Sigmund Freud (1856-1939): “The Future
of an Illusion”
Definition of religion: “religion consists of certain dogmas,
assertions about facts and conditions of external (or internal) reality, which
tell one something that one has not oneself discovered and which claim that one
should give credence” (p. 72).
Ordinarily, dogmas (truth
claims) are founded on observation which can be personally confirmed. Not so with religious dogmas.
What are religious dogmas
based on? (p. 73)
Religious people claim that religious dogmas deserve to
be believed because:
1) our primal ancestors believed
them;
2) we have proofs handed down from
antiquity;
3) it is forbidden to raise
questions about their authenticity.
Freud’s reply to these
arguments:
1)
our ancestors were far more ignorant than we are on many things. Why should we believe them on this?
2)
the writings of antiquity (the Scriptures) “bear every trace of being
untrustworthy. They are full of
contradictions, revision and interpolations” (p.74).
3)
(which Freud deals with first on p. 73), this reason evokes suspicion
that society knows that there are not good bases of religious doctrine, or such
bases would be put forward.
Nonetheless, Freud thinks
that religious doctrines are further defended through the argument
A. from absurdity (Credo quia absurdum). Religious doctrines stand above (are superior
to reason and its capacities).
B. from “As if”. We act “as if” we believed these
absurdities.
“But” in spite of the fact
that religious dogmas have not bases in evidence, and they rely on absurdity,
people continue to believe them (p. 75).
WHY???
Look, says Freud, to the
psychical origin of religious ideas….
“These [religious ideas] 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 secret of their strength is the strength of these wishes” (75).
This illusion is based in our
infantile helplessness leading to the need for protection provided by our
fathers. Since we never get over the
need for a protective father, we have a super-strong wish for a super-Father to
protect us: we call this super-Father
God.
Definition of Illusion: an illusion is not the same as error (it is
not necessarily an error)… “It is characteristic of the illusion that is derived
from men’s wishes” (p. 76). An example would be Christopher Columbus’ wish to
find a sea-route to India, or a peasant girl’s wish for a prince to rescue her. Religious illusions border on the delusional.
“No reasonable man will
behave so frivolously in other matters or rest content with such feeble grounds
for his opinions or for the attitude he adopts; it is only in the highest and
holiest things he allows this” (77).
See here an additional summary of Freud's - The Future of an Illusion
