Freudian Support for Atheism
By Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
10/1/2023
Reasons Atheists may use Freudian psychology as a support for the validity of atheism include:
1. Psychological explanations: Freudian psychology, developed by Sigmund Freud, focuses on understanding human behavior, thoughts, and emotions through the lens of the unconscious mind. Atheists might argue that psychological mechanisms can explain religious beliefs, such as wish fulfillment, where individuals create a belief in God to satisfy their emotional or psychological needs. They may see Freudian psychology as offering an explanation for the origin and persistence of religious beliefs, thereby supporting atheism.
2. Critique of religious beliefs: Freudian psychology includes the concept of the Oedipus complex, which suggests that individuals have unconscious desires for their opposite-sex parent and experience feelings of rivalry and hostility towards their same-sex parent. Atheists may argue that religious beliefs, particularly belief in a heavenly father figure, can be seen as projections of the Oedipal desires onto a divine figure. They may use this interpretation to criticize religious beliefs as products of unconscious psychological processes rather than objective truths.
3. Development of secular alternatives: Freudian psychology also emphasizes the role of reason, critical thinking, and the pursuit of truth in understanding human behavior. Atheists might align with Freud’s emphasis on rationality and argue that religious beliefs are irrational and contrary to scientific explanations of the world. They may view Freudian psychology as providing a framework for understanding human behavior without invoking supernatural entities, reinforcing their stance on atheism.
It’s important to note that not all atheists use Freudian psychology as a support for their atheistic beliefs. Atheism is a diverse worldview, and individuals may have different reasons and arguments for their lack of belief in deities. Additionally, Freudian psychology itself has faced criticism and has been revised and expanded upon by subsequent psychologists.
Critique of the Freudian Justification of Atheism:
Atheism denies the existence of God, and seeks to find alternative plausible explanations for phenomena used by believers to justify belief in God. Freudian theory uses the postulated existence of the unconscious mind as the entity which generates the concept of God to fill a need for meaning. Of course such an explanation could be true, but this thesis must confront the alternative data points and theoretical structures which validate God’s existence.
As an alternative perspective I refer to my Theory of Absolutes/Conscious Point Hypothesis, which postulates the creation of the substance of the universe from/by/within the mind of God. From the axiomatic assumption of the existence of God, and His ability to create points of consciousness capable of interacting by rules, follows the entire spectrum of substance, creation of the universe and life, physical law, animal and human consciousness, good and evil, purpose and meaning, the Biblical revelation and all world religions. This perspective, the Theory of Absolutes/Conscious Point Hypothesis, allows us to place all existence, all the substance and phenomena of life, in a rationally connected sequence and web of cause and effect.
The Freudian dismissal of God as a manufactured product of the unconscious mind to justify and understand the passions of the heart and mysteries of the universe is a possible explanation of the human concept of God. But this possible explanation for why may have manufactured the concept of God, does not negate the plausible alternate explanation of the existence of the universe arising from God. The existence of a self consistent, and experimentally and theoretically consistent hypothesis explaining the existence of the universe, is rationally satisfying as a justification of God’s existence.
The explanation of all of existence by an interconnected and layered web of phenomena including all realms of human experience, meets the criteria for a deep explanatory postulate for the tree of connection between the origin of the universe and its current state. The assumption of God using the mechanism of the creation of the substance of the universe as points of consciousness created as projections from/by His mind connects the universe deeply to His existence, while answering the deep questions of physics and the unification of all field, quantum, relativistic, and particle phenomena. The assumption of a universe pervaded by a dense matrix of conscious points, each of which attract and repel other conscious points, provides the substrate needed to form physical substance, and provide the motive force to produce the phenomena of kinetic and potential energy. This substrate of a dense matrix of conscious points filling the entire universe has the property of being conscious at its most elemental level, making the rise of consciousness in humans and animals a natural expression of the complex interactions of the components comprising all entities, both spiritual and physical.
I believe, the Conscious Point Hypothesis, with its axiomatic assumption of the existence of God, produces a paradigm of seamless integration of all phenomena, both physical and metaphysical. Such a unified theory/hypothesis/postulate/paradigm is the holy grail of philosophy, physics, cosmology, ontology, and epistemology, etc. Of course, such a theory, however much verified by experiment, and analyzed in terms of it explanatory validity and utility in predication, does not prove that God exists. Rather, God’s existence cannot be proved, it can only be validated to a high degree of likelihood by His existence being consistent with all observations of life/experiments. Proof of God’s existence will always be an article of faith.