The world we live in forces upon us the stark realization of just how helpless we truly are. We see nature in all her destructive force shatter the lives of fellow members of our species. Consider the tornado that ravaged Jareel, Texas in May 1997. Out of nowhere, by an act of nature's indifference toward man, a once productive and happy community was transformed into a war zone, and all in about ten minutes time. Hurricanes whisk away coastal homes, wash away bridges, cause disease, homelessness, and in short disrupt our already hectic lives. With so much stacked against us, not to mention the acts of cruelty and injustice we invoke upon each other, its a wonder man is able to endure and continue the propagation of the species.
So what is it in the definition of being an animal, an organism, or more properly, a human, that allows us to keep going? For one, as Charles Darwin correctly inferred, it is our instinct of self-preservation that helps us to cope with the enormous odds stacked against us. We survive because we want to, for the only recourse if we submit is extinction, or more plainly, death.
But aside from this biological explanation, Sigmund Freud found a psychological tool at work. Each of us sought the protection of our father in childhood when we were scared by the dark, the bogeyman in the closet, a raging thunderstorm, or the bully in school or down the street. Our father, through love, reassured us all would be all right and that no harm would befall us as long as his watchful eye was present. We gained relief and assurance from his words and fell asleep happy and secure. Freud asserted that this same idea of a loving father we assign to our concept of a Higher Power. In his religious treatise, The Future of An Illusion, he states the following, "Thus the benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the dangers of life..." Life is so much easier to cope with if we believe that there is something out there, greater in power, love, wisdom, and compassion, to watch over us and to care for us. We assign the deity human qualities, for "it is in fact natural to man to personify everything that he wants to understand in order later to control it." Thus by Freud, God becomes a psychological means for dealing with life. It goes without saying that the religious experience, quite possibly a manifestation of some psychogenic method for dealing with that which we cannot control, holds a more prominent and influential role in our lives than we all may casually admit.
The question of whether or not this idea, the highest and most perfect idea we can have, exists is unquestionably in the affirmative and the explanation of why we have a subconscious dependency on it too has been established. But man, with all his creative and imaginative powers, does not just admit the existence of the idea of God, but goes further to develop a mythology and system for revering His name. We have ascribed our own characteristics to His nature, theories as to his origin, and tried to explain his role in terms of influencing our lives. It is these questions and concerns that will constitute the basis of my examination of the idea of God.
David Hume, in his philosophical works, attempted not to prove or refute religion, but to show that no argument has been produced to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that God exists. He sought to arouse skepticism in man, not encourage atheism. Hume's basic objections to the arguments offered to support religious accusations include the following: 1. they are questionable, and 2. that they are far from proving that God exists, even if they are not flawed. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume says that philosophers who say everything is full of God, "rob nature, and all created beings of every power, in order to render their dependence on the Deity still more sensible and immediate." He said that neither the material world or God himself could be proven since the mind is a stream of ideas and impressions whose origins we are unaware of. If we are in a room alone and perceive a table, the table exists as it is perceived by my senses. But when I leave the room, it no longer exists. This is similar to the question of if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, did it actually make a sound? In short, we have a succession of individual ideas, of which we are aware of, but cannot determine their origin. This idea leads us to a dead-end street.
In the Enquiry, Hume goes on to say that if men attempt to understand realms of spirits, questions beyond the reach of human capacity, they become frustrated and never arrive at any conclusion. These are things outside our own power of understanding and so can never be comprehended. What of the sources of our actions then? If the source lies outside the person himself/herself then they affect him in no way possible, positive or negative. While we act we are acted upon, as the ultimate author of all our volitions is the Creator. He, in his divine providence, bestows motion on this immense machine. Human actions then have no moral turpitude at all as proceeding from so good a cause or the Creator is involved in responsibility for our actions. Hence, man is allowed to be ignorant and incompetent, but the Creator is not. All actions done that are criminal then arise from his divine intent, and the Deity, not man, is responsible. But if all our actions truly can be traced back to God they cannot be criminal since God is perfect. If though they are criminal, then God is not perfect and is the ultimate author of guilt and moral turpitude in all his creatures.
The last major topic in Hume's work is the issue of miracles. He first defines miracles as a violation of the laws of nature. It is not a miracle if it occurs in the common course of nature. He goes on to say that there are no miracles witnessed by any sufficient number of men of goodsense, education, and character as to prove evidence "beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others." The religionist sees what has no reality, knowing it is false, but perseveres in it because it promotes their cause. Mankind, having a natural propensity toward the extraordinary and marvelous, easily accept these forged miracles, prophecies, and supernatural events and a red flag of suspicion should be raised against all relations of this kind. He finishes by pointing out that in destroying a rival religious system, one must destroy their miracles so it loses credibility to its supporters.
So what does Hume finally conclude about religion. Despite the fact that he believes that no concept of God can be substantiated through reason, he says that in the end, one must believe in the existence of God since such a belief is essential and the basis of all human hopes, morality, and society. A belief in God arises from the basic human desire for happiness, fear of death and future misery, and the thirst of many for revenge. In summation it serves a psychological function. As for the soul and immorality, Hume says these ideas are wholly without foundation and cannot be accepted. To the end David Hume was a skeptic.
John Stuart Mill, considered to be the father of modern liberalism, concluded four central propositions that lead us to believe. These are as follows:
Before delving to an examination of Mill's concept of God, let us begin at his interpretation of Nature as explained in his first of the Three Essays on Religion entitled, "Nature." He defines nature as the sum of all phenomena together with the causes which produce them. This includes all that happens and all that has the potential of happening. Man, he continues, obeys the laws of nature but does not guide himself by them necessarily. "Though all conduct is in conformity to laws of nature, all conduct is not grounded on knowledge of them, and intelligently directed to the attainment of purposes by means of them." Man then attempts to improve on his condition, thereby arousing religious suspicion since this is seen as offensive to the deity(ies) that are supposed to be running the universe and as an interference of their governing of it. The Catholic Church sees any attempt to exercise power over nature as, "an impious effort to usurp divine power, and dare more than was permitted to man."
He goes on to say that the very things men are punished for doing to one another are nature's daily performances. Killing, for example, is an act Nature carries out everyday, but one regarded as a criminal act according to human laws. All acts that Nature performs are unbiased, do not discriminate, and are indifferent as to who are the victims. Nature is seen as, "emptying her shafts upon the best and noblest indifferently with the meanest and worst..."
What interpretation or moral theory of Creation does Mill agree is not self-contradictory or contradictory to the facts it attempts to account for? The only admissible theory then becomes that which says Good cannot subdue evil, either physical or moral, at once and altogether. This then implies the Author of Good to be the Author of Evil, which is not readily accepted. He says that it cannot be decided which of the Creator's works are truer expressions of his character than any other. We tend, although, to only select acts that do not lead to moral results. Followed to its logical conclusion, Mill asserts that the Deity intends and approves all men do, and so all actions of man are done in obedience to his will.
Religionists say Providence intends all that is good, not all that happens. This allows man to do whatever he wishes so long as it "promotes the general good, and not what man has a natural inclination to..." So what is the duty of man? Mill sums it up as follows, "The duty of man is to cooperate with the beneficent powers, not by imitating but by perpetually striving to amend the course of nature - and bringing that part of it over which we can exercise control, more nearly into conformity with a high standard of justice and goodness." In short, man should rise above his environment, conforming to the laws of nature at times as it may be required, but it should more properly be observed to be cooperating with these influences.
After establishing the relationship of Nature to man, Mill sets out to examine the Utility of Religion. An argument for the utility of religion, Mill says, is an appeal to induce non-believers to practice a well meant hypocrisy, for semi-believers to ignore what may shake their unstable belief, or for anyone in general, so as to abstain from expressing any doubts. Religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable. Learned virtues, he noted, are taught as aspects of religious instruction.
Mill asks what aspects of human nature cause religion to be necessary? First, fear of the gods lead mankind to try to worship them, in an attempt at appeasement. Second, man realized just how small he was in the universe. Religion gave him the slightest hope of attaining knowledge. Third, cravings for higher things and an insufficiency to satisfy human aspirations. So long as suffering occurs, we will need a God to love and console us.
In his final treatise on religion, named Theism, Mill attempts to define God. He assumes that the only consistent view of God is one in which He governs the world according to certain invariable laws. It is useless to inquire into the final courses since only concrete evidence should be concentrated on. Finally, Mill says that the immortality of man is not without its limitations. If man is not to spend eternity in some improved form then it is preferable to live the best life possible now, by enjoying whatever pleasures and satisfactions provided by our abilities, and find death a release from this world.
Mill did not see God as omnipotent, but great and limited in power. Since he was limited in power, than we have no grounds to suppose unlimited knowledge. Mill says, " The knowledge and wisdom necessary to planning and arranging the cosmos are, no doubt, as much in excess of human knowledge as the power implied is in excess of human power. But nothing obliges us to suppose that either the knowledge or the skill is infinite." God seems to have a purpose that does not seem to be the happiness of His creations, but some other mysterious goal to whose realization He is apparently more committed. He finishes by saying the God's work is not finished and in fact, He needs our help in completing it. This is in itself an invigorating and elevating thought.
The final philosopher that I wish to give some time and attention to is William James, who examined the religious phenomena in his treatise The Varieties of Religious Experience. Like Freud, he was a psychologist and sought some means of explaining religion to be a need of our minds. What does the term religion actually mean to James? He defines it as, "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." He says that the term religion does not stand for any single principle or essence, but is a collective name, because there are so many religions and they are so different from one another. Man's main concern in life is happiness, and religion serves as an inner path to a supernatural kind of happiness. In fact, happiness in the absolute and everlasting is found nowhere but in religion.
He goes on to describe several fundamental practices of religion. First is conversion, which he defines as receiving grace, experiencing religion, or being regenerated by a gradual process in which the divided self becomes one and consciously right superior and happy. People are converted because they feel an incompleteness or wrongness from which they want to escape (sin) and the positive idea they are eager to compass. A second function of religion is prayer, in which he says is the very soul and essence of religion and through it things which cannot be realized in any other way, come about. It is an inner communion with the spirit. Finally, James declares that feeling we have of a presence watching over us is in actuality a hallucination.
How then do we measure the religious experience? James says the test of any theory or belief should be its practical consequences. Rationalism insists that all our beliefs should ultimately find for themselves articulate grounds, consisting of the following: stable abstract principles, definite facts of sensation, hypotheses based on these facts, and inferences logically drawn. Accordingly, religion is one of many ways to achieve unity. The process of curing inner completeness and reducing inner discord is a general psychological process which may occur with any sort of mental material. Some people cannot be converted since religious ideas are unable to become the center of their spiritual energy. They hold materialistic or pessimistic beliefs that limit their natural tendency to expand or faith is seen as something weak and shameful. Finally, psychology and religion agree that there are forces outside the conscious individual that bring redemption to their life. They differ in that psychology says these forces are subconscious and "do not transcend the individual's personality" and religion makes them the result of the "supernatural operations of the Deity."
In The Will To Believe, James asserts that a belief in God is necessary for the satisfaction of man's nature. We cannot prove that God exists but we each have a will to believe and we must satisfy this will. Each man wants to believe in a certain way, because this belief seems to satisfy him most completely. He says that religion offers us a momentous and forced option (an option is the decision between two hypothesis; a hypothesis is anything proposed to our belief). We loose the good if we look upon religion with skepticism and if it in reality is true. James does not wish to forfeit his only chance of getting on the winning side. We all can choose to believe if we wish. It is in each of our power's to decide for ourselves, while at the same time it is at our own risk.
For James, he sees a basic psychological need of religion, but at the same time says what if the religionists are right. It does not hurt us to believe in God but this remains a choice we must all make in the deep recesses of our mind.
Sigmund Freud, by far the name most commonly known by common people and the father of Psychology, did not lend much credence to the worship of gods or a God. In The Future of an Illusion he said gods serve three purposes. These are to exorcise the terrors of nature, reconcile man to Fate's cruelty, and to compensate men for their sufferings. Freud believed that man "...personify everything that he wants to understand in order later to control it."
Religious ideas give information about what is most important and interesting in our life, and so are highly prized. Freud said the church has made two attempts to justify their doctrines. First they say religious doctrines are outside the jurisdiction of reason, truth must be felt inwardly, and they need not be comprehended. Second, our thought-activity contains a great number of hypotheses whose groundlessness and even absurdity we fully realize, but we have to behave as if we believed in them. He says that belief in a divine providence allays our fear of the dangers of life. A moral world ensures the fulfillment of the demands of justice and the belief in a future life provides a prolongation of earthly existence. If we are told there is no God then people will feel no obligation to obey the laws of society and will follow their own asocial and egotistical instincts.
There are people who obey the precepts of civilization because they allow religious threats to intimidate themselves and are afraid of religion so long as they consider it a part of the reality which hems them in.
For Freud, religion was a psychological tool.
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