The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 62): Sigmund Freud, and His Scientific Claims that Religion is an Illusion

Within a short span of ten years, not only did Lenin, Sanger, and Hitler all write their seminal works, but Sigmund Freud also contributed what was to be one of his most influential works, The Future of an Illusion. (It is interesting to note that the young Adolph Hitler grew up in Vienna, the very city where Sigmund Freud lived. I can’t help but wonder if they may have ever passed each other on the street). Although Freud is known as the father of psychoanalysis, it is interesting to note that most of his psychiatric theories have been largely abandoned within the field. Where Freud’s influence can most be felt can be within the larger culture, particularly his critique of religion.

In a nutshell, Freud’s take on religion is this: it is an evolutionary phenomenon, and that now, with the rise of modern science, it is inevitable that religion must fade away. But more than just being an evolutionary phenomenon, Freud also said that religion was first and foremost a mental illness, an “illusion” that might have helped the survival of the human species for a time, but that is now threatening human progress. The future of this “illusion,” therefore, was its extinction.

A Not So Scientific Analysis of Religion
But it must be clearly stated, that even though Freud claimed his analysis of religion was somehow “objective” and “scientific,” nothing could be further from the truth. Just as Marx cherry-picked and misrepresented various economic facts and figures to bolster his Communist theory, so did Freud cherry-pick and misrepresent (and sometimes simply made up) facts and figures about religion to support his “psychiatric take” of the origin, development, and future of “religious illusion.”

Freud claimed that the origins of religion were rooted in humanity’s primitive, tribal past. Way back at the dawn of humanity, there were ancient, tribal cavemen who were terrified of the forces of nature (like thunder and lightning). They then proceeded to project the way they had related to their fathers onto an illusionary “father figure” in the sky. It gave them a sense of security and safety—of course, there was no “father figure” in the sky, but the thought of a “heavenly father” in the sky gave a sense of security and safety to ancient, tribal man.

Furthermore, Freud conjectured, our tribal ancestors tended to relate to this “heavenly father” in the same way they had related to their own fathers: on one hand they feared him, because he brought punishment, much like their earthly fathers punished them when they did something wrong as children; on the other hand, they sought him for safety, much like children run to their fathers when they are scared.

Religion as the Oedipus Complex, Cannibalism, and Incest
Now mind you, nothing of what Freud suggested can be characterized in any way, shape, or form as “objective scientific analysis.” It was a completely subjective interpretation—and a rather ignorant one at that—of the supposed “psychological origin” of religion. But if that wasn’t bad enough, Freud speculated even further. He claimed that the more one goes back in time, the more one finds in the more primitive, ancient religions certain core practices that essentially “evolve” over time, namely things like incest, cannibalism, and sacred meals. Benjamin Wiker tells us that Freud claimed, “…the origin of the religious cult (the origin of culture) was the killing and eating of a father by his sons. And why would sons want to murder their father? Because, naturally, they desired to have sex with their mother. In true primitive fashion, they believed that by eating their father they gained his strength and privileges” (166).

That’s right—Freud claimed that since it was a “scientific fact” that young boys had a desire to have sex with their mother and kill their father (i.e. the Oedipus Complex), that in ancient times this psychological desire was manifest in ancient religious cultic practices: the “god” was depicted as a sacred animal that could only be eaten once a year during a sacred meal. In that way, primitive man could fulfill his desire to kill and eat his father. Tack on the whole sacred prostitution thing, wherein primitive man could simulate incestuous sex with his mother after enjoying his religious, sacred meal in which he symbolically killed and ate his father—and there you have it: according to Freud, incestuous cannibalism was the origin of religion.

Of course, Freud wouldn’t say such actions were “evil”—for there really is no such thing. It was just primitive behavior as they tried to make sense of an ultimately meaningless and dangerous world. But now, with the rise of modern science, man has been given the means to subdue nature, and therefore there is simply no need for such religious practices. “It’s science,” Freud says, “trust me, what I’m saying is purely objective and scientific. Let’s just admit it—it’s time for religion to go. There’s no more need for it. Science has dawned.”

There was only one problem with Freud’s claims—they were all purely speculative and unscientific at best, and blatantly ignorant at worst. To claim some sort of psychological connection between, let’s say, Christian communion and a primitive tribe’s sacred meal simply ignores any historical context of either event. The only connection is that food is eaten. When Jesus said, “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” he was giving a new meaning to the traditional Passover meal, and the eating of the lamb and the drinking of the wine. And the Passover meal had nothing to do with cannibalism and incest.

Freud on Morality…and Science
Even more significantly, though, was Freud’s take on morality. He anticipated the objection that if we got rid of religion, then there would be no basis for morality. Freud’s response was essentially, “We need to get away from the fear that there is some sort of ‘daddy in the sky’ who will punish us if we do something ‘wrong,’ or reward us if we do something ‘right.’” But if there is no ‘god’ to reward or punish, wouldn’t that give people license to do whatever they wanted, with no fear of punishment? Wouldn’t that open the doors to chaos in society? Freud’s response was, “Well, it’s just a chance we have to take! Science has ‘proven’ there is no god, so we just need to accept it, and get about the business of teaching the ignorant masses that it is just common sense and rational to behave morally—it benefits society.”

Of course, contrary to what Freud claimed, science has never, and can never, proven God does not exist. The physical sciences are limited to what can be observed and tested in the natural world. To claim that science has proven God doesn’t exist makes about as much logical sense as claiming that our ability to explain the inner-workings of a grandfather clock has ‘proven’ that time itself doesn’t exist. Simply put, a physical science, or any explanation of the inner-workings within the natural world, can never even address (let alone prove or disprove) the existence of anything above or beyond the natural world.

A further problem with Freud is much what he calls “science” (i.e. his explanation of religion, and much of his psychological theories like the Oedipus Complex) simply is not science in any way, shape or form. What he did was hijack a proper understanding of the physical sciences, and then co-opt the term “science” to justify and prop up his decidedly unscientific claims. In effect, he did a very modern thing: he claimed “science” and “objectivity” to falsely legitimize his very unscientific, subjective, presuppositional worldview—namely philosophical atheism. Incidentally, this modern notion that “objective science” is able to discern “the truth,” as opposed to faith and religion has been challenged by many postmodern thinkers like Derrida and Lyotard. We will discuss those men in a later post.

The sad thing is that the modern world bought this bait and switch to the point where his claims about “the illusion of religion” and “religion as a psychological disorder” are simply accepted in some circles as just unquestioned dogma (just look at the New Atheists). Simply put, Freud’s unscientific claims about religion are now parroted and blindly accepted with a religious devotion by secularists who, like Freud, claim champion science and rationality. The irony would be all too funny, if it wasn’t altogether tragic.

Not only that, but the 20^th century has proven Freud’s hope that atheism and science would lead the way to a better world was a foolish pipe dream.

What Freud Got Right…and Where He Went Wrong
We should be fair to Freud, though. He did open the door to a very valuable field—that of psychology. His insights into the human psyche are indeed valuable. He did help awaken us to the reality that people do, in fact, have a tendency to cling to untruths and fantasies much like a child clings to a security blanket. Such tendencies are childish—but such tendencies are not limited to “religion.” Rather, such tendencies are common to the entire human race, and they cut across all walks of life—religious as well as non-religious. Of course, anyone familiar with the Bible, as well as the wisdom of the Church Fathers throughout the past 2,000 years, will quickly realize that the psychological problems and tendencies that Freud alerted the modern world to were things that were long addressed throughout Church history by countless monks, priests, and theologians, not to mention the Scriptures themselves.

Essentially, what men like Freud (as well as like Feuerbach before him) did was take truths about humanity that had long been expounded throughout Christian tradition, and then claim them for their own, cutting God out of the picture altogether. What Freud said about childish, psychologically-stunted growth among the masses of population (i.e. creating a ‘god’ in their own image in order to manipulate and give a false sense of comfort) was what the OT prophets called idolatry.

Sadly though, it is ignorance of the rich psychological wisdom found among the Church Fathers that has led many secularists to claim that Freud was preaching “something new under the sun.” He wasn’t. The true insights into human behavior that Freud made were made, discussed, and expounded upon by countless Christian thinkers throughout the centuries. The only really “new” things Freud claimed (i.e. religion is a mental disorder, stemming from childhood trauma) were the ones that are demonstrably false, and ironically unscientific.

Nowhere does this atheistic hubris/ignorance display itself more than in Freud’s claim that ‘science’—specifically Copernicus’ heliocentric universe, and Darwin’s theory of evolution—had proven that the religious (i.e. Christianity’s) claim that man was special in the universe was utterly false. Freud claimed that since Copernicus proved the earth wasn’t the center of the universe, and since Darwin proved humans biologically descended from animals, that Christianity’s claim that the earth was special and that man was “in God’s image” was just discredited. Yet how does the location of the earth determine its significance? And how does the way in which humanity came to be determine humanity’s uniqueness?

In any case, Freud deserves much more than this brief overview, but for my purposes, it will have to suffice. Freud has had a tremendous influence on how modern society has tended to view religion—his claims are (ironically) just taken as “scientific” gospel-truth by many. In my opinion, though, his claims are neither scientific nor true.