Posted by Oediupus on September 19, 1999 at 05:44:03:
In Reply to: Re: The existence of God. posted by Philosopher on September 17, 1999 at 11:37:31:
: Your final comment rings of Freud's ertion that God is just something humans make up to deal with their own deficencies; belief give them comfort, nothing more.
(oedipus): Freud said more than this. The longing for God, according to Freud, is really the longing for the powerful father-figure we remember from childhood. When we are children, our fathers appear to us as a kind of god, but as we grow up, they seem less and less powerful, and have to come off their pedestals. Nevertheless, we remember vaguely that infantile sense of having an all-powerful father figure, we miss it, and so displace those feelings onto an imaginary father of the universe, whose presence we then feel as if he were real.
While it is true that every one of us longs for a kind of infinity, this does not mean that we are weak; rather, it means that there is a place inside of each of us that longs for God.
(oedipus): "longs for a kind of infinity" - what does that mean? Nothing, as far as I can tell. You can't long for something abstract and inimaginable. People obviously long for infinitely long life, which is just another way of saying that they are afraid of dying. This is actually a better explanation of the origin of the idea of God. People fear death and want to escape, so eventually someone conjures up the tale of a powerful being who can save them and invisible realms in which live the dead. The idea catches on because people prefer it to the cold truth.
To prove this, simply ask yourself why is it that people who don't believe in God, who know that they cannot be infinite still have that feeling. It Freud were right, then these people would have overcome their dependency of God and could lead wonderful live, but they don't.
(oedipus): Freud's position was actually more like this: you can't overcome your irrational cravings, but if you recognize them you're really better off. This doesn't necessarily meanvliving a wonderful life, but rather living without incapacitating mental illness. Not that Freud's method actually cured anyone; he was more of a moral philosopher - the truth is superior to deception was his keynote.
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