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: : 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. : oedipus - You can't prove that God doesn't exist; you can't prove that anything doesn't exist. Freud isn't *proving* the non-existence of God. You're presented with 2 alternatives: : 1)God exists : 2)he's an imaginary being : rather than proving one or the other absolutely, you have to select the one which makes the most sense. Did God create humans and instill in them a desire for him? Or do humans simply possess a desire for transcendent experience, for and escape from death, and therefore create fictions to satisfy their cravings? : 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. : oedipus - Look at that logic. You're equating reason and belief. I don't think they have anything in common. : 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. : oedipus - Most American christians do in fact think of god as an old angry man. Who are the most prominent christian leaders here - Falwell, Robertson, et al. Catholics do tend to have a loftier idea of God, but that says something about the aging of religions, not the aging of individual people. : 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. : oedipus - People can accept that their fathers aren't all-powerful; they can't accept the fact that there is no all-powerful being at all. So they conjure up an invisible father. : 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. : oedipus - Not all evil comes from man. If God exists, he must bear sole responsibility for natural disasters. If there is no God, these are not evil, they are morally neutral. If there is a God, however, these disasters are caused by an intelligent agent and are therefore evil actions, the evil-doer being God. : Hence, God cannot do everything that some childish people want Him to do. : oedipus - Then you don't pray? : This limitation (it's not really a limitation per se, but that's another topic) does not amount to non-existence. : : 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. : oedipus - yes, but longing for 'infinity' is a bit of a rhetorical stretch. : People also long for the existence of aliens, or all sorts of weirdo occult stuff, which is far out and abstract. : oedipus - The catholic church is just as occult, but it has prestige. I think the longing for angels and the longing for aliens is identical and I defy you to prove that they are dissimilar. : 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. : oedipus - People talk about God, even though they admit he 'surpes human understanding.' : 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. : oedipus - So why do so many people prefer Buddha or Muhammad or Krishna. : 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. : oedipus - Obviously not, or devout christians would immediately give up their possessions and abandon their families. (Who was it that suggested that?) : 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. : oedipus - Not true. I know plenty of girls who sit around longing for a boyfriend or husband, event though they don't yet know anyone suitable. They form their ideal first, then try to fit guy into it. Boys do the same thing. And haven't you ever heard of 'venting your frustration'? People feel grouchy, and go about looking for someone to hurl their anger against. I say feelings come first, and attach themselves to objects. : 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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