Critiques of Religious Belief

This is an essay that I did for Philosophy back in December. I have yet to revise this topic in preparation for Friday's exam, but I did come across this. Reading it through, I think that its content is fairly understandable for people not doing the A2, and the subject matter is fascinating. I've always been really interested in social sciences and this explores how sociology, psychology and the advance of science have helped the growing atheism of modern society.

Try and see past the A-Level style of writing, it's actually a really interesting topic!

Hope it doesn't bore you to death... :p

J xxx

Examine the key ideas in critiques of religious belief

In 1841, Ludwig Feuerbach wrote in Essence of Christianity: ‘Religion is the dream of the human mind… in these days, illusion only is sacred, truth profane.’ Feuerbach, one of the founding figures in Humanistic Atheism, was writing at a time of great social change and scientific development, in a post-Enlightenment world in which religious belief could no longer go unquestioned. The disciplines of sociology and psychology were beginning to develop in the 19th century, bringing fresh critiques of religion that still profoundly effect modern thought. The idea of religious belief being a psychological crutch, an illusion, even a delusion, is still present in today’s thinking; most notably informing the writings of ‘New Atheists’ such as Richard Dawkins. Scientific advances – most significantly Darwin’s theory of evolution – have also contributed hugely to the wave of new critiques of religious belief over the last one and half centuries.
Study of psychology has offered a key critique of religious belief: that humans have a psychological need of religion and thus the illusion of religious belief has been created to fulfill that need. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), whose pioneering work in psychology had enormous influence in the early 20th century, famously wrote that religious belief is merely wish-fulfilment. Humans have constructed religions for themselves; Freud echoes Hume’s idea that religious belief arises from human beings’ terror of nature and compensates for our suffering. Freud believed that humans see God as a father figure; because our parents cannot protect us forever, we need something invincible to fill that role. Freud echoes Feuerbach in his assertion that “religious beliefs are illusions, fulfillment of the oldest, strongest and most insistent wishes of mankind; the secret of their strength is the strength of these wishes.”
The sociological critique to religion has also been influential. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) was one of the earliest sociologists. Unlike Freud, Durkheim did not identity with a need for religion to be overthrown – he saw the sociological benefits of religion – but held the view that religion is merely a method of giving humans the social interaction and community bonding they require for wellbeing. His studies showed that members of religions with a high degree of ritual – specifically Catholicism – were less inclined to commit suicide than their counterparts in denominations such as Protestantism, because a higher level of incorporation into a community correlates with a reduced tendency towards unhappiness: “The Catholic is much less likely to lose sight of the ties binding him to the confessional group of which he is part.”
The challenge of modern science has given rise to much critique of religious belief. Assertions in the Bible that contradict science are being increasingly rejected (n.b. It is possible to reject specific religious belief without rejecting the concept of theism). For example, the theory of Evolution discredits the Biblical account of the world’s creation in a seven-day period, which can be said to undermine the Bible itself because the writers of the Bible were informed by their own scientific world in their own day, which indicates that the Bible is not divinely written. Our understanding of the universe seriously undermines the religious idea of human superiority: we live in an enormous, possibly infinite, universe in which our planet orbits the sun along with other bodies and in which we are insignificant. In the past, God could be used to explain everything, as our scientific knowledge was limited. It is now possible to explain the structure of the universe and the earth without needing to include religion: for many, religion is seen as a comforting superstition that is separate from the rationality of religion.
Finally, political criticism of religion and a belief in the harmfulness of religion has arisen since the enlightenment. Today, some atheists and agnostics would defend their position by claiming that religion is harmful, a method of control, and should even perhaps be overthrown (an ‘antitheist’ approach). Karl Marx (1818-1883) is perhaps the most famous thinker in this regard. He argued that religion is essentially used as a form of social control, ‘the opium of the people,’ and that humans could achieve their full potential if religion was removed: ‘The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.’ In the past, religion has used fear of eternal damnation to control people into submission. Some argue that religion is used today to justify acts of terrorism and violence and thus would be better to be abolished. So this can be used as a critique of religion by arguing that religion has simply been invented as a means of control and to justify terror.
To conclude: in the modern Western world, atheism has grown as psychological, sociological, scientific and political critiques have emerged after the enlightenment, the industrial revolution and significant scientific advancement. Pioneering thinkers such as Freud, Durkheim, Marx and Darwin offered profoundly influential arguments against religious belief, which have remained significant today and still convince people of the potential illusion and harmfulness of religious belief.


Consider critically whether any of these ideas support the belief that there is no God

While critiques of religious belief show the potential difficulties with Religion as a concept, they do not prove that God does not exist and do not necessarily support even the belief that there is no God. It is perfectly possible to reject religion on the basis of it being psychologically or sociologically constructed, or because of the advancement of science, without rejecting God or belief in God. However, critiques of religious belief can contribute as a factor to an individual’s belief that there is no God.
The psychological and sociological critiques to religious belief can support the belief that there is no God insofar as they demonstrate that religion is a human construction and therefore there is no reason to assume that there is a God behind these religions if the religions themselves are false. Freud believed that humans invent God as an acknowledgement of the need for a protective father (“God is the exalted father and the longing for the father is the root of the need for religion”). Durkheim shows that religion exists to express the a collective existence and consciousness (“Religion is in a word the system of symbols by means of which society becomes conscious of itself”): he argues that religions cannot be distinguished from each other and they all solve the purpose of binding members of a society to each other. Therefore the purpose of religion is nothing to do with the existence of God, but with social cohesion: God becomes irrelevant, and this theoretically could support the belief that there is no God.
Modern psychologists, however, have largely discredited Freud’s ideas; for example, Freud’s ‘Oedipus Complex’ has been disproved by research into non-Western societies and the animal kingdom. Also, much of Freud’s work has been dismissed as non-scientific and it has been pointed out that Freud fails to explore polytheistic religions in which there are multiple gods and thus no room for the idea of one all-powerful male father figure. Durkheim, it can be argued, in recognizing the need for social unity through religion, does not address the deeper reasons why it might be religion, specifically, as opposed to another form of community, that is practiced across all cultures. It could be that it is God that inspires humans to want to form communities in such a way.
The challenge of modern science can be said to seriously weaken belief in God. Many people do not believe in God because of scientific ideas such as ‘The Big Bang’ and Darwin’s theory of evolution. Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist who argues against the Design Argument in Why there is Almost Certainly No God by claiming that evolution makes the world appear to look designed because it has evolved to appear so: “A deep understanding of Darwinism teaches us to be wary of the easy assumption that design is the only alternative to chance, and teaches us to seek out graded ramps of slowing increasing complexity.” Science disproves the literal truth of the Bible and other religious texts and can thus be shown to be a valid contributory factor in the argument for atheism.
However, science and religion are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Science cannot disprove the existence of God – the question of where the universe came from is still unanswered and for many is only answerable with the concept of a creator God – and the unreliability of religious texts does not mean that there is no moral truth in those texts. For example, Christians can learn from the story of the Garden of Eden without taking it as historical fact. Moreover, it can even be claimed that science can help to show the existence of God, rather than disprove it: Antony Flew famously abandoned his atheism on the basis that “DNA research has provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”
In conclusion, both atheism and religion are forms of belief: ultimately the decision whether or not to believe in God is based on reason and understanding that is not based on fact or proof. The existence of God cannot be proved or disproved, although an atheist might argue that science, psychology and sociology have helped them to come to the conclusion that God does not exist, while a religious person might argue that these same ideas help them to decide that God does indeed exist. Religion and atheism rest on “belief,” and the existence of God cannot be proved.