Posted by Philosopher on September 19, 1999 at 12:43:21:
In Reply to: Freud posted by Oediupus on September 19, 1999 at 05:44:03:
: (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.
Thus sayeth the Philosopher: Freud, or at least your explanation of his thought, simply begs the question. In order to proove that God doesn't exist he must first ume that He is a figment of the imagination, which would mean that God doesn't exist--and around and around we go. He umes that an adult's conviction of the existence of God must be infantile simply because it resembles the feeling people have as children when they look up to their fathers as more powerful than they really are. But no one would argue that a child's reasoning is anywhere as sophisticated as an adult's; hence, by definition a child's belief is inferior to an adult's. A man's conception of God undoubtedly changes over time: a child's picture of an old man who gets angry when he does bad things changes (hopefully but not always) to an adult's fuller appreciation of the full wonders of God's power. Just because as children we impute great powers to our fathers, which we eventually discover they don't possess, doesn't mean that our father don't exist--it only means that they aren't as powerful as we thought. A lot of people get bent all out of shape when they consider all of the evil in the world, which if there was a God, He would surely prevent. But since evil is a privation of good that comes from man's free will, and God cannot violate man's free will (or else it wouldn't be free) God cannot prevent evil. Hence, God cannot do everything that some childish people want Him to do. This limitation (it's not really a limitation per se, but that's another topic) does not amount to non-existence.
: (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.
Thus sayeth the Philosopher: People long for abstract and unimaginable things all the time--the non-existence of God, for example is abstract (you can't touch God)and people wish that would be true. People also long for the existence of aliens, or all sorts of weirdo occult stuff, which is far out and abstract. As for unimaginable, by definition something unimaginable cannot be sought for since it cannot be conceived of; therefore, it is impossible to even name something unimaginable because as soon as you name it you must conceive of it. And this gets ridiculous pretty fast. I was thinking of the statement of Paul Tillich, the early 20th century Protestant theologian, who said that each and every on of us has a Christ-shaped vacuum inside of use that only the love of Jesus can fill. Furthermore, St Augustine held that man has numerous loves--loves of things, loves of people, and ultimately love of God. Only the love of God satisfies us fully. Each and every person loves something as his god, whether it be , money, whatever; it is impossible not to hold something as one's highest good (I'm borrowing from Aristotle now). Still, only the love of the greatest good will ever satisfy man, and this greatest good is God. Freud got it partly right, I think, but a bit backwards. He said that because man has these feelings--the longing after some chief good that will ultimately fulfill us completely--that the object of these feeling must have been created by the feelings themselves, and so the object doesn't really exist except as the creation of the feeling. But this is absurd--feelings just don't exist unless some object elicits them. The same goes for actions, nothing is done randomly (truly randomly). No action of the appetite can take place unless there is something to act towards, which requires that that something actually exists prior--not subsequent to--the feeling itself.
: (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.
Philosopher: Veritas vos liberabit. The truth, which Freud apparently valued over deception, can set you free from your irrational cravings. That doesn't mean, however, that they will completely disappear. But the irrational appetite can be subordianted to the will, which can be subordinated to the intellect. The process of realizing a deception is nothing else than the beginning of putting the faculties of the soul into order.
Again, Freud gets part of it right, but draws a conclusion unwarranted by the evidence.
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