The Coalescence of Sigmund Freud and Sam Harris

Sigmund Freud, commonly referred to as the father of psychoanalysis, discusses religion’s origins, developments and its future in The Future of an Illusion (1927). Freud outlines two complementary factors that facilitated the creation of religion:

1. The need to control the destructive nature of men ( thus allowing orderly social interaction).

2. Man’s predisposition for “wish fulfillment” to ameliorate his fear of death and to satisfy his Oedipal complex.

   
   

Although much of Freud’s work on psychology has been discarded, one should at a minimum respect his decades of clinical work lending a considerable amount of credence to his opinions regarding human nature.

Freud’s view of human nature was extremely unfavorable. Freud considered human nature to be anti-social, rebellious and containing high sexual and destructive tendencies. Freud concluded that this destructive nature sets a predisposition for disaster when humans interact with others in society.

Freud wrote, “For masses are lazy and unintelligent; are generally incapable of abstention and are not convinced by argument of inevitable consequences”. He concluded that this creates a terribly hostile society that could implode if it were not for civilizing forces and developing government oversight. 

Freud observed that gawds are utilized by humans to perform three tasks:

1. To remove the terrors that exist daily in nature (acts of nature, threats from others).

2. To reconcile humans to fate and the inevitability of death.

3. To compensate humans for controlling their destructive natures.

   
   

Harris writes, “without death, the influence of faith-based religion would be unthinkable. Clearly, the fact of death is intolerable to us, and faith is little more than the shadow cast by our hope for a better life beyond the grave”.

People get out of bed and live in a context of uncertainty, faced with the possibility of terrible certainties – like the certainty of death, exposure to a natural disaster or a debilitating accident. Having a positive disposition, a willingness to set a course in life without any assurance that things will go one’s way is occasionally called “faith”.

Religious faith is the belief in historical and metaphysical propositions without sufficient evidence. When the evidence for a religious proposition is thin or nonexistent, or there is compelling evidence against it, people invoke faith. 

Faith is simply the license people give themselves to keep believing when practical reasons fail. When rational inquiry supports the creed, it is championed; when it poses a threat it is derided. Faith is the mortar that fills the cracks in the evidence and the gaps in the logic – and thus it is faith that keeps the entire terrible edifice of religious certainty still looming dangerously over our world.