Sigmund Freud and the Illusion of Peace

Yesterday’s post was about Karl Marx. Today it’s about Sigmund Freud, who was born on this date in 1856. They have this in common—that religion is a subjective response of one sort or another, to be explained away psychologically or sociologically. Feuerbach contended that God is part of the furniture of a dream world. Marx called religion “the opiate of the people,” a drug that postpones the realization of social utopianism. Freud, when writing about religion, spoke of “the future of an illusion.”

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

All were atheists. All traded the idea of God for a vision of reality that gained traction for awhile, then lost steam. Almost no one knows about Feuerbach, and those who do seldom think of him with affection. Marx’s communism, where it exists, is anything but utopian. And Freudian psychoanalysis is now repudiated by most practitioners and theorists in psychology.

The doctrines that God is a projection of the human imagination (Feuerbach), that religion is a drug that holds humanity back from realization of its highest aspirations and greatest potential (Marx), that the idea of God meets some need for a grand Father figure (Freud), are all affectations. They each acknowledge the pervasiveness of religion in the experience of humanity. Each explains away what it does not argue is false. Each imagines a world improved by the deconstruction of religion. And each has failed in its diagnosis of the human predicament and in its prognosis for a religionless world.

Notice, each of these visions for humanity attempts a solution for the human predicament, which they each in their own way attribute to religion. But the attempt to shift responsibility for the human predicament onto God is itself responsible for the human predicament. The strategy has its origin in the Garden, where the serpent alleged that God’s warning and God’s promise would hold the first couple back from realizing the full potential of humanity.

The impulse is the same for every generation. There is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:4-11). Today, the false starts toward utopian society are rooted in scientific naturalism, mysticism, political meliorism, and religious fanaticism. In every case, true religion is either denied or obscured. The effect is the same: to steer men and women away from the only sure source of salvation, individually and collectively.

We frantically grasp for some semblance of peace—peace of mind, peace among nations. But our frenzy only makes things worse. It displaces peace. And it ensures that the true source of peace is passed by, unnoticed. That source is too good to be true, too easy for it to really count: “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29-30).

But isn’t that how the achievement of peace should come? Not as an achievement, but as a gift?

Some dates:

  • 1841—Publication of Ludwig Feuerbach’s, Das Wesen des Christentums (English: The Essence of Christianity)
  • 1848—Publication of The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
  • 1922—Formation of the Communist Party in Russia and establishment of the Soviet Union (USSR)
  • 1927—Seizure of control of China by the Communist Party
  • 1927—Publication of The Future of an Illusion, by Sigmund Freud

About Doug Geivett
University Professor; PhD in philosophy; author; conference speaker. Hobbies include motorcycling, travel, kayaking, sailing.

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