Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion: Religion is The Universal Neurosis

Freud wants to have it all ways!  He may have been a great innovator in Psychology, but when it comes to talking about religion and why people feel they need it, he is muddled and self-contradicting.

To take just one example: he claims (Penguin ed.,2005: 27) that “if, as a person grows older he realises that he is destined to remain a child for ever, that he can never manage without protection against alien superior powers…………(this is) identical with the need for protection against infant helplessness.” 

But then ( p.63) he exclaims – “Surely infantilism is something that is meant to be overcome? A person cannot remain a child for ever.”

Well – do we, or don’t we, remain children all our lives?  And if we do, has Freud got it right when he says that   you and I and everyone else only turn to religion because it offers “an illusory consolation”?

Freud states that he is thinking principally in terms of the Christian tradition. So what ‘consolation’ , exactly, does this offer? The knowledge that one’s sins will be weighed against one’s good works at the Day of Judgement, and that one may be found wanting. We might end up in the other place!  How consoling is that?  This idea of religion is a ‘good, long-term investment’ seems incredibly risky as a motive for religious belief. What you and I and everyone – want, surely, is something that works for us in there and now.

Freud pours scorn on the suggestion that “the truth must be felt inwardly, it need not be understood”. He  loudly proclaims that “there is no authority higher than reason.” (p.33). He cannot stand the thought that something irrational, or which can’t be explained by reason, might be profoundly important to people. He says – what about all those people who don’t have a deeply felt religious experience? Why should they believe?

Well, Mr. Freud, how exactly do you know how many people do, or don’t, have religious experiences? Why do you assume that only a few experience this?