Why Religion is Fake | Freud

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Sigmund Freud, in works such as The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and Its Discontents, was extremely critical of religion. Calling religions illusions, he maintained that they arise out of a child's need for comfort as it grows up in an increasingly hostile world as it leaves the parental bubble.

The desire for the safety of the father ultimately leads to what we would call religions today, often with god(s) as a father figure on central stage.

Moving on from the individual to the societal level, religions are illusions that help maintain civilization by encouraging adherents to repress their most violent, primal instincts.

Freud believed however, that religions would come to be discarded as their function is fulfilled by other mechanisms, by the advent of science and the further development of reason.

[amanofnoreputation]

"For Freud, religion was a neurosis."
Jung: " . . . And I took that personally."

[SentMyOwnWay]

I like how the definition of “cope” has changed to anything you’re doing while also simultaneously not being a millionaire. Anybody who doesn’t have literally everything they want is now “coping”. 🙄

[roberthak]

As a non-religious European its funny to listen to this, after having discovered that the supermajority of Freuds following (inner circle) was full of jewish people. It seems that he should have pointed his analysis lens to his own religion. Or maybe criticising and demoralising christians was the intention all along?
Btw, anybody has read the babylonian talmud? Very interesting (set of ) books, even more interesting than the Bible or Kuran.

[fun_at_work]

I'll refrain from taking the advice of someone who knew very little about religion, who said that lusting after your mother is normal, and who created a wild story about penis envy rather than accepting that pedophiles were harming children.

[gamera]

Psychotherapy is cope. Religion is cope. Coping is an important thing for humans to do so we don't lose our minds.

[alexxx]

Well, the religion has faded but reason hasn't taken over the world. We live in precarious times.

[onehandslinger]

Science and reason will never replace beliefs, as they occupy completely different spaces. There are things which the humans know, and things which they don't know. And there are things which they don't know but they believe. Why? Because it's essential for existence. On the other hand, there is no real conflict between science and religion. When Pythagoras invented science, he didn't do it for the industrial revolution. He did it exclusively for mystical reasons, to find the essence of the universe. If God made the world, he made the world the way the world is. The laws of the world, the laws of physics, mathematics, biology, are the laws of God. Knowing these laws you come closer to God. Everything else is just ideological farts with no connection with reality.

[GuillotineFistTW]

I'd extend that to ideology in general, not just religion.

[Elvengem]

Its obvious if God is our heavenly Father, that he would place that infantile desire within us to last throughout life and so we can desire to stay in contact with Him. But for those many people who reject this need for a Father and laws, this is just as prevalent when they dont accept Him . Our deep true nature we must allow to be is to be a child who should follow the ways of a good father or mother too. Then so Freud only wanted to despiritualize everything he interpreted about the interactions of the mind! He wanted to materialize everything as random human instincts without God involved. Freud was only half right or maybe not even half right.What he vowed for with Nietchze and Marx was to create a rebellion against the need for having this heavenly Father. They were dangerous and wanted us freedom to give into doing the depravities of human mistakes.

[HeliosPhoebus]

Religion will fall away naturally as humanity evolves, just like all popular ideologies do.

[ShadowedAgony]

Just wanted to write a thought I had just from the first two minutes.

Coping really is, a least to me, a function of the self. Our mind must find ways to cope with existence.

The opening of Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House starts with the striking line: "no live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality"

I think as human beings we must limit our reality in order to function. I believe this is why religion, advertisements, secular ideologies, gender roles and so on are so appealing to us. When asked "how do we cope with the suffering around the world" we are often told to focus on things we can control, to limit our view. To create our own cages to comfort us from the the universal cage of existence.

[jesusrey]

Let me tell you that Jesus Christ is alive.

He is the true living savior, he is alive.

Born from a virgin, he lived a perfect life. He was crucified on Mt. Calvary. Put in a borrowed tomb, but on the third day, on God's schedule. Up from the grave he rose and he lives as our blessed hope.

Trust him. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thou shall be safe.

[m.guedes]

Freud was important because he was the first to seriously consider, study and analyze thoroughly the psychology. But remember he was just the first one, and he was wrong or limited in a lot of consideration. The video itself considers it when it says "Freud being Freud", which highlights the limitations of his view to explain everything to early young life and sexuality. He understood something meaningful, but could not see further than the beginning. It is something that any pioneer in a field will suffer. Later people will expand and reach better understanding. The point is: this is valid to Freud's view about religion TOO! He presented a very limited explanation that psychologist today would not agree about it. Another problem of the essay is only consider an European point of view of religion, and concludes that this is a general position of psychological repression. This is very specific of a set of Western religions that are not true in Eastern or African religions. There are several religious practices that try to reach the divine abolishing repression, in sexual frenzy for instance. In summary, this is a very limited and old view about religion in psychology. So much more was discussed about it in the academic fields, trying to figure out what is the "oceanic" feeling. Describe it as a mere illusion in XXI century is limited and ignored a lot of scientific development in this field, to says the least.

[Tiogar]

While this may explain how monotheistic religions seem to have a father figure, it does not explain why these religions would want their subjects to overcome their mortal instincts, or how polytheistic religions came to be.

[NotMe-etbx]

One of the core principles of Christianity is free will. God doesn't make anyone do anything, He wants us to participate in His life. If you want to have non-marital sex above having a relationship with God, go ahead. If you want to put money before anything else, go ahead! If you want to be envious or vengeful or any of the vices, GO AHEAD! If you put that before God, you can do it, but God reveals to us that our actions, as it turns out, have observable, empirically verifiable consequences. Some are obvious, other are much more subtle; some take generations for their fruits to ripen, but they always come true.

The rules of Christianity are there to protect man from his own fallen nature. His proclivity to hurt himself by hurting others or polluting his body and mind. Its the catch 22 that the All Mighty puts Himself through willfully. If He just puts everything in right order by force, the game that He loves so much is over, but if He doesn't step in, many of His beloved children will refuse to play the game, or never be taught the rules. So He conspires to guide us towards Himself, slowly, mysteriously, where we *can choose* to doubt, or choose to trust, but there's always a choice to be mature, and accept reality, or deny it, and live in your lazy, neurotic self-deceptive cope we call atheism.

[EldenRingBuildsArchive]

As the father of a pseudoscience, he was just scared of competition.
Oh, and the dislike of usury from Christianity surely didn’t help

[SireJaxs]

Please, quit being a Reddit Athiest. 2, 000 Years worth of Theology debunked every single arguement.

[commonwunder]

To the believers... their divine 'father figure' has chosen to play a game.
With the hordes of little ones in 'the human herd' that supposedly look 'a bit like him'.
That game is life ...and 'life' is purely a test to show your devotion to him.

Get through the test ( three score and ten years ) and you can spend eternity,
squatting in his awe-inspiring glow. That's it, there is no more to it.
The whole of life is an illusion... there is no pain, or suffering. It was only a game.
( Similar to how a lot of people now theorise 'play with' with the idea of the world,
being a computer simulation )

This is how the Abrahamic religions see the underlying nature of reality.
As a God given test. Everything else is semantics. You either chose to accept this,
or you won't. Generally, only a very small minority of the herd think this is all nonsense.

But the vast majority of the herd need it, they desperately need the conclusion it offers.
The ability to be absolutely right about the true nature of reality and that life is eternal.
Both of these dispel, or at least subdue… the curse of human anxiety.

This is what all humans instinctively and unanimously require.
A complete release from 'mortal' anxiety. Atheists should understand this.
But like children they fight it, as if they would fight a parent for trying to overly protect them.
Yet they have to realise they are the outlier. They're out of touch with the 'majority',
herd mentality.

Whether they're devoid of normal herd-like levels of emphatic empathy,
or just righteously belligerent iconoclasts.They must realise they're the noisy minority.
And in many ways... both of these atheist subgroups should consider themselves,
psychologically abnormal. For it is normal to believe in fanciful myths,
and stories of ever lasting life.

It is and always will be the default setting. It's what they implicitly need to function.
Many things in life persist because they're 'tried and tested'.
Because they're absolutely essential tools for the mental well-being of the herd.

[Sridarsh]

In my opinion, these views of Freud and others are very limited, especially and only directed to certain parts of religion, or only mainly to the abrahamic religions, it uses the eastern religions not by itself or analyzing it by itself, but rather, uses it as a side argument for the main argument which is against the abrahamic religions and imo nitpicks the necessary parts to make the such argument, im sure if they really delved deep into eastern religions and the modern spiritual traditions/movements/saints, they would have a very different answer. Carl Jung not meeting Ramana Maharshi, i think was one of the biggest fails of Jung personally, and what couldve been contributed to the world, i personally lean to the camp that thinks that Jung not meeting Ramana, was a characteristic of jungs own shadow which he hadnt realized, but anyways, i wish freud and others really delved deeper. Also FYI as a sidenote, Eastern "religions" arent religions, they were given the name religion in the western framework. Hinduism isnt hinduism, its original non western name is Sanatan Dharma, its a compilation of philosophical systems, and enquiry is first, not dogmatic belief. My main counter argument to these folks, would be, you are only looking at religion in its dogmatic sense, how can you explain mystics of the long past and recent past or even the present to some extent, they arent "human", Freuds argument is acc one of the best ive heard counteracting religion, and Dharma in some sense, esp vedanta and most parts of dharma would agree with most of his analysis, but rather than being it being an irrational delusion, it comes from the core of all living beings, the want to go back to its original form, what Freud calls that ocean, which he sees as relating to childhood need, is acc the childhood need of all living beings for eternity, so in some sense he is right, but it isnt a delusion acc to Sanatan Dharma. Coming back to my main argument (my apologies) is that in the east, these saints and mystics exist to this day, in the west the number is very low, but here is a place (east) where these sons of gods are being regulary produced, and a lot of these experiences, and their miracles, is very very hard for one to explain through just the lenses people like Freud and Nietczhe use, its impossible. An example, Freud compares this to dreams, but hey, when one wakes up from a true spiritual experience, one doesnt remain the same, the outside and the personality changes for the better, thayts the difference between true meditation progress, true bhakti, true jnana etc... it isnt like sleep or dreams, as in sleep acc to dharma you do go back to that eternal reality, the brahman, but it is like psychedelics, you come out of it normal (in psychedelics its temporary), nothing really changes, even in psychedelics its only philosophical concepts that changes for the most part, true change isnt there, thats the difference, and people like freud idt have heard this argument ive put forth which in the east people put forth, thus my point that if they have looked into the east and these sorts of arguments, their view on "religion" (even tho dharma isnt religion, its religious philosophy to some sense as theres an extraordinary and supernatural) would be very different.

[amanofnoreputation]

All societies have myths. Some of them just happen to take the form of religions. Even if we take it to be a delusion, it is one we cannot live without.