Professor Kenny's discussion of the formation of fundamentalist beliefs can contribute to understanding some of the underlying roots of current conflicts, for example in the Middle East, and assist in conflict resolution and the achievement of peace in our troubled world. Kenny's penetrating, exhaustive, multidisciplinary examination of the origins of religious belief and how it has been exploited for political ends is therefore no mere academic exercise. Science, on the other hand, offers no such explanations about the universe or the meaning of our lives and no consolation for the unanswered longings of humanity.
SCIENCE, GOD AND RELIGION
Then followed "The question of a Weltanschauung" in New Introductory Lectures (Freud, 1933a); "Why war?" (Freud, 1933b ); and Moses and Monotheism (Freud, 1939), Freud's erudite inquiry into the origins of belief in a singular deity. Freud (1918) and Jung (1933) argued that theology and the concept of God should be understood from a psychological perspective, a call echoed by Todd (2012), who considered that without reference to post -quantum physics, cognitive neuroscience and depth psychology, much of the scholarship on God will fail to satisfy our deepest longings for resolution of the psychophysical (mind/matter) problem, the problem of metaphysical materialism (i.e. the doctrine of mortality as annihilation of the self ) and our place in the "drama of cosmology". I conclude this chapter with a discussion of the role of 'ordinary' cognition in the formation of religious beliefs.
DOES GOD EXIST?
We begin with one of the oldest arguments for the existence of God from the modern era. The result is that if the concept of the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality. Although the First Cause theory tries to explain everything that exists in the universe, we cannot explain the existence of the First Cause.
THE COMMON ORIGINS IN HUMAN NATURE OF TABOOS, CONSCIENCE,
Durkheim argued that it was the symbolic representation in the form of totemic emblems and symbols of the totemic animal or plant that became sacred and imbued with magical powers. In the third stage, children come to understand that the word is an arbitrary designation for the thing. For example, the belief that objects were alive and created by god permeates the writing of the time.
They are also characteristic features of young children's thinking that we just discussed. To find out, spirits were gathered that could provide vital information about the disposition of demons. For example, in Western culture, "the memory of the dead loved ones should be kept green at all costs."
The Bagobo of the Philippines maintain that everyone has a right-handed (benevolent) soul and a left-handed (malevolent) soul. The good soul goes to the city of the dead, which is described as heavenly (eg a place where the. Religion represents the collectively shared sentiment of the tribe, which is embodied in the hallowed totemic object.
Golding, 1982, p. 548) Freud and Durkheim developed independent theories about the socialization of the individual and the role of religion in society.
FREUD, RELIGION, CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY
With the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s, Freud's work, along with that of other brilliant minds, including Albert Einstein, H.G. Mann soon realized that the gods could not alleviate the "confusion and helplessness of the human race" (Freud, 1927, p. 18), leading to the conclusion that the gods themselves were subject to the same vicissitudes as man and that a power over the gods – Fate/ a unitary Deity – operated. Freud observed that the ambivalence of the relationship between father and child is reflected in every religion.
Utterances such as mine entailed a certain curtailment of one's earthly existence and an effective acceleration of the possibility of having a personal experience of the afterlife” (Freud, 1927, p. 36). After all, religion is a warmer and more comforting blanket than reason, which requires us to "admit to ourselves the full extent of [our] helplessness and insignificance in the machinery of the universe" (Freud, 1927, p. 49) ). Only when social interest and the individual's human interest are identical will the need for repression disappear.
Freud thinks that the reason lies in the fear of the father and of his threat of castration. These events may have been the origin of the Messianic myth of the Second Coming. Ultimately, Moses became indistinguishable in the minds of “the poor Jewish slaves” (Freud, 1939, p. 110) whom he had chosen and saved from Moses' God, undoubtedly as a result of the injection into 'God'. ' of the personality traits of the 'great man'.
Eventually, the “dominion of the father of the primordial horde” (Freud, 1939, p. 133) was reasserted in the development of monotheistic religions, which allow only one god as supreme lord and master.
FREUD, THE DEMONIC, MADNESS AND THE FANCIFUL
Over time, he was comforted by the sense of community and shared suffering of the accepting believers. Can we then argue that depictions of the Devil shed light on the nature of the relationship with the earthly father. Moreover, he recovered from the loss of his father, first by seeking the devil as a surrogate father, and then by falling into the embrace of "the fathers."
His illusions then took on a mystical and religious character - Schreber believed it to be "the devil's game". Daniel was really the plaything of the Devil/father who had committed spiritual murder upon him. The role of the nightmare in the creation of mythical beings was certainly canvassed by others.
Some mythologists even trace belief in spirits in general to nightmare experiences. A similar but less brutal account of Satan's fall is given in the Qur'an aˉ n. The bread is the flesh of the dead Christ and the wine is his blood.
For Pontius Pilate, Jesus was “King of the Jews” and as such a threat to the Roman Empire.
CRITIQUES OF FREUD’S THEORY ON RELIGION
How can we know if primitive man imagined the totemic animal in the way Freud described it. This father image, on the other hand, according to Freud, came from two sources – the ancestral father of the primordial horde and the actual father of the individual. Communism was a failed experiment due to the irreconcilable clash between human nature and the concept of absolute equality in the collective.
Would his theory of the origin and purpose of religion fail if the Oedipus complex were false or non-existent. This passage does not support a causal role of the Oedipus complex in our need for faith. It is important that Freud remains almost exclusively on the role of the image of the father in the son's conception of God.
Resolution [of the Oedipus complex] is the development of the ability to tolerate a relationship between three people. Such was Freud's belief that psychoanalysis is an atheistic science, those professing religious beliefs were not accepted for psychoanalytic training in the early days of the 'movement'. Freud compared us to the rest of the animal world, which does not contemplate the incomprehensible.
Stolorow (in Kenny, 2014), like Freud, urges more honesty in our understanding of the human condition:.
GROUP PSYCHOLOGY AND THE PSYCHOANALYSIS OF VIOLENCE
I think that among various psychosocial factors, unconscious anger and guilt drive much of the self-destructive and other-destructive behavior we see in the world today. Freud's (1921) depiction of the 'herd instinct' found its perfect embodiment in Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. Berke (1996) draws a close parallel between rampant nationalism at the level of the state and malignant narcissism at the individual.
Prisoners lived in (ie, spent 24 hours a day for the duration of the experiment in the simulated prison). Significantly, Philip Zimbardo, who served as a prison guard, became desensitized to the violent behavior of the prison guards. To increase our self-esteem, we improve the status of the group we belong to.
Activity in frontal brain regions indicated that participants were experiencing conflict over suppressing their emotions. The seemingly rationalistic religions of the East are at their core ancestor worshipers and. Abraham is buried in Hebron, which is currently part of the disputed Palestinian territories.
Not so - God saves them and Ishmael later becomes the father of the Arab peoples.
TERROR THEOLOGY AND FUNDAMENTALISM
Such is the case with those who would attribute all the tribulations of the Middle East to Islamic fundamentalism. And the governor of the city [Orestes] honored her exceedingly; for she deceived him by her magic. The Papua New Guinea 'witches' of today bear an uncanny resemblance to the witches of the Middle Ages.
With its iconic Christian symbol, the flaming cross, the Klan blasted its hateful message across the night sky in the name of Christianity. It was also left as a "calling card" in the front gardens of the thousands of African-American homes they burned in the 1950s and 1960s. The Klan in the southern states of the US had the support of the police and the judiciary.
Muhammad is not the father of any man among you, but he is the messenger of Allah and the seal of the prophets. In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. We will address the issue of what constitutes the 'true' message of the Qur'an in the next section.
Unabated political conflict between Sunnis and Shiites is the source of most of the deaths in the Middle East.
