illusive religions: Sigmund Freud's The Future of an Illusion

For purpose of this essay, religion will be defined as a collection of institutional beliefs and customs concerning humanity and the purpose of the universe [1]. Key beliefs within religion that will be explored, as well as there relation to reason, are:

Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity allowed me to comprehend fully the past occurrences of psychology and theology. The book displayed the faith and confidence that both psychology and Christianity must be combined in order for it to have a better understanding and allowing the client a better chance of healing. In order to do this there must be a complete understanding of each component in and of itself. Entwistle’s (2010) book presented all the facts from history as it has shaped society today (pp. 18-34). As he discussed these historic events, it shows just how the wisdom that is held today is a reflection or reaction of what happened then. Christianity has always had a huge impact on world history

Although Jewish by heritage, Freud felt that religion was an escape for most people. Like Karl Marx, he felt that religion was the ‘opiate’ of the masses and that it should not be propagated. That said ,Freud grappled with the problem of mythology and religious institutions for most of his life. He collected many antiquities, most of which were religious, and a Leonardo cartoon, ‘Madonna and Child with St Anne’ hung in his house. Some scholars have suggested that Freud saw religion as the disguised psychological truths he felt lie at the heart of human mental distress.

Religion plays a vital role in everyone’s life one way or another. Whether it be a small influence for major decisions or influence for even the most mundane tasks. Religion can be used as an excuse for certain actions, whether good or bad, and can spark hate amongst people who do not share their beliefs. Religion is a powerful thing. However, when left open to interpretation can cause a dangerous impact to everyone around.

The sole purpose of this paper is to investigate and uncover the reasons as to why Sigmund Freud refused to believe in religion. Sigmund Freud was an unbelievable psychologist and philosopher. He was known for discovering many great ideas such us psychoanalysis and for truly understanding human development as well as atypical development. Freud was also known for his strong rejection of religion. Freud believed religion was an illusion and thought that those who followed religion were weak and part of the ignorant society. Freud lost his faith in religion growing up. He had many difficulties in his childhood. Freud didn’t have a great relationship with his parents and surely enough lost all his loved ones at a very young age. Freud struggled with the idea of protection. He lost faith in God because he was taught that God was supposed to protect and save you from hardship but unfortunately for Freud, he didn’t experience that. Thus, this paper will unveil the reasons for Freud’s rejection of religion.

This essay will focus on two theorists, Friedrich Nietzsche, a nineteenth century German philosopher and cultural theorist and Sigmund Freud, a twentieth century Austrian neurologist and ‘father’ of psychoanalysis. I will be discussing Freud and Nietzsche and their theories on culture, primarily concentrating on Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents and Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic, but will also utilise some secondary reading in its analysis.

For this week I decided to go with the fourth question because I felt a connection to Freud’s arguments and ideas on religion and God. People have strong beliefs and needs for spiritual comfort. A belief of higher being other than the man himself that will serve protection. What people desire in beliefs are only wishes of them wanting or needing something. When people wish God to be true, they will believe it will be true. According to Freud, this is wishful thinking of wanting to believe in something that we may not find evidence of. “These, which profess to be dogmas, 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

Freud saw religion as an illusion. By illusion he meant a belief that people want very much to be true. He attempted to explain why religion persists in spite of the lack of evidence for its tenets. Freud asserted that religion is a largely unconscious neurotic response to repression. By repression he meant that civilized society demands that we cannot fulfill all our desires immediately, but that they have to be repressed. Rational arguments to a person holding who holds a religious conviction will not change the neurotic response of a person. He asserts that monotheist religions grew out of a homicide in a clan of a father by his sons. This incident was subconsciously remembered in human

In his book The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud explains how religion came about. First, one must remember that Freud considered civilization to be coercive in nature, and a form of oppression of the intelligent few over the masses. For these reasons, individuals tended to behave in a way that was threatening to the existence of society. These threatening behaviors were rooted in unsatisfied instincts, and unable to be fulfilled because of social prohibitions. These ancient prohibited behaviors included incest, cannibalism, and murder. Freud believed that religion was created as an enforcer of ideal behaviors, and worked to create privation, or internal self-coercion.

Finally, the third section will dwell on the controversial topic of faith, and human’s need for belief. Religion has done an excellent job in manipulating human’s need for trust. Therefore, the combination of these three sections should compel the reader to better understand why such a false belief, such as religion has had such success throughout history.

According to the Freud the religion answer the question which is mostly asked what the purpose of life is. Religion tells us why we created and what is the purpose behind the creation of the whole universe? It is the religion who teaches us different ways of living and also guides our behavior for living a healthy and good life. It also help us how to deal with the hardships of life. Religion offers consolidation from the hardships of life. The hardships which the human face is created by them because they made their artificial needs and spend their whole life in fulfilling this need but the religion stops us from creating any artificial need and tells us to follow the state of nature so that we can safe ourselves from many hardships of life. (Page 7, 12)

Different sociological perspectives on religion have focused on outlining the various roles that religion serves, the inequalities and other consequences that it can perpetuate and reinforce in our daily lives. It is evident from different theoretical explanations that religion really exists. This fact has been established by different sociologists and has outmuscled all the objections and critics that have been argued against it. Religion has been founded by natural things around us, and it is a law in sociology that no institution that is based on error and falsehood can ever survive in our modern society. It is also apparent that religion roots itself in reality and corresponds to the needs of all humans. Science has over the years, tried and failed to discover the origin of religion (Giddens et al. 2016). Different perspectives have existed to explain the sociology of religion. The structural functionalism theory contends that religion exists to serve various functions within our society, such as providing answers to spiritual mysteries in, or creating a place for social controls and interactions, and offering emotional comfort among many others. Conflict theory, on the other hand, views religion as an institution that has contributed to the patterns of social inequality and conflict. Symbolic interactionist theory arises from the thought that the world we live in is constructed socially and through the interpretation various

Throughout my life I have struggled to find balance between confessing my faith while being fully immersed within the world. These seems to correlate with the history of psychology as they are trying to become more scientific while holding onto Christian morals. During this essay I will explore the story of my life and the history of psychology and how they relate. We see a similar theme in both stories of the changing viewpoint of worldview and in the end hope that they will both become fully visible.

Based on this genealogical account of religion, Freud’s interlocutor voices skepticism over the possibility of mankind outgrowing the religious illusion. First, he argues that the moral system of culture depends on the religious illusion, without it chaos would erupt. Reason is incapable of suppressing the instinctual desires of man; only the word of God is capable of that task. Therefore, we should follow the philosophy of “As if”, that is to say, we must adhere to the religious illusion as if it were true, for the practical maintenance of society. Second, if man is in a state of perpetual childlike neurosis, then to deprive him of the illusion that sustains it

Freud argues that religion is an illusion that should be replaced by science, which is not an illusion. He compares how knowledge is accepted in other teaching compared to that of religion. When teaching religious beliefs three explanations are provided; these teachings deserve to be believed because they were already believed by our primal ancestors; we possess proofs which have been handed down to us from those same primal ancestors; it is forbidden to raise the question of their authentication at all. Religious teachings demand belief in their contents, but not without producing ground for their claim(Freud 33.). Freud