Atheism (A Review Article)

Paul Vitz

In 1999 Paul C Vitz wrote the Faith of the Fatherless an important book with the subtitle, "The Psychology of Atheism". Vitz is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at New York University; and here is his Christian testimony: "after a rather wishy-washy Christian upbringing, I became an atheist in college (at the University of Michigan in the 1950s) and remained so throughout graduate school (at Stanford University) and my first years as a young experimental psychologist at New York University. I rediscovered Christianity in my late thirties in the very secular environment of academic psychology in New York City." He continues as follows:

"On reflection, I have seen that my reasons for becoming, and remaining, an atheist-skeptic from age eighteen to age thirty-eight were, on the whole, superficial and lacking in serious intellectual and moral foundation. Furthermore, I am convinced that these reasons are common among Americans, especially in intellectual, academic, and artistic communities and in the media. As a student of psychology, I was supported in my atheism by various general ideas. The argument - criticized here [in the book] - that God is a projection of psychological needs, particularly childish needs, was one that I accepted. Supporting this psychological interpretation was a cultural or anthropological critique of belief as such. I am not sure where I learned it, though I do remember enjoying a course at the University of Michigan taught by an outspokenly atheistic professor of anthropology. I also believed in 'evolution', including the evolution of world views. It seemed to me that primitive man had gods, goddesses, and spirits of many types: in this animistic phase, deities inhabited many natural locales (springs, woods, impressive animals, large distinctive rocks, and the like). Somewhat more 'advanced' cultures had fewer deities but were still polytheistic. By the time of the Greeks or the Egyptians, there were a relatively small number of gods and goddesses, with a fairly clear hierarchy; Judaism introduced monotheism as the natural conclusion of this progression from many to one. And of course the final answer for the 'mature modern mind' was to do away with the divine altogether, to understand the whole process as a form of intellectual evolution or maturation. Thus, the evolution from many to few to one to none appeared to be both an historical and logical progression.

Of course, I never seriously investigated the evidence for this view or questioned it in any way. It just seemed correct and obvious."

He then listed some other reasons for his atheism, the final one of which was "simple personal convenience". "The fact is that, in the powerful secular and neopagan world of today, it is quite inconvenient to be a serious believer. I would have had to give up many pleasures (you may use your imagination) and was unwilling to do so. And besides, religion takes a good deal of time, not just Sunday mornings; the serious practice of any religion calls for much more than that. There are other church services, as well as time for prayer and Scripture reading, not to mention time for 'good works' of various sorts. I was far too busy for such time-consuming activities. I now see," he summarizes, "that it was because of my social need to assimilate, my professional need to be accepted as part of the world of academic psychology, and my personal need for independence and an agreeable way of life that I chose to be an atheist. Hence, the intellectual basis for my atheism, like that of countless others, appears in retrospect to be much more of a shallow rationalization than an objective rationale."

This book, however, attempts to turn Freud on his head! Vitz argues that despite its claim to cool-headed rationality, modern atheism may well have originated in the irrational, often neurotic, psychological needs of a few powerfully influential thinkers. He takes "the apostles of atheism" and subjects them to the same psychological analysis they employ to debunk belief in God. This leads to the conclusion that the most likely source of their atheism was the experience in their own personal lives of "a defective father".

But first we need some history.


Some history

Alister McGrath, the Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford, in another book, The Twilight of Atheism. says that “the remarkable rise and subsequent decline of atheism is framed by two pivotal events, separated by precisely two hundred years: the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and that of the Berlin Wall in 1989." It is certainly true that prior to the 19th century atheism was the conviction of only a very small minority. In ancient Rome the poet Lucretius was "atheistic" but found it hard to persuade his fellow Romans. He penned that much quoted line: "Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum (religion has been a force that has brought so much evil)." His main thesis was "the world is ultimately only a collection of 'atoms', so let's be scientific and get away from priest craft and religion."

But things changed radically in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The psychoanalyst and atheist, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), was the key influence. So great was his influence that W.H.Auden described Freud as "not a person, but a whole climate of opinion". Freud, however, was simply echoing the work of an earlier atheist, Ludwig Feuerbach. Feuerbach, a German university teacher, in 1841 wrote The Essence of Christianity. There he explained his "projection theory" of religious belief. He said, "What man misses - whether this be articulate and therefore conscious, or an unconscious need - that is God." And he went on: "Man projects his nature into the world outside himself before he finds it in himself ... To live in projected dream-images is the essence of religion. Religion sacrifices reality to the projected dream"

As a young man Freud avidly read Feuerbach and, as Vitz says, took Feuerbach's position, "articulated it more eloquently and published it at a time when the audience for such a theory was much larger. And because Freud is the author, somehow the findings of psychoanalysis are assumed to support the theory. In his The Future of an Illusion he wrote: 'Religious ideas have arisen from the same need as have all the other achievements of civilization: from the necessity of defending oneself against the crushing superior force of nature.' And so he concludes that religious beliefs are 'illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind ... As we already know, the terrifying impression of helplessness in childhood aroused the need for protection - for protection through love - which was provided by the father ... Thus the benevolent rule of divine Providence allays our fear of the dangers of life.'"

But what is the psychoanalytic evidence for any of this? The answer is there is none. Vitz writes: "In a letter of 1927 to his Oskar Pfister (an early psychoanalyst and believing Protestant pastor) Freud wrote: 'Let us be quite clear on the point that the view expressed in my book [The Future of an Illusion] form no part of analytic theory. They are my personal views.'"

Freud, however, makes you think that he is very familiar with the psychology of belief in God. "Such," says Vitz, "is not the case. In fact, Freud had very little psychoanalytic experience with patients who believed in God or were genuinely religious. None of his published cases deals with a patient who believed in God at the time of the psychoanalysis. That is, nowhere did Freud publish a psychoanalysis of the belief in God based on clinical evidence provided by a believing patient. He never presented publicly any serious psychological evidence for his projection theory or for his other ideas about religion. Instead, Freud's peculiar personal obsession with religion is primarily focused on texts and issues drawn from anthropology, history and literature - not from any cited psychoanalytic experience ... It is important to add that, to the best of my knowledge there is no systematic empirical evidence to support the thesis of childhood projection being the basis of belief in God. Indeed, the assumption that religious belief is neurotic and psychologically counterproductive has been substantially rejected. Instead, there is now much research showing that a religious life is associated with greater physical health and psychological well-being."

In Freud's work two key assumptions are the unconscious and what he called the "Oedipus complex". That was where an unconscious sexual desire of a young male child for its mother leads to an intense hatred and fear of its father. This then gets resolved in various ways but never completely. The problems are regularly reactivated at puberty. "There are good reasons to give only limited acceptance to Freud's Oedipal theory," says Vitz, but it does suggest a "rationale for understanding the wish-fulfilling origin of the rejection of God."


Understanding the rejection of God

Freud wrote an essay on Leonardo da Vinci. In it he claimed "psychoanalysis, which has taught us the intimate connection between the father complex and belief in God, has shown us that the personal god is logically nothing but an exalted father, and daily demonstrates to us how youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down."

Vitz then makes a significant comment on these words: "this interesting observation requires no assumptions about unconscious sexual desires for the mother, or even about presumed universal competitive hatred focused on the father. Instead Freud makes the simple and easily understood claim that once a child or youth is disappointed in or loses respect for his earthly father, belief in a heavenly father becomes impossible. That a child's psychological representation of his father is intimately connected to his understanding of God was assumed by Freud and has been rather well developed by a number of psychologists, especially psychoanalysts. In other words, an atheist's disappointment in and resentment of his own father unconsciously justifies his rejection of God." Vitz points out that there are many ways a father can lose his authority or disappoint a child: "he can be absent through death or abandonment; he can be present but obviously weak, cowardly and unworthy of respect, even if he is otherwise pleasant or 'nice'; or he can be present but physically, sexually, or psychologically abusive." All of these ways can contribute to what Vitz calls the "defective father" hypothesis as a determinant of atheism. But is there any evidence? The evidence is remarkable. Space forbids detailed biographies; but here are some facts about just a few of the famous atheists - Vitz cites more (and has famous theists as a control group).

Two of the morning stars of the atheistic revolution in the 18th century were David Hume, the Scottish Philosopher and the French man of letters, Voltaire. Hume was raised as a Scottish Presbyterian but lost his faith as a young man and than argued against the Christian religion in many of his writings. We know little about his childhood, but what we do know is most important: David's father, Joseph, died in 1713 when the philosopher-to-be was only two years old. Voltaire rejected the God of the Bible and denied the reality of sin, but still believed in some impersonal ultimate being - "a cosmic, depersonalized God of unknown character". But, records Vitz, " the psychologically important thing about Voltaire is that he strongly rejected his father - so much so that he repudiated his father's name (Arouet) and took the name 'Voltaire'."

Then take Ludwig Feuerbach, Freud's hero. His father, a distinguished jurist and criminologist, left his wife and home when Feuerbach was 9. He then lived very publicly with a woman in another town who bore him a child. He only returned on his lover's death and when Feuerbach was 18. Another significant influence on modern atheism was Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Nietzsche is best known for his claim that "God is dead." His father died when he was four years old. Aged 24 he wrote that his father "died all too soon. I missed the strict and superior guidance of a male intellect." Nevertheless, he saw his father as weak and sickly, lacking in the "life force". This he put down to his father's Christianity.

A little younger than Nietzsche was Freud himself (1856-1939). Freud certainly had problems with his father, Jacob, whom he saw as weak, not least in his passive response to anti-Semitism. Worse still, in two of his letters written as an adult, he writes that his father was a sexual pervert and his children suffered accordingly. Ten years younger than Freud was H.G.Wells (1866-46) whose influence came through his Outline of History. He was one the great popularizers of ideas before the Radio and TV age. Wells had a hatred for God and a contempt for his incompetent cricket-playing father. All this is documented in his autobiography.

When I was at school and university in the fifties and sixties, the most significant atheist, with a huge influence on both morals and religion, was Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). His father died when he was 4. Also influential while I was at school and university was the Frenchman Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) with his existentialist philosophy of post-modern relativism: "If one discards God the father [which he did], there has to be someone to invent values ... To say that we invent values means nothing else but this: life has no meaning a priori. Before you come alive, life is nothing; it's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning you choose". Sartre's father died in 1906 when Sartre was only fifteen months old. The father of his atheistic contemporary, Albert Camus (1913-1960), died in 1914 at the Battle of the Marne, when Albert was one year old.


Stalin, Hitler, Marx and some observations

What, however, about the two great political atheists - Stalin (1879-1953) and Hitler (1889-1945). A friend who knew Stalin wrote: "undeserved and severe beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as the father was. Since all people in authority over others seemed to him to be like his father, there soon arose in him a vengeful feeling against all people standing above him." Hitler's upbringing was similar. Hitler's father was described as "authoritarian and selfish, and showing little concern for the feelings of his much younger wife and little understanding of his children" and "a hard unsympathetic and short-tempered man."

Karl Marx (1818-1883) who, like Freud, followed Feuerbach's projection theory regarding belief in God, may be a partial exception to the "defective father" hypothesis. Marx' father came from a long line of Jewish rabbis but he converted to Christianity primarily for social reasons. Such a superficial conversion, of course, may have diminished Karl's respect for his father. However, there is no clear conflict or estrangement between the older Marx and Karl. But in his late teens Karl radically rejected his "bourgeois background" and so all his father stood for.

Vitz discusses these studies and provides significantly more detail. I have just given the simple facts as relate to a "defective father". Vitz refers to other factors as well as the simple father-child relationship.

So what are the conclusions? What did Vitz say? One of his own serious concerns is this:

"Nietzsche, Marx and Freud are famous as formulators of powerful theories, but these atheist masters do not bother to argue whether religious beliefs are true or false. Instead they ask what motives would lead people to hold such beliefs. As we have seen, this mode of inquiry is equally applicable to them and their ideas. It is certainly time for such critical suspicion to be applied to the 'atheistic' structures of government, law, media and academia that have arisen in our time."

Vitz argues that a good case can be made that historically important atheists have as one significant factor in their atheism a "defective father" which can be seen as contributing to their own "projection of atheism" onto a world that is created by the true and living God.

However, Vitz does not believe that his analysis will necessarily convince any unbelievers. He says, "since both believers and non believers in God have psychological reasons for their positions, one important conclusion is that in any debate as to the truth of the existence of God, psychology should be irrelevant ... The present study is an argument in favour of the pre-modern idea that controversies should be settled on the basis of evidence, not on the psychology of the interlocutors."

One piece of evidence that needs to be addressed relates to the assumed evolutionary progress of religion from the primitive to the sophisticated. Auguste Comte (1789-1857) argued for this evolutionary progress - from the theological (animism to polytheism to monotheism) to the metaphysical to the scientific. Nietzsche, Marx, Freud and many others inherited this evolutionary tradition.

However, the anthropological evidence is to the contrary and this evidence was available "years before Freud's religious theorizing" in Andrew Lang's work of 1898 on Australian aborigines. More recently Lang's work has been confirmed. It is said that a genuine feature of primitive religion in both Australia, South America and North America is a religion of a "High God" or "Supreme Being" who is not a ghost of the dead or some lower deity raised to a higher power. Furthermore one anthropologist has reported that "the name 'father' is applied to the supreme being, as is the name 'creator'. Also this figure is seen as utterly righteous with his response to anything morally bad being to abhor it and punish it. The moral life of these primitive tribes is determined by their understanding of the rewards and punishments from this morally good supreme being." Vitz concludes that no evolutionary model that makes monotheism a relatively late development can be considered acceptable on empirical grounds. Monotheism, it seems, leads to polytheism when tribes meet and blend. The evidence suggests then that religious history is one of devolution or regression - from one god to a few gods to many gods, and, finally, in the modern period, to every person a god. This, of course, is in line with St Paul's teaching in Romans chapter 1.


P.S.

If Vitz is right, you would expect that a breakdown in marriage would lead to an increase in atheism; we have such a breakdown and we an increase.

If Vitz is right, many atheists will have painful memories and experiences, so evangelism needs to be sensitive.

The great evidence against atheism is still the Resurrection of Jesus.