Describe Psychological challenges to religious belief

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Charlie Matthews 12CAS

28/04/2007

  1. Describe Psychological challenges to religious belief

There are two main contributors to the arguments posed against religious belief: Freud and Jung. They were both philosophers whose theories have grown to be famous this does not mean to say, however, that they agreed with each other.

Freud believed that religious belief was born from infantile obsession with a father figure. In Freud’s opinion, people use religion to fulfil wishes deeply rooted in mankind such as the assurance that death is not the end and that there is someone watching over us and caring for us. Freud believed people seek comfort from personifying the elements and believing that they can influence them by the behaviour.

One of Freud’s most memorable points was his belief that religious belief was a neurosis. In his famous book Totem and Taboo Freud gives a suggestion for the beginnings of religious belief. This story was founded closely on the works of Darwin. In his book, Freud describes how in the small tribes, (part of Darwin’s theory that early man travelled around in small groups,) there would be a dominant male who had exclusive sexual rights to the women of the tribe and drove the sons away when they grew up. The sons resented the father and came together to murder and devour him. After doing so, they felt guilty and as a result developed a moral code as a commemoration of the terrible act they had committed. They still feared the father figure in death, thus giving more power than when he had lived. This powerful dead father figure, developed into the idea of God.

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Freud believed that this creation is sustained out of the need for protection that we gain as we grow up and no longer have adults to care for and protect us as we did when we were children. We long for an omnipotent eternal father; God fulfilled this desire. In conclusion Freud believed religion beliefs sprung from psychological imbalances and people’s deep-rooted insecurity, the “universal obsessional neurosis of humanity.”

Jung agreed with most points, however, he also argued that some consider that the sense of moral obligation could have a divine source and therefore moral arguments are not ...

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