{"id":94121,"date":"2022-02-06T23:58:51","date_gmt":"2022-02-07T06:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=94121"},"modified":"2022-02-09T13:34:19","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T20:34:19","slug":"on-the-psychology-of-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2022\/02\/on-the-psychology-of-atheism.html","title":{"rendered":"On the psychology of atheism?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"s,mdfn,saknwnoajbfj<\/a>
A scene from yestereve\u2019s walk here at Ko Olina, taken with my iPhone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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I originally published this column in Provo\u2019s\u00a0Daily Herald<\/em>, back around 14 April 2000, under the title \u201cFaith of the Fatherless.\u201d\u00a0 In the past two or three days, my blog\u2019s most dogged resident atheist commenter has suggested that theistic belief originates in psychological defect and insinuates that, if I understood psychology, I would see things his way.\u00a0 So I thought that there might be some value in dusting it off and sharing it again:<\/p>\n

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A widespread assumption, especially among intellectuals, holds that belief in God derives from irrational, immature needs and wishes, whereas atheism or skepticism results from a grown-up, rational, no-nonsense view of the world as it really is.\u00a0 The most famous statement of this position comes from Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in his book\u00a0The Future of an Illusion<\/i>.\u00a0 According to Freud, religion is an attempt to cope with our cosmic helplessness by imagining a benevolent father figure in the sky.\u00a0 Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura recently declared that religion is for people with weak minds.<\/span><\/p>\n

New York University psychology professor Paul Vitz disputes such notions in his book\u00a0Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism<\/i>.\u00a0 Vitz says that Freud\u2019s theory reveals Freud\u2019s own inadequate knowledge in matters of religion.\u00a0 The pagan faiths of the Mediterranean area, for instance, offered no benevolent father God, and major living religions such as Buddhism<\/a> and Hinduism lack such a figure.\u00a0 Furthermore, as Vitz observes, \u201cnowhere did Freud publish a psychoanalysis of the belief in God based on clinical evidence provided by a believing patient.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, Freud\u2019s doctrine rests not on scientific data, but on preconceptions and anti-religious prejudices.\u00a0 There is, in fact, growing evidence to suggest that those who lead religious lives tend to be healthier than those who do not, both psychologically and physically.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, Vitz remarks, the idea that a belief might derive from childish needs or powerful unconscious wishes is a sword that can cut two ways.\u00a0 If, for example, one accepts the Freudian theory of the so-called \u201cOedipus complex,\u201d Vitz writes, one can easily view atheism as \u201can illusion caused by the Oedipal desire to kill the father (God) and replace him with oneself.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed, in\u00a0Faith of the Fatherless<\/i>, he argues that vocal or intense atheism tends to be \u201cgenerated by the peculiar psychological needs of its advocates.\u201d\u00a0 Among his examples is a famous French skeptic who thoroughly rejected his father, repudiated his father\u2019s name (Arouet) in order to call himself \u201cVoltaire,\u201d and even wrote a play entitled\u00a0Oedipus<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Vitz proposes what he terms \u201cthe defective father hypothesis\u201d as an explanation of atheism.\u00a0 In an essay on Leonardo da Vinci, Freud remarked that \u201cpsychoanalysis, which has taught us the intimate connection between the father complex and belief in God, has shown us that the personal god is logically nothing but an exalted father, and daily demonstrates to us how youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Vitz takes Freud at his word. He examines a representative list of prominent atheists\u2014including Friedrich Nietzsche, David Hume, Bertrand Russell, Josef Stalin, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, H. G. Wells, Adolf Hitler, Madalyn Murray O\u2019Hair, Mao Tse Tung, and Sigmund Freud himself\u2014and finds a surprisingly consistent pattern of weak, abusive, absent, despised, or dead fathers.\u00a0 In strong contrast, such believers as mathematician-philosopher Blaise Pascal, theologian Karl Barth, statesman Edmund Burke, John Henry Cardinal Newman, anti-slavery crusader William Wilberforce, philosopher-bishop George Berkeley (for whom the California university town is named), theologian and anti-Nazi martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, cultural observer Alexis de Tocqueville, religious thinker S\u00f6ren Kierkegaard, writer G. K. Chesterton, theologian-musician-medical missionary Albert Schweitzer, and Jewish theologians Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel enjoyed healthy relationships with their fathers or father-substitutes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Atheism might be dismissed as a comforting illusion, a belief unworthy of mature minds.\u00a0 But Vitz (himself an atheist into his late thirties) concludes, simply, that since both believers and unbelievers have psychological reasons for their positions, questions of faith have to be answered on the basis of evidence, not name-calling.\u00a0 Whatever our relationships with our fathers, we remain free to exercise faith, or not to.\u00a0 But we must wonder, with Professor Vitz, how the breakdown of the American family and the weakening of fatherhood will affect our children.\u00a0 Churches may have yet another reason for concern about these trends.<\/span><\/p>\n

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And this column, which I published in the Deseret News<\/em> on 2 February 2017, is also directly relevant to the claim:<\/p>\n

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\u201cIs religious faith a mental illness?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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While on the subject of psychology and mental illness:\u00a0 When my wife and I were sitting in the Delta Airlines lounge in Los Angeles several days ago, waiting for our very early morning flight to Maui, I suddenly heard extremely loud talking behind me.\u00a0 It was a group of about four or five men, all of whom looked and sounded Middle Eastern.\u00a0 Iranian, I would guess, although they were speaking in accented English.\u00a0 One of them was far and away the loudest.\u00a0 He was wearing a red MAGA hat.\u00a0 \u201cMake America Great Again!\u201d\u00a0 They never sat down, but continued to speak in extremely elevated voices.\u00a0 I had been reading, and I tried not to listen.\u00a0 Eventually, though, it became simply impossible.\u00a0 Everybody in the lounge was watching them.\u00a0 They may have been drunk, which, given the hour, suggests that they had been up all night.\u00a0 The really loud one said something about its being his birthday, so they were headed somewhere on a flight.<\/p>\n

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Pretty soon, it became apparent that the really loud one \u2014 let\u2019s call him TRLO, for the sake of convenience \u2014 was very much agitated because one of the Delta agents there had asked him to put on a mask.\u00a0 (There were signs at the entrance and throughout the lounge saying that masks were required.)\u00a0 Several more Delta people came, one after another, asking him to don a mask.\u00a0 A soft-spoken middle-aged lady came and told him that he should show some respect for everyone else by putting on a mask and quieting down.\u00a0 He informed her that she was an idiot.\u00a0 He then proceeded to give the entire lounge a lecture on his freedoms and on the idiocy of wearing masks.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finally, another Delta agent came and told TRLO to leave.\u00a0 \u201cAre you throwing me out of the Delta lounge?\u201d he demanded, loudly.\u00a0 \u201cYes, I am.\u00a0 Leave now.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He yelled all the way out, but finally he and his pals did exit the lounge.\u00a0 The episode lasted about ten or fifteen minutes.\u00a0 I was greatly relieved that they weren\u2019t on our<\/em> flight.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t relish the thought of getting about an hour offshore and then perhaps having to return because this belligerent boor wouldn\u2019t comply with Delta regulations.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m astonished that some so-called conservatives \u2014 as this fellow might<\/em> perhaps have described himself, though perhaps not \u2014 often don\u2019t seem to recognize the fact that their freedoms are not unlimited when they\u2019re on someone else\u2019s private property.\u00a0 One can argue the merits or demerits of government mask requirements and vaccine mandates.\u00a0 But no thoughtful genuine believer in the rights of private property can seriously argue that a private individual, association, or company doesn\u2019t have substantial rights to limit what is said and what is done in spaces that it owns.\u00a0 If Delta wants to insist that its patrons wear leopard skin pants and propeller beanies and speak only pig Latin or go elsewhere, that is entirely within its rights.\u00a0 If it chooses to insist that its patrons wear anti-COVID masks, that is entirely within its rights.\u00a0 As it is the complete right of potential patrons, if such rules are decreed, to go elsewhere.<\/p>\n

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Posted from Ko Olina, Oahu, Hawaii<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 I originally published this column in Provo\u2019s\u00a0Daily Herald, back around 14 April 2000, under the title \u201cFaith of the Fatherless.\u201d\u00a0 In the past two or three days, my blog\u2019s most dogged resident atheist commenter has suggested that theistic belief originates in psychological defect and insinuates that, if I understood psychology, I 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