Agree or Disagree: 'Freud is the atheist's touchstone'

[BurtWorm]

This is from the Website for the PBS miniseries "The Question of God":

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/why/index.html


As part of his intellectual legacy, Freud strongly advocated an atheistic philosophy of life. Freud's philosophical writings, more widely read than his expository or scientific works, have played a significant role in the secularization of our culture. In the 17th century people turned to the discoveries of astronomy to demonstrate what they considered the irreconcilable conflict between science and faith; in the 18th century, to Newtonian physics; in the 19th century, to Darwin; in the 20th century and still today, Freud is the atheist's touchstone.

[BurtWorm]

1. Well, so far, the whole premise of The Question of God is

boneheaded.

[AngryAmish]

2. Freud is a religion

Not disproveable and not proveable.

[Taverner]

3. Freud, Marx and Darwin

Are cited by Fundamentalists as symptoms of an athiestic culture, yet all three thinkers are merely extensions of the Christian Thought from years past. One can trace a line from the Christian theologians concept of the Holy Spirit to Freud's subconcious, Genesis' play-by-play creation myth to the order of Darwin's origin of species and the Sermon on the Mount to Marx's concept of the proletariat wielding the true value in an economic sense.

I could go on, but if anything I would argue that Judeo-Christian philosophy is the touchstone to Freud...

[aneerkoinos]

9. Freud Marx Engels & Jung

that's Finnish hippie redneck countryrock band playing politically consciouss drinking songs.



Sorry, link not for Finnish impaired:
http://www.saunalahti.fi/~lede/fmej/

[stlchic]

4. Who came up with that?

Geez, PBS isn't exactly trying to keep up their track record of putting out intelligent material, are they?

Who produced this "miniseries"? Based on the ridiculous assertion that Darwin = Atheism, it sounds like a run of the mill fundamentalist that completely ignores the fact that many Christians find there is no conflict with evolutionary theory and their faith.

Freud? A touchstone? I'd like to know how many Atheists they interviewed to come up with this "conclusion" (my guess - zilch!).

:wtf:

[BurtWorm]

6. The Templeton Foundation is behind it.

As I suspected. They're the ones who promote ID by pretending to be in search of common ground between science and religion. They give the largest annual prize every year--$1 million.

[On the Road]

5. I Seem to be the Only "Agree" Vote

not because of Freud per se, although I love his writing, but because an understanding of the psychology of religion is fundamental to transcending it. William James started it, but he was more of an observer. Other atheists put stakes in the ground, but it took a psychological understanding of how otherwise intelligent people can believe strange things to really begin to change the consensus.

[BurtWorm]

7. "An understanding of the psychology of religion is fundamental

to transcending it." I don't agree. I know what you mean, but I don't think it's the only way to transcend religion. For myself, it came from a search for an object that I came to see as impossible to attain, and an acceptance of that circumstance.

[Zensea]

8. Nietzsche predates Freud

Of course that makes it more complex, since apparently Freud was unfamiliar with Nietzsche's work, according to Jung. That's where it starts to get complex
Jung was heavily influenced by Nietzsche despite the fact that Jung was not an atheist.
As for Freud secularizing the culture, the argument that Jung makes and which I tend to agree with is that this secularization of the culture really started long before that with the Enlightenment, Galileo, Newton and others.
Freud was part of that much later.

PBS even says that in the quote. How this makes Freud the touchstone would be if one assumes that no one has a sense of history and can only think back 100 years or so. Significant, yes. Touchstone, no.

[aneerkoinos]

10. Other

I'm Jungian Buddhist Shaman

[LisaLynne]

11. But how do you feel about Freud? :) nt

[aneerkoinos]

12. I told you I'm Jungian

so I think Freud had traumatic relationship to fenomena of collective subconsciousness. So called rationality (ie. belief in positivistic materialism) is rather a symptom of irrational and frightened denial of mythopoietic reality.

[sangh0]

15. I just wanted to say that

I just loved that post. A complex idea phrased concisely.

Could you get yourself hired by the Kerry campaign? Please?

[LisaLynne]

16. Just wanted to hear you say it. ;)

[noonwitch]

13. Freud was right about a couple of things, but was so wrong about the rest

He was right about the influence of the unconscious mind, and the ego, id and superego.

He was wrong about women in general and about child sexual abuse (little girls make it up because they have sexual fantasies).

Some of the people who took his work and further theorized were correct. Karen Horney took his penis envy theory and said that men and women are envious of each other's roles sometimes. Jung took the unconscious mind concept and applied it to society at large and came up with the collective unconscience and dream analysis.

[aneerkoinos]

14. Collective subconsciousness

(I would not call it UNconsciousness ;))

I'm strongly of the opinion that it is time to discard Individualism, the credo in individual separate mind as the basis of Western (now fragmented to our peril) world view and philosophy. It's interesting to notice the parallels between Jung, Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance, (especially Bohmian) Quantum Physics, where a new holistic scientific paradigm is emerging. It's nothing new per se, it corresponds strongly to Buddhist and Gnostic philosophies, and I'd like to go as far as to name it 'Heraclitean' paradigm. Panta rhei!

[Book Lover]

17. Maybe 100 years ago, but not today

Let's put the idea to the crudest test - how many atheists alive today have read the philosophical writings of Freud? Not even I, yet. Freud opened the gates of understanding regarding the process of human thinking, but was not correct about everything and did not address everything.

[BigMcLargehuge]

18. Hume is the Atheist's touchstone