Freud’s Illusion
The great debate between science and religion has gone on for many years since man has discovered the field of science and reason. In The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud outlines his idea as to why religious ideas are man made illusions stemming from man’s deepest wishes and desires. Although Freud makes a good argument about how religious ideas are illusions, he disregards some of the important characteristics of religion and the positive contributions religion has for a society.
According to Freud, religious ideas are "teachings and assertions about facts and conditions of external (or internal) reality which tell one something one has not discovered for oneself and which claim to one's belief"(31). Freud later goes on to explain that religious ideas give us "information about what is most important and interesting to us in life", which makes the ideas "highly prized"(31). Freud is stating that religious ideas are taught and are therefore passed down from generation to generation. He is also stating that the teachings of religious ideas give information about oneself that could not have been discovered without it. Science prefers to us logic and reasoning to come up with a fact while religion uses teachings that were revealed many generations ago to state a fact about human nature.
Freud argues that because religious ideas are teachings, there must be grounds for the claims of the teaching's contents. Freud gives an anecdote of how as a young man he was able to go to the ruins of ancient Athens and prove to himself the claim that there was indeed an ancient city in Athens. With this example, Freud was able to conclude that the teachin ...