Is Atheism Irrational?

The first temple in New York City — The Manhattan New York Temple, across the street from Lincoln Center in New York City
(LDS.org)

Another selection from my notes:

Harvard psychiatrist Armand Nicholi, Jr., suggests that one motivation for Freud’s atheism may have been his overpowering desire, as an unfashionably Jewish intellectual in fin-de-siecle Vienna—where anti-clericalism and secularizing contempt for religious belief were common among the educated elite—for personal acceptance and the acceptance of his new theory of psychoanalysis.[1]

Freud’s early experiences with anti-Semitism critically influenced his attitude toward the spiritual worldview. In Austria over 90 percent of the population registered as Catholic. Freud said that in this environment “I was expected to feel myself inferior and an alien because I was a Jew.” One can understand Freud’s motivation to discredit and destroy what he called the “religious Weltanschauung” and why he referred to religion as “the enemy.” Without this “enemy” he would not be in a tiny minority and expected to feel himself “inferior and an alien.” [2]

Freud’s philosophical works are not characterized by the objective, dispassionate tone of the clinician or scientist. Instead, they exhibit an intense, emotional, argumentative and, at times, desperate and pleading tone. Freud obviously feels intensely about these issues. He appears to be determined to destroy every possible reason for accepting the spiritual worldview. [3]

[1] Nicholi, The Question of God, 20.