Essay on Humanities: Religion and Superior Intelligence

Submitted By yingielee
Words: 485
Pages: 2

I will attempt to discuss why I agree or disagree in Sigmund Freud perception of religion. In the book the Future of an illusion, Freud struggled to create a theory that would distinguish morality from

religion so that people would still be able to know right from wrong even if they did not believe in god. Freud criticism on the belief of God is that such a belief is untrustworthy because of its

psychological origin. That is, God is a projection of our own intense, unconscious desires. He is a wish fulfillment derived from childish needs for protection and security. Freud argument is by stating that

we are limited in how we can predict the future by how we perceive the present and the little we about the past. He utilizes his method of psychoanalysis on religion by comparing the relationship between

human and religion to that child and his parents. He demonstrates that religion is the product of the human mind. Freud believed religion was a cultural product, the creation of civilization itself.

Civilization's principal was to defend humankind against nature. It is accomplished this by generating religious ideas in response to nature and fate. Religion gave civilization a sense of control over one of

its greatest fears, death. Religion beliefs in all societies have some idea of the way ultimate reality should be, and how things ultimately should be in universe. Religion gave individual life a higher purpose.

It gave hope after death. Religious beliefs made death less a fearsome end and made it simply a passing by command of a superior intelligence. A superior intelligence who orders everything for the best

and a place where all good is rewarded and evil is punished, and all of the hardships and suffering of life are obliterated. He thinks religion is an illusion and as an atheist, he argues that mankind will be

better off when it stop meaningless belief in religion. Freud claimed that humans have