief in spirits ?
  belief in God
• Belief in souls/spirits is not found in all
  nations
• It is not the oldest cultures
• Animistic ideas are not the original of religion

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Criticism

• 5 )Feuerbach and Marx
• Psychological factors affected the ideal of
  religion
• Psychological influences draws no conclusion to
  the existence or nonexistence of God
• No need to make a further explanation

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Criticism

• 6) The writer Paul C.
• Tometic Theory is an not universal explanation on
  unconscious motivation
• Need to establish a comprehend theory, to give a
  wider understanding of aheism
• Hence, he is working on a new model to replace it
  now

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Merits

• Described God as a psychological equivalent to
  our father
• Developed a strightforward understanding on the
  rejection of God our wish-fulfillment
• Explain the unconscious motivation of human

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Merits

• Explain the relationship between children, their
  fathers and God
• If a child loses respect to his father, belief in
  God becomes impossible
• The theory contributes much to a number of
  psychologists

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Merits

• A good explanation of lack of religious belief
  between human
• Oedipuss desire to abolish his father
• do not belief his own religion