Sigmund Freud is no longer the revered figure he once was. A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education noted that Freud is no longer routinely assigned even in psychology curricula. In a way, Freud is following the downward path of that other great totem of the last couple of centuries, Karl Marx. It's hard to believe so many intelligent people spent their lives studying these two thinkers. Intellectuals, we have to conclude, are often fatally attracted to far-out theories that tease the mind but that bear little relation to what's actually going on in the world.
Marxism worked well in academic laboratories and only failed miserably when it was actually tried. Similarly for decades Freud spun out his elaborate theories, and they sounded so scientific and so modern and so avant garde. Depression? Well, that's because your sister abused you when you were four, and you have concealed from yourself the memory of it, but if you do hundreds of hours of therapy, you can excavate the source of your anxiety, and by coming to terms with it you can slowly overcome it. But today when you go to the doctor and are diagnosed with depression, he gives you a pill and you feel better. No need for most people to visit the therapist's couch.
Freud also argued that what we are secretly attracted to, we make into a taboo. Freud explained the "incest taboo" by saying that we secretly want to have sex with our mothers and our sisters, and so we repress those feelings and outlaw them. In Freud's words, "The strength of the incestuous wishes can be detected behind the prohibition against them."
The cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker pointed out the shortcoming of this theory. Pinker notes that by Freud's logic the fact that humans are averse to eating cow dung shows that we secretly want to eat it. Pinker's point is that there are sound evolutionary reasons both for avoiding cow dung and for avoiding incest. The former is unhealthy and attracts disease-carrying insects; the latter results in biological abnormalities. So natural selection produces humans who avoid both. Once again, Freudian fantasy is replaced with a much more plausible scientific alternative.
I've been reading Freud's The Future of an Illusion, where Freud makes the case that religion is a form of "wish fulfillment." Freud writes that for the individual "life is hard to bear," and beyond this there is "the painful riddle of death, against which no medicine has yet been found." And so to "make helplessness tolerable" man invents God and religion not because they are true but because we wish them to be true. " For Freud, one may say, Christianity is adult Disneyland. We forget that Freud is the author of this portrait of religion that is widely espoused in our time.
Well, let's examine this Freudian explanation in an entirely secular and rational way. Imagine a bunch of people who have gathered in a room because they want to avoid life's difficulties--sickness, suffering, death--by making up a religion that will make them feel better. I can entirely see how such a group would come up with the concept of heaven. Heaven is a place where there is no suffering and no death. Eternal bliss would surely fit into my wish-fulfillment scheme.
But I don't see why this group would come up with the concept of hell. (We are not talking about why priests might later use the concept to enforce doctrinal obedience or institutional loyalty. We are talking about why wish-fulfilling humans would invent the concept in the first place.) Hell is not only worse than sickness but also worse than death, because death is merely the end, while hell implies eternal separation from God.
I also don't see why seekers of wish-fulfillment would come up with Christian morality. Who needs the Ten Commandments or other such rules which make our lives more difficult by asserting a series of "Thou Shall Nots"? Even Christians recoil from the severe demands of their ethical code. Recall the church father Augustine, who kept putting off his conversion to Christianity, praying to God, "Make me chaste, O Lord, but not yet." In other words, a project of wish-fulfillment would seem to dictate a much more libertine social morality than the one we find in the Old and New Testaments.
Bottom line: Judaism and Christianity, not to mention the other great religions, hardly look like they are the product of mere wishful thinking. In fact, they posit a God and a moral universe that makes some fairly stern demands on humans. It's almost wishful to think that God does not exist, so that we can escape those demands. This is a point that does not seem to have occurred to poor Sigmund Freud.
Reader Comments ( Page 6 of 17)
76. "But I don't see why this group would come up with the concept of hell." - Dinesh D'Delusional
"This would be a good point if Christians were telling everyone that Christians were going to hell." - insaneatheist
As I elluded to in #8, I don't think Dinesh's point is "good" in the slightest. If anything, it's just another one of D'Souza's straw man dug from its grave. Every power structure, which religion certainly is, has a system of rewards and punishments and every ancient fairy tale has good verses evil, hero verses villain.
In the Christian's fairy tale, god is the hero and the Devil is the villain (even though the all-creator created the Devil and supposedly has an "all-powerful" sway over him). Like many fairy tales, the Christian fairy tale is riddled with lies and contradictions - but that doesn't phase the Dineshian D'desire to believe, just as about 95% of Dinesh's blog comments that usually refutes Dinesh's strawmen doesn't phase Dinesh D'Dishonest.
WhatzInAName at 7:27PM on Aug 12th 2008
77. In fact it is prophesied that there will come a falling away from God , church, religion,christianity.
This is one of the signs of the end of time.
Observant at 4:40PM on Aug 12th 2008
Someone has being saying the end is near since the beginning and observent I feel you will be as correct as the rest of them.
I've heard the Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot,ect. were atheist bit a lot and argued it frequently but today I realize my arguments are wrong. Forget logic, common sense , history, facts, evidence, and all that crap, I've got a new way.
No matter what they claim to be they were not real atheist becuase the holy book of atheism clearly states to not commit genocide.
As a prophet of atheism(God came to me and told me he didn't exist) I know The non god is clearly against such things so that argument is clearly moot and offensive. I would appreciate it if it were not used any longer.
tmo at 7:45PM on Aug 12th 2008
78. From this perspective, the issue of how they "justified" mass murder points to a materialistic and humanistic foundation.
Troy
And that has nothing to do with not believing in a god - you can tag every megalomaniac with being an atheist, but that wouldn't make it true.
The very words: humanistic foundation connotes that the major emphasis would be on the idea that there is a commitment to the search for truth and morality through human means in support of human interests. Not one persons interests, or one persons ideals, but humanity's interest in total.
Not one government, or regime or religion can own that. Humanity must own to it in total.
You can pray to your god and humanity will continue to suffer itself, you can live your life morally with no god and humanity will continue to suffer itself, you may put all your energy to help those who suffer, but humanity will continue to suffer itself. There are things that even humanity cannot control and that is the suffering of itself.
TJ at 7:47PM on Aug 12th 2008
79. Amen, brother tmo
TJ at 7:50PM on Aug 12th 2008
80. Both Pol Pot and Hitler had considered becoming clergy and were rasied in the good ole' catholic traditions:
Reprinted from: Chris "Ali BAba".
The Holocaust was caused by Christian fundamentalism:
History is currently being distorted by the millions of Christians who lie to have us believe that the Holocaust was not a Christian deed. Through subterfuge and concealment, many of today’s Church leaders and faithful Christians have camouflaged the Christianity of Adolf Hitler and have attempted to mark him an atheist, a pagan cult worshipper, or a false Christian in order to place his misdeeds on those with out Jesus. However, from the earliest formation of the Nazi party and throughout the period of conquest and growth, Hitler expressed his Christian support to the German citizenry and soldiers. Those who would make Hitler an atheist should turn their eyes to history books before they address their pews and chat rooms.
Considering that Christianity has thus far been incapable of producing an unbiased, educated follower which speaks the truth, (I haven’t encountered any), I have been forced to dispel the myth by writing this essay. It is not until I bring up his speeches, my personal info on the Nazi regime and their tactics that a Christian will begin to question what their clergy told them. (I am the offspring of a German soldier. My Opa served under Hitler in WW2 and my father was raised during the time of the Nazi regime. This is important information to take into consideration for I am privy to some info that most Americans do not know. It is common for American media and education institutions to lie to their citizens concerning Nazi Germany.) So, in presenting this information I must break it into four parts: 1) Facts about Hitler and his involvement with the Church. 2) How the Church was the catalyst for anti- Semitism. 3) Facts concerning how the Nazi regime drilled these beliefs into Germanic society. 4) Quotes Hitler made which prove he had a disdain for atheism/occultism, upheld his Christian faith, and hated Jews due to his Christianity.
Hitler’s involvement with the Church:
a) Hitler was baptized as Roman Catholic during infancy in Austria.
b) As Hitler approached boyhood he attended a monastery school. (On his way to school young Adolf daily observed a stone arch which was carved with the monastery’s coat of arms bearing a swastika.)
c) Hitler was a communicant and an altar boy in the Catholic Church.
d) As a young man he was confirmed as a “soldier of Christ.” His most ardent goal at the time was to become a priest. Hitler writes of his love for the church and clergy: “I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal.” -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
e) Hitler was NEVER excommunicated nor condemned by his church. Matter of fact the Church felt he was JUST and “avenging for God” in attacking the Jews for they deemed the Semites the killers of Jesus.
f) Hitler, Franco and Mussolini were given VETO power over whom the pope could appoint as a bishop in Germany, Spain and Italy. In turn they surtaxed the Catholics and gave the money to the Vatican. Hitler wrote a speech in which he talks about this alliance, this is an excerpt: “The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgement of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church. This treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National Socialism [Nazism] is hostile to religion is a lie.” Adolf Hitler, 22 July 1933, writing to the Nazi Party
Hitler and the Popeg) Hitler worked CLOSELY with Pope Pius in converting Germanic society and supporting the church. The Church absorbed Nazi ideals and preached them as part of their sermons in turn Hitler placed Catholic teachings in public education. This photo depicts Hitler with Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, the papal nuncio in Berlin. It was taken On April 20, 1939, when Orsenigo celebrated Hitler’s birthday. The celebrations were initiated by Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) and became a tradition.
Each April 20, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin was to send “warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany with “fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their altars.” (If you would like to know more about the secret dealings of Hitler and the Pope I recommend you get a book titled: Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, by John Cornwell)
h) Due to Hitler’s involvement with the Church he began enacting doctrines of the Church as law. He outlawed all abortion, raged a death war on all homosexuals, and demanded corporal punishment in schools and home. Many times Hitler addressed the church and promised that Germany would implement its teachings: “The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to positive Christianity. It will be its honest endeavor to protect both the great Christian Confessions in their rights, to secure them from interference with their doctrines (Lehren), and in their duties to constitute a harmony with the views and the exigencies of the State of today.” –Adolf Hitler, on 26 June 1934, to Catholic bishops to assure them that he would take action against the new pagan propaganda “Providence has caused me to be Catholic, and I know therefore how to handle this Church.” -Adolf Hitler, reportedly to have said in Berlin in 1936 on the enmity of the Catholic Church to National Socialism
How Christianity was the catalyst of the Holocaust:
Hitler’s anti-Semitism grew out of his Christian education. Austria and Germany were majorly Christian during his time and they held the belief that Jews were an inferior status to Aryan Christians. The Christians blamed the Jews for the killing of Jesus. Jewish hatred did not actually spring from Hitler, it came from the preaching of Catholic priests and Protestant ministers throughout Germany for hundreds of years. The Protestant leader, Martin Luther, himself, held a livid hatred for Jews and their Jewish religion. In his book, “On the Jews and their Lies,” Luther set the standard for Jewish hatred in Protestant Germany up until World War 2. Hitler expressed a great admiration for Martin Luther constantly quoting his works and beliefs.
Now, you must remember before Hitler rose to Chancellor of Germany the country was in a deep economic depression due to the Versailles treaty. The Versailles treaty demanded that Germans made financial reparations for the previous war and Germany simply was not self sufficient enough in order to pay the debt. Hitler was the leader that raised Germany out of the depression and brought them back to a world recognized power. Due to his annulment of the financial woes of the Germanic people he became their redeemer and they anointed him as the leader of the German Reich Christian Church in 1933. This placed him in power of the German Christian Socialist movement which legislates their political and religious agendas. It united all denominations, mainly the Protestant/Catholic and Lutheran people to instill faith in a national Christianity.
How the Nazi Regime converted the people:
a) In the 1920s, Hitler’s German Workers’ Party (pre Nazi term) adopted a “Programme” with twenty-five points (the Nazi version of a constitution). In point twenty-four, their intent clearly demonstrates, from the very beginning, their stand in favor of a “positive” Christianity: “We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State, so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the morality and moral sense of the German race. The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession...”
b) The Nazi regime started a youth movement which preached its agenda to impressionable children. Hitler backed up the notion that all people need faith and religious education: “By helping to raise man above the level of bestial vegetation, faith contributes in reality to the securing and safeguarding of his existence. Take away from present-day mankind its education-based, religious- dogmatic principles-- or, practically speaking, ethical-moral principles-- by abolishing this religious education, but without replacing it by an equivalent, and the result will be a grave shock to the foundations of their existence.” – Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
c) The Nazi regime began to control schools insisting that Christianity was taught.
d) The Nazi regime included anti-Semitic Christian writings in textbooks and they were not removed from Christian doctrines until 1961.
e) The Nazi regime having full blown power over the people began to forcibly convert all its military.
Nazi Belt Bucklef) The Nazi regime forced the German soldiers to wear religious symbols such as the swastika and they placed religious sayings on military gear. An example here is this German army belt buckle (I believe my Opa had one) which reads “Gott Mit Uns”. For those of you who do not speak German it is translated as “God With Us”.
g) The German troops were often forced to get sprinkled with holy water and listen to a sermon by a Catholic priest before going out on a maneuver.
h) The Nazis created a secret service called the “SS Reich” that would act as spies on the dealings of other citizens. If anyone was suspected of heresy (Going not only against the Socialist party but CHURCH DOCTRINE) they would be prosecuted.
Quotes from Hitler:
Hitler’s speeches and proclamations, even more clearly, reveal his faith and feelings toward a Christianized Germany. Nazism presents an embarrassment to Christianity and demonstrates the danger of their faith So they try to pin him on other theistic views. The following words from Hitler show his disdain for atheism, and pagan cults, and reveal the strength of his Christian feelings:
“National Socialism is not a cult-movement-- a movement for worship; it is exclusively a ‘volkic’ political doctrine based upon racial principles. In its purpose there is no mystic cult, only the care and leadership of a people defined by a common blood-relationship... We will not allow mystically- minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else-- in any case something which has nothing to do with us. At the head of our programme there stand no secret surmisings but clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. But since we set as the central point of this perception and of this profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the future of a being formed by God, we thus serve the maintenance of a divine work and fulfill a divine will-- not in the secret twilight of a new house of worship, but openly before the face of the Lord… Our worship is exclusively the cultivation of the natural, and for that reason, because natural, therefore God-willed. Our humility is the unconditional submission before the divine laws of existence so far as they are known to us men.” -Adolf Hitler, in Nuremberg on 6 Sept.1938. [Christians have always accused Hitler of believing in pagan cult mythology. What is written here clearly expresses his stand against cults.]
“We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” -Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933 [This statement clearly refutes modern Christians who claim Hitler as favoring atheism. Hitler wanted to form a society in which ALL people worshipped Jesus and considered any questioning of such to be heresy. The Holocaust was like a modern inquisition, killing all who did not accept Jesus. Though more Jews were killed then any other it should be noted that MANY ARYAN pagans and atheists were murdered for their non-belief in Christ.]
Here Hitler uses the Bible and his Christianity in order to attack the Jews and uphold his anti-Semitism:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." –Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
"Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is quite obvious here that Hitler is referring to destructing the Judaism alters on which Christianity was founded.)
"The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (The idea of the devil and the Jew came out of medieval anti-Jewish beliefs based on interpretations from the Bible. Martin Luther, and teachers after him, continued this “tradition” up until the 20th century.)
"With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is common in war for one race to rape another so that they can “defile” the race and assimilate their own. Hitler speaks about this very tactic here.)
“The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present- day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation.”–Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
"…the fall of man in paradise has always been followed by his expulsion." -Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (See Genesis Chapter 3 where humankind is cast from Eden for their sins. Hitler compares this to the need to exterminate the Jews for their sin against Christ.)
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” –Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
“The anti-Semitism of the new movement [Christian Social movement] was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge.” –Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (This quote is very interesting for it disperses the idea that Hitler raged war due to being an Aryan supremacist. He states quite clearly that he has a problem with Jews for their belief not race. That is why many German Jews died in WW2 regardless of their Aryan nationality.)
“Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain.” –Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (Here Hitler is admitting that his war against the Jews were so successful because of his strong Christian Spirituality.)
Quotes from Other Nazis about Hitler and Religion:
"Around 1937, when Hitler heard that at the instigation of the party and the SS vast numbers of his followers had left the church because it was obstinately opposing his plans, he nevertheless ordered his chief associates, above all Goering and Gobbels, to remain members of the church. He too would remain a member of the Catholic Church, he said, although he had no real attachment to it. And in fact he remained in the church until his suicide." (Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer page 95-96)
WhatzInAName at 8:03PM on Aug 12th 2008
81. In fact it is prophesied that there will come a falling away from God , church, religion,christianity.
This is one of the signs of the end of time.
****
Sigh. Might as well give up now then, Obsy Baby. But then again, The End Is Near has been toted by sidewalk crazies on sandwhich boards ever since pavement was invented. Ah, but guess what! They all went to meet their non-existent maker, just like you will. They joined the great big fraud in the sky without the added benefit of a great big sky to go to. Kind of like Jim Jones.
T.Brough at 8:04PM on Aug 12th 2008
82. 1 Mind Ministries' leader, Queen Antoinette, could not get a recalcitrant(21-month-old) Javon ( Thompson) to say "amen" after meals, a church tradition, and subsequently began depriving the child of food and water as punishment. The boy eventually died...
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/949037/1_mind_ministries_1_mind_for_murder.html
Hey, Observant, was that prophesied in your booklets? At least 1 Mind Ministries wasn't 'falling away', right?
not-pboyfloyd at 8:46PM on Aug 12th 2008
83. 0. In fact it is prophesied that there will come a falling away from God , church, religion,christianity.
This is one of the signs of the end of time.
xxxxx
It is perhaps a sign of the end of the church's time, or the end of our concepts of time, which are being scientifically scrutinized in a way that was never possible before. An end to the bigotry, hatred and prejudice that is the property of religion would be greatly appreciated by society and future generations.
Clif Kuplen at 9:18PM on Aug 12th 2008
84. Well, that's because your sister abused you when you were four, and you have concealed from yourself the memory of it, but if you do hundreds of hours of therapy, you can excavate the source of your anxiety, and by coming to terms with it you can slowly overcome it. But today when you go to the doctor and are diagnosed with depression, he gives you a pill and you feel better. No need for most people to visit the therapist's couch.- DD
---------------------------------------------
Dinesh,
Are you advocating drug usage over therapy?
Isn't that kind of like putting a 'Hello Kitty' band-aid over a sucking chest wound?
Drugs are not always called for. One must deal with the problem on a mental level or it will resurface again and again....unless, of course, there exists a chemical imbalance, but that does not happen in the scenario you described.
It would seem to me like your god is a drug of sorts. Religion medicates the brain (believe ...everything is gonna be allright). It is the non-bielever that must deal with life's obstacles without medication dulling the senses.
mac at 9:24PM on Aug 12th 2008
85. Psychobabble's founding fathers:
Believed in-
Head bumps determining personality
.
Lunar cycles determining behavior
.
Themselves to be sex gods
.
Lobotomies
.
Electroshock
.
Fire hosing
.
Straight jackets and rubber rooms
.
Behavior modification (animal training)
.
Cocaine addiction
.
Lifetime commitment to asylums
.
and endless other b.s.
.
and saw themselves as "Scientists"!
.
that's a laugh!
Lon Horiuchi V at 9:32PM on Aug 12th 2008
86. Lon Horiuchi V - "Psychobabble's founding fathers" are long since dead and many of the experiments you site were even rejected to obscurity by the scientific community of their time. You conveniently leave many other real findings that hold true today, including the ones about self-deception that lead to the socio pathology of lying and projection, evident in your projection (and lie) that they believed "themselves to be sex gods".
All early science has it's flaws, but unlike the comparative mountains of babble found in the bible and in our churches, science begs for further study and criticism to seek deeper understanding. In Christianity we see the opposite, boiling to "our mind is made up, don't you dare say that there is no evidence for God and don't bother us with the facts".
WhatzInAName at 9:54PM on Aug 12th 2008
87.
Lon, I would guess from your comments that you would rather call in an exorcist to remove the imps and spirits that create psychological problems in people.
Freud is a pioneer that moved psychology to the realm of science. Psychology has moved beyond Freud, Lon. Have you moved beyond satan?
JefFlyingV at 10:12PM on Aug 12th 2008
88. As far as I know, the basic model of the freudian conscious is still more or less adhered to; conscious unconscious and subconscious, ego, id and superego, etc. That basic and very general model still holds a lot of water with a lot of practitioners.
Clif Kuplen at 10:14PM on Aug 12th 2008
89. Liars look at truth and goodness and say, "no," preferring the darkness of night.
Tom B at 10:13PM on Aug 12th 2008
xxxx
It's nice at night, and if you think in such a fuzzy manner that you're ok with calling others you've never met liars, you might be lying about truth and goodness too.
Do you make others suffer in the name of 'truth and goodness'?
Clif Kuplen at 10:17PM on Aug 12th 2008
90.
Lon odd post name you picked.
JefFlyingV at 10:20PM on Aug 12th 2008