This should be very instructive for the unbiased viewer/student..
VIDEO: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6497928602096415301
VIDEO: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6497928602096415301
Seminar: The Question of God - Sigmund Freud vs. C.S. Lewis
- Thread starter ParkBoyz
- Start date
Yea, I enjoyed it a lot.. I thought that it would be refreshing to get some psychological and philosophical insight on the issue from two extremely influential and intelligent people from both sides of the extreme. Both of them make good sense which was the conclusion behind the seminar basically, that one can indeed find God by way of reason and have decent engagement on these issues with the secular world. This also gave me more personal insight into Freud as I've never received that in depth of an examination on his personal life, he was a genius. Psychology is an awesome discipline also.
I did not have a chance to watch the video, but I have to say this: you can not "find God by way of reason" and leave it there, because God is something that very actively influences the world we live in. Thus the question whether God exists or not is not purely abstract and existing out of the real world, it is very relevant to the real world we live in and any conclusion you reach "by way of reason" has to be supported by evidence. We've been waiting for the evidence for thousands of years and it never comes...
If you didn't watch the video, please shut the fuck up as this is considered trolling in its ultimate form and you are just a biased idiot with no life. This further extends the notion that you are nothing but a fraud, keep the pseudo-intellectualism at a minimal in this thread.. You are definitely no C.S. Lewis or Sigmund Freud and your knowledge of psychology is demonstrably lacking, so please contribute usefully, or refrain from comment, thank you, I appreciate it..
ParkBoyz said:
If you didn't watch the video, please shut the fuck up as this is considered trolling in its ultimate form and you are just a biased idiot with no life. This further extends the notion that you are nothing but a fraud, keep the pseudo-intellectualism at a minimal in this thread.. You are definitely no C.S. Lewis or Sigmund Freud and your knowledge of psychology is demonstrably lacking, so please contribute usefully, or refrain from comment, thank you, I appreciate it..
C.S Lewis has no credibility when it comes to making claims about the objective reality because he was a person with no education in hardcore sciences (and in the scientific method, accordingly). As I already said you can't "find God" just by thinking and reading, you need some really solid scientific reasoning supported by experimental results if possible to d othat
Тhere was one useful things in the video and it was the connection between the child-father relationships and atheism.
Other than that it was bogus
1. While it is good to know where disbelief can originate from, he totally left out the point about where and how belief originates/originated, which is very relevant to the "Question of God". I spent 1 hour listening about how and why Freud and C.S Lewis believed/ didn't believe and where atheism sometimes comes from, I didn't hear much about belief. It was a lot like as if believing is normal and atheism is an aberration. Even if atheism arises from lack of respect to authority (which is not a bad thing because authorities are not always right), that by no means mean that it is abnormal, much less that God exists.
2. The part about C.S. Lewis and his conversion was particularly disgusting. C.S. Lewis was a "militant atheist" who opened his mind to God's word, looked at the "evidence" and saw the truth. This is plain ridiculous and it just shows why the fact that you have a degree and a position at a major university does not mean you're a real scientist/rational person (well, he wasn't anyway, but the point remains valid about the speaker).
What was the evidence? The Bible... Well, the fact that the Gospels are right about certain historical events doesn't mean shit because they are not right about all of them and that's to be expected from a book comprised of collections of stories about the history of jews and their religion. This is by no means evidence for the existence of God. And so on. C.S Lewis read the Bible, "saw" the truth in it, opened his mind to God and he felt he musts exist....
Wow...
Other than that it was bogus
1. While it is good to know where disbelief can originate from, he totally left out the point about where and how belief originates/originated, which is very relevant to the "Question of God". I spent 1 hour listening about how and why Freud and C.S Lewis believed/ didn't believe and where atheism sometimes comes from, I didn't hear much about belief. It was a lot like as if believing is normal and atheism is an aberration. Even if atheism arises from lack of respect to authority (which is not a bad thing because authorities are not always right), that by no means mean that it is abnormal, much less that God exists.
2. The part about C.S. Lewis and his conversion was particularly disgusting. C.S. Lewis was a "militant atheist" who opened his mind to God's word, looked at the "evidence" and saw the truth. This is plain ridiculous and it just shows why the fact that you have a degree and a position at a major university does not mean you're a real scientist/rational person (well, he wasn't anyway, but the point remains valid about the speaker).
What was the evidence? The Bible... Well, the fact that the Gospels are right about certain historical events doesn't mean shit because they are not right about all of them and that's to be expected from a book comprised of collections of stories about the history of jews and their religion. This is by no means evidence for the existence of God. And so on. C.S Lewis read the Bible, "saw" the truth in it, opened his mind to God and he felt he musts exist....
Wow...
I may address your arguments later but as I said, by giving an opinion on the video before you even got a chance to see it exposed your bias.
In the meanwhile...
From The Future of an Illusion (1927)
Chapter IV
"The child's attitude to its father is coloured by a peculiar ambivalence."
IV
Freud writes:
... My work is a good example of the strict isolation of the particular contribution which psycho-analytic discussion can make to the solution of the problem of religion. ... It is, of course, my duty to point out the connecting links ..., between the deeper and the manifest motives, between the father-complex and man's helplessness and need for protection.
These connections are not hard to find. They consist in the relation of the child's helplessness to the helplessness of the adult which continues it. So that, as was to be expected, the motives for the formation of the religion which psycho-analysis revealed now turn out to be the same as the infantile contribution to the manifest motives. Let us transport ourselves in the mental life of a child. You remember the choice of object according to the anaclitic [attachment] type, which psycho-analysis talks of? The libido there follows the paths of narcissistic needs and attaches itself to the objects which ensure the satisfaction of those needs. In this way the mother, who satisfies the child hunger, becomes its first love-object and certainly also its first protection against all the undefined dangers which threaten it in the external world — its first protection against anxiety, we may say.
In this function [of protection] the mother is soon replaced by the stronger father, who retains that position for the rest of childhood. But the child's attitude to its father is coloured by a peculiar ambivalence. The father himself constitutes a danger for the child, perhaps because of its earlier relation to its mother. Thus it fears him no less than it longs for him and admires him. The indications of this ambivalence in the attitude to the father are deeply imprinted in every religion, as was shown in Totem and Taboo. When the growing individual finds that he is destined to remain a child for ever, that he can never do without protection against strange powers, he lends those powers the features belonging to the figure of his father; he creates for himself the gods whom he dreads, whom he seeks to propitiate, and whom he nevertheless entrusts with his own protection. Thus his longing for a father is a motive identical with his need for protection against the consequences of his human weakness. The defense against childish helplessness is what lends its characteristic features to the adult's reaction to the helplessness which he has to acknowledge — a reaction which is precisely the formation of religion. But it is not my intention to enquire any further into the development of the idea of God; what we are concerned with here is the finished body of religious ideas as it is transmitted by civilization to the individual.
In the meanwhile...
From The Future of an Illusion (1927)
Chapter IV
"The child's attitude to its father is coloured by a peculiar ambivalence."
IV
Freud writes:
... My work is a good example of the strict isolation of the particular contribution which psycho-analytic discussion can make to the solution of the problem of religion. ... It is, of course, my duty to point out the connecting links ..., between the deeper and the manifest motives, between the father-complex and man's helplessness and need for protection.
These connections are not hard to find. They consist in the relation of the child's helplessness to the helplessness of the adult which continues it. So that, as was to be expected, the motives for the formation of the religion which psycho-analysis revealed now turn out to be the same as the infantile contribution to the manifest motives. Let us transport ourselves in the mental life of a child. You remember the choice of object according to the anaclitic [attachment] type, which psycho-analysis talks of? The libido there follows the paths of narcissistic needs and attaches itself to the objects which ensure the satisfaction of those needs. In this way the mother, who satisfies the child hunger, becomes its first love-object and certainly also its first protection against all the undefined dangers which threaten it in the external world — its first protection against anxiety, we may say.
In this function [of protection] the mother is soon replaced by the stronger father, who retains that position for the rest of childhood. But the child's attitude to its father is coloured by a peculiar ambivalence. The father himself constitutes a danger for the child, perhaps because of its earlier relation to its mother. Thus it fears him no less than it longs for him and admires him. The indications of this ambivalence in the attitude to the father are deeply imprinted in every religion, as was shown in Totem and Taboo. When the growing individual finds that he is destined to remain a child for ever, that he can never do without protection against strange powers, he lends those powers the features belonging to the figure of his father; he creates for himself the gods whom he dreads, whom he seeks to propitiate, and whom he nevertheless entrusts with his own protection. Thus his longing for a father is a motive identical with his need for protection against the consequences of his human weakness. The defense against childish helplessness is what lends its characteristic features to the adult's reaction to the helplessness which he has to acknowledge — a reaction which is precisely the formation of religion. But it is not my intention to enquire any further into the development of the idea of God; what we are concerned with here is the finished body of religious ideas as it is transmitted by civilization to the individual.