Chantelle asked:

What is Freud's view on the nature and justifiability of religious beliefs?

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According to Freud in The Future of an Illusion,we cannot justify religion. Religious doctrines are
bodies of knowledge which cannot be tested since they are teachings handed down from ancestors,
and while it might seem that we ought to believe them, and most people do, there is no reason to
believe writings from the past. Whilst a particular person might come to believe through divine
revelation, Freud says that all we can say about this is that the person has had a mental experience
giving rise to his conviction, but it doesn't follow that everyone ought to have such an experience.

However, Freud does say here that the man who adds religious beliefs to his "knowledge" is richer,
which is to say we can assume there is more to reality than can be discovered through the scientific
route of testing, evidence and justification. He calls religious knowledge an illusion, but claims that
illusions (as opposed to delusions) are not necessarily in contradiction to reality since it is not
impossible that an illusion, which for Freud is essentially derived from or motivated by wishes, can be
true.

Freud doesn't justify religion, but looks at the origin of its illusory nature in the psyche of man, and
speculates that this origin lies in the helplessness of childhood and the desire for protection against
danger, the unknown and fate. This exalted protective father figure, God, can protect from unknown
fate.

In his later workCivilization and its Discontents,Freud took the view that religious beliefs are
delusions, which is to change his stance from saying that such beliefs might be true, to claiming that
they are not. This is because the instinct to religion is "infantile", an early instinct which is the
expression of the desire to be protected from a hostile world. In psychoanalytical theory, man grows
and develops through many stages and develops individual grown-up instincts and sublimations
which can lead to a satisfying life in which the world doesn't appear hostile, and there is no wish for
protection. In contrast, the consolations offered by religion don't have developmental efficacy in that
religious beliefs don't offer the development of individualistic choice and adaptation to the world. So
no longer would Freud claim that religion is not the type of thing that can be justified. The later view is
that it cannot be justified as being beneficial to mankind.

Rachel Browne

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