Sunday, October 19, 2008

A Quote from Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Austrian Psychiatrist and "Father" of Psychoanalysis

"When man is freed of religion,
he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life."
~ Sigmund Freud


A Few Thoughts:

•My own experience allows me a slight variation on this quote as a personal expression: Since being free of religion, I have lived a more normal and wholesome life.

•Freud's psychological explanation for God and religion is uncomplicated: Owing to feelings of helplessness and guilt, the need for security and forgiveness arises, so people invent for themselves an entity that will provide precisely those things. - Philosophy of Religion.info: Sigmund Freud - Religion As Wish Fulfillment - In short, religion is seen as "childish delusion," and atheism as "grown-up realism."

2 comments:

  1. Truer words were never spoken...by two people.

    I was lucky in the sense that my parents were not big church goers as I got into my late teens.

    My mother grew up in a very strict Southern Baptist household, so there was her necessity to fulfill some childhood obligation.

    My father was raised in the Catholic Church and they went to church more like robots. They came they saw they left. Not much to see there.

    But there was never much talk about religion, you just accepted it, that we all believed the same notion.

    Yet low and behold, neither of my parents attend any church or any organized religion for that matter. How sad is that? If you are that hellbent (pun 100% intended) about what you believe in, then why not march up the step to the church?

    I am getting off topic. But I feel no shackles on me because I have to live up to some deities set of rules. I know what to do, and I try my best to do it...end of discussion.

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  2. I grew up with a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. Neither was devout but made sure I had an understanding of both. What am I today? A renegade Catholic who is tolerant of everyone's beliefs -- except those crazies on the religious right because I'm intolerant of intolerance.

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