I'm not sure there is an ounce of what Sigmund Freud says that I actually believe. Some of his ideas seriously leave me scratching my head wondering where in the world this man came up with ideas like that. For example, his phenomenon that he called the Oedipus complex absolutely about made my head spin...not with a transcendence of knowledge but rather a lack thereof. I couldn't understand how he could ever believe that. I wanted to blog on his beliefs concerning the aforementioned Oedipus complex but decided against based upon the fact that it would make for awkward class discussion. Instead I want to defend my faith since Freud seems to take shots at it in all of his ideas.
Therefore, I would like to bring to light a little excerpt from the text describing one of Freud's beliefs: "Freud questioned the very nature of human morality. He described benevolent action and altruistic conduct as mere masks for self-gratification, and religion as a form of mass delusion". I checked the blog criteria and it said that I don't have to be objective and that I can lay out my personal opinions so here it goes....
Im sorry if I step on any toes beforehand because that is not my intention. I want to go more specific than just religion and see how his ideas hold up to a specific religion...Christianity. This may be tougher than I think considering that there are so many different divisions of Christianity all with different beliefs. I believe that Christianity is more than a "mass delusion" but rather it is where we get our morality, or ideas of right and wrong, from. Most atheists would agree that what the Nazis did was wrong. Well, where did they get this concept of "wrong" from? Please don't say society or that everyone knows that killing someone was wrong. Go back to the very first human...if you're a Christian that would be Adam and if not a Christian then just think of the first person. How did they ever come up with what was right and wrong. They would have had no preconceived ideas of even what is moral. This means that it must have been like a law of nature in that it was not created by humans but rather by a higher being or God. It was always in us...its intuitive (an idea often identified with C.S. Lewis) but we have a disease called sin.
http://atheology.com/2007/03/29/cs-lewis-moral-argument/
Freud lays out all the things we desire and to be frank basically all of them are sin (ie, Oedipus complex). As a result its hard to believe that "benevolent actions" and "altruistic conduct" are nothing more than "masks for self-gratification" but they are. It's the moral law (I believe people would say this is our conscience or Christians would possibly say the Holy Spirit) coming out in us because we know what we ought to do but we do it very little because we are born sinners. To be honest, this sin looks more pleasurable than the joy we get from helping others so that's why it comes out in us more and we have a "sin nature" but yet we still know what is right. This is the reason that a Saviour (Jesus Christ) is needed because we utterly fail at keeping this moral law. The only way we could be redeemed in the eyes of God (the source of this law) is to have someone pay the price or atone for our sins.
Once again, I didn't mean to step on any toes. It was the only way I knew how to refute Freud's ideas on morality and religion...that religion (specifically Christianity) is more than a "mass delusion" and morality stems from Christianity. And most importantly to show that Jesus Christ was needed because He is the only way to be just in God's eyes because as Freud even said we just desire all these sinful things because they bring pleasure. I hope that these thoughts aren't too scattered because I didn't want to go overly long in to explaining the concepts...
