Posted on 04/17/2005 3:15:49 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
How does one become an atheist? Does a person's relationship with his earthly father affect his relationship with his heavenly Father? These are some of the questions we will explore in this article as we talk about the book Faith of the Fatherless by Paul Vitz. Vitz is a psychologist who was an atheist himself until his late thirties. He began to wonder if psychology played a role in one's belief about God. After all, secular psychologists have been saying that a belief in God is really nothing more than infantile wish fulfillment. Dr. Vitz wondered if the shoe was on the other foot. Could it be that atheists are engaged in unconscious wish fulfillment?
After studying the lives of more than a dozen of the world's most influential atheists, Dr. Vitz discovered that they all had one thing in common: defective relationships with their fathers. The relationship was defective because the father was either dead, abusive, weak, or had abandoned the children. When he studied the lives of influential theists during those same historical time periods, he found they enjoyed a strong, loving relationship with a father (or a father substitute if the father was dead).
For example, Friedrich Nietzche lost his father (who was a pastor) before his fifth birthday. One biographer wrote that Nietzche was "passionately attached to his father, and the shock of losing him was profound." Dr. Vitz writes that Nietzche had a "strong, intellectually macho reaction against a dead, very Christian father." Friedrich Nietzche is best known as the philosopher who said, "God is dead." It certainly seems possible that his rejection of God and Christianity was a "rejection of the weakness of his father."
Contrast Nietzche with the life of Blaise Pascal. This famous mathematician and religious writer lived at a time in Paris when there was considerable skepticism about religion. He nevertheless wrote Les pensées (Thoughts), a powerful and imaginative defense of Christianity, which also attacked skepticism. Pascal's father, Etienne, was a wealthy judge and also an able mathematician. He was known as a good man with religious convictions. Pascal's mother died when he was three, so his father gave up his law practice and home-schooled Blaise and his sisters.
Here we are going to look at the correlation between our relationship with our earthly father and our heavenly Father. No matter what our family background, we are still responsible for the choices we make. Growing up in an unloving home does not excuse us from rejecting God, but it does explain why some people reject God. There may be a psychological component to their commitment to atheism.
Nietzche and Freud
Friedrich Nietzche is a philosopher who has influenced everyone from Adolph Hitler to the Columbine killers. His father was a Lutheran pastor who died of a brain disease before Nietzche's fifth birthday. He often spoke positively of his father and said his death was a great loss, which he never forgot. One biographer wrote that Nietzche was "passionately attached to his father, and the shock of losing him was profound." It seems he associated the general weakness and sickness of his father with his father's Christianity. Nietzche's major criticism of Christianity was that it suffers from an absence, even a rejection, of "life force." The God Nietzche chose was Dionysius, a strong pagan expression of life force. It certainly seems possible that his rejection of God and Christianity was a "rejection of the weakness of his father."
Nietzche's own philosophy placed an emphasis on the "superman" along with a denigration of women. Yet his own search for masculinity was undermined by the domination of his childhood by his mother and female relatives in a Christian household. Dr. Vitz says, "It is not surprising, then, that for Nietzche Christian morality was something for women." He concludes that Nietzche had a "strong, intellectually macho reaction against a dead, very Christian father who was loved and admired but perceived as sickly and weak."
Sigmund Freud despised his Jewish father, who was a weak man unable to support his family. Freud later wrote in two letters that his father was a sexual pervert, and that the children suffered as a result. Dr. Vitz believes that Freud's Oedipus Complex (which placed hatred of the father at the center of his psychology) was an expression of "his strong unconscious hostility to and rejection of his own father." His father was involved in a form of reformed Judaism but was also a weak, passive man with sexual perversions. Freud's rejection of God and Judaism seems connected to his rejection of his father.
Both Nietzche and Freud demonstrate the relationship between our attitudes toward our earthly father and our heavenly Father. In both cases, there seems to be a psychological component to their commitment to atheism.
Russell and Hume
Bertrand Russell was one of the most famous atheists of the last century. Both of Russell's parents lived on the margin of radical politics. His father died when Bertrand Russell was four years old, and his mother died two years earlier. He was subsequently cared for by his rigidly puritanical grandmother, who was known as "Deadly Nightshade." She was by birth a Scottish Presbyterian, and by temperament a puritan. Russell's daughter Katherine noted that his grandmother's joyless faith was "the only form of Christianity my father knew well." This ascetic faith taught that "the life of this world was no more than a gloomy testing ground for future bliss." She concluded, "My father threw this morbid belief out the window."
Dr. Vitz points out that Russell's only other parent figures were a string of nannies to whom he often grew quite attached. When one of the nannies left, the eleven-year-old Bertrand was "inconsolable." He soon discovered that the way out of his sadness was to retreat into the world of books.
After his early years of lost loves and later years of solitary living at home with tutors, Russell described himself in this way: "My most profound feelings have remained always solitary and have found in human things no companionship . . . . The sea, the stars, the night wind in waste places, mean more to me than even the human beings I love best, and I am conscious that human affection is to me at bottom an attempt to escape from the vain search for God."
Another famous atheist was David Hume. He was born into a prominent and affluent family. He seems to have been on good terms with his mother as well as his brother and sister. He was raised as a Scottish Presbyterian but gave up his faith and devoted most of his writing to the topic of religion.
Like the other atheists we have discussed, David Hume fits the pattern. His father died when he was two years old. Biographies of his life mention no relatives or family friends who could serve as father-figures. And David Hume is known as a man who had no religious beliefs and spent his life raising skeptical arguments against religion in any form.
Both Russell and Hume demonstrate the relationship between our attitudes toward our earthly father and our heavenly Father. In each case, there is a psychological component to their commitment to atheism.
Sartre, Voltaire, and Feuerbach
Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most famous atheists of the last century. His father died when he was fifteen months old. He and his mother lived with his maternal grandparents as his mother cultivated a very intimate relationship with him. She concentrated her emotional energy on her son until she remarried when Sartre was twelve. This idyllic and Oedipal involvement came to an end, and Sartre strongly rejected his stepfather. In those formative years, Sartre's real father died, his grandfather was cool and distant, and his stepfather took his beloved mother away from him. The adolescent Sartre concluded to himself, "You know what? God doesn't exist." Commentators note that Sartre obsessed with fatherhood all his life and never got over his fatherlessness. Dr. Vitz concludes that "his father's absence was such a painful reality that Jean-Paul spent a lifetime trying to deny the loss and build a philosophy in which the absence of a father and of God is the very starting place for the good or authentic life."
Another philosopher during the French Enlightenment disliked his father so much that he changed his name from Arouet to Voltaire. The two fought constantly. At one point Voltaire's father was so angry with his son for his interest in the world of letters rather than taking up a career in law that he "authorized having his son sent to prison or into exile in the West Indies." Voltaire was not a true atheist, but rather a deist who believed in an impersonal God. He was a strident critic of religion, especially Christianity with its understanding of a personal God.
Ludwig Feuerbach was a prominent German atheist who was born into a distinguished and gifted German family. His father was a prominent jurist who was difficult and undiplomatic with colleagues and family. The dramatic event in young Ludwig's life must have been his father's affair with the wife of one his father's friends. They lived together openly in another town, and she bore him a son. The affair began when Feuerbach was nine and lasted for nine years. His father publicly rejected his family, and years later Feuerbach rejected Christianity. One famous critic of religion said that Feuerbach was so hostile to Christianity that he would have been called the Antichrist if the world had ended then.
Each of these men once again illustrates the relationship between atheism and their fathers.
Burke and Wilberforce
British statesman Edmund Burke is considered by many as the founder of modern conservative political thought. He was partly raised by his grandfather and three affectionate uncles. He later wrote of his Uncle Garret, that he was "one of the very best men, I believe that ever lived, of the clearest integrity, the most genuine principles of religion and virtue." His writings are in direct opposition to the radical principles of the French Revolution. One of his major criticisms of the French Revolution was its hostility to religion: "We are not converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire; Helevetius has made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers." For Burke, God and religion were important pillars of a just and civil society.
William Wilberforce was an English statesman and abolitionist. His father died when he was nine years old, and he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle. He was extremely close to his uncle and to John Newton who was a frequent visitor to their home. Newton was a former slave trader who converted to Christ and wrote the famous hymn "Amazing Grace." Wilberforce first heard of the evils of slavery from Newton's stories and sermons, "even reverencing him as a parent when [he] was a child." Wilberforce was an evangelical Christian who went on to serve in parliament and was instrumental in abolishing the British slave trade.
As mentioned earlier, Blaise Pascal was a famous mathematician and religious writer. Pascal's father was a wealthy judge and also an able mathematician, known as a good man with religious convictions. Pascal's mother died when he was three, so his father gave up his law practice and home-schooled Blaise and his sisters. Pascal went on to powerfully present a Christian perspective at a time when there was considerable skepticism about religion in France.
I believe Paul Vitz provides an important look at atheists and theists in his book Faith of the Fatherless. The prominent atheists of the last few centuries all had defective relationships with their fathers while the theists enjoyed a strong, loving relationship with a father or a father substitute. This might be something to compassionately consider the next time you witness to an atheist.
Interesting article. It is fascinating how many leftists build a radical political philosophy in reaction to deeply personal losses or shortcomings. Few of them, I suspect, admit it even to themselves. I suppose this could go for conservatives as well.
What we have listed here are the atheists and secularists who possessed the obsessive drive necessary to change the world and influence millions of people. Not the run-of-the-mill secularist who you can find almost anywhere.
No, your solution for primary cause is only one of many wacky ideas, no more special than the others.
Again, as with the case of “existence,” an atheist, to logically win his case, must try to establish that something other than God was, or could have been, the primary cause of creation.
Atheists just get to say "we don't know." They also get to say that your god solution for primary cause doesn't make any sense, since you created attributes excluding the god from the need of a primary cause himself. It is a solution fabricated out of thin-air to address a problem with no evidence showing that it is actually the solution.
Atheists often lack the hubris of the religious, and can actually say "we don't know." You guys have a need to have all the answers.
Your solution -- "God did it."
If you say you “don’t know” then you are not an atheist but an agnostic
The difference is mainly one of point of view. The agnostic is easily willing to accept various possibilities as possibly valid. The atheist says it's flat-out not valid unless you present evidence.
In my arguments on this thread, I have created no attributes for “God as a primary cause” ... By the rules of logic, a creator exists before a creation and is, therefore, not bound the nature or limitations of his creation.
You just created attributes -- the creator who needs no creator and stands outside his creation not subject to its rules. If I create (build) a house, I'm certainly subject to the rules surrounding that house. I don't get to walk through walls. However, you never answer the question of what created the creator so that he could create his creation.
It is no more a “solution fabricated out of thin air” than is its counter-solution, “there is no god.”
"There is no god" isn't a counter-solution. The counter-solutions are various scientific theories that at least have some evidence behind them. They ignore deity.
Additionally, the “God” solution has as much, or more, evidence supporting it as its counter-solution, “there is no god.”
The only "evidence" is in logical games. There is no objective evidence.
I note that you have not taken exception to the two positions that establish existence and creation.
This has gotten pretty long. Please restate those positions.
I am an atheist. My father was one of the most sincerely devout individuals I have ever met. At his funeral the priest talked about how great it was to have such a true believer in the congregation.
I did not have a defective relationship with my father.
My father was not dead when I became an atheist. He was not abusive or weak and did not abandon us.
The reasons I became an atheist had to do with what I perceived as being the truth, and were not in any way a reaction against my father.
Maybe Dr. Vitz's theory only works with his selected sample.
A synonym doesn't always have the same meaning. "Gradation" and "tread" are synonyms to the word "Stair", yet you don't tell people that you just walked up the gradation in your apartment because the term is inappropriate and actually has a different meaning. Likewise, belief and faith may be synonymous but are not identical. Again, you are incorrect.
No I am not. In logic there is the “law of the excluded middle,”
So , the way you debate is to ignore my previous statement completely and continue to argue about something that I've already told you has no context to what I said. i.e., something cannot simultaneously exist and not exist, or simultaneously possess characteristics that are mutually exclusive. There is nothing mutually exclusive between an agnostic and a theist/atheist. Prove me wrong. The terms theist, deist, agnostic or atheist are, by definition, all mutually exclusive. Atheist and theist are mutually exclusive. An agnostic is not mutually exclusive with atheist or theist definitions Lets spell this out
A = Atheist
B = Theist
C = Agnostic
B ~A
A ~B
A v C
B v C
Consequently, by the rules of logic, one is a theist, deist, agnostic or atheist not any combination of these terms.
You haven't established that they are mutually exclusive. I have already illustrated my example. Show me in your definition that you posted how an agnotic can not be a theist or atheist.
On the contrary, I don’t think I missed your point at all. Rather, your statement is core of the disagreement attributed to Socrates and Protagoras.
If you told me that you just bought a car because you liked the sporty look ( a subjective opinion), and I told you that your purchase was illogical because its based on a subjective opinion, would that change the fact that you purchased a car using your own perceptions? This is the argument you are trying to make to me on my definition of denial.
Me: Denial is not accepting something to be true, and for different people the conditions for acceptance of truth can be limited or rigorous.
You:This statement is one of “relativism.” In a logical debate, it has no meaning.
Me:Whether their perception of truth is correct or not is inconsequential to the fact that people make denials based on their perceptions.
You:Your use of the word “perceptions” is nothing more than a substitution for the phrase “subjective opinion” in the argument I quoted.
And now my reply: Understand I am not saying that all truth is relative. I am stating that people make decisions based on their perceptions. This is not a proposition that assumes relativism to be true or false. People are not computers, they each have their own methodologies, as flawed as some may be, for arriving at truth. Logic is not subjective, but statements about subjective decisions can be expressed in logic. For example: If Grandma feels danger aproaching then she hides in the closet. "Feels" is a subjective word to describe a perception within Granny's mind but her reaction is objective andthis statement can be expressed within the confides of logic. Denying something is also identifiable and measurable, and can be expressed logically.
Atheists love Stalin, Hitler, and Mao.
Afterall if you follow them there is no room for God.
Ops4 God BLess America!
Have I ever taken that positive position?
Your editing left out an important qualifier in my original statement. Let me restate the entire sentence for clarity:
Same thing, only you admit you put those attributes there so that the statement would be logically coherent within its own invented premises.
Therefore, the Creator of space-time has no need of a beginning or end or a “creator” of the Creator.
So you set an attribute as timeless. Any other explanation for the universe can also set an attribute of timelessness, the universe itself could be timeless, or time could have been something that came into existence at some point. Your explanation is no better.
"There is no god" is the definition of one of these counter-solutions, atheism.
Not by one of the definitions you quoted. BTW, you do realize that theism includes lots of solutions that are counter to yours and equally valid/invalid.
Furthermore, you have not offered any objective evidence for the atheism position in any of your posts.
It needs none. Prove it, or we assume your assertion is false. Logical gymnastics do not apply.
From post 199: Recall that this line of reasoning began all the way back at post 59 with the following:
Ah, that one. I've already answered: we don't know the answer positively, and your god answer is one of many amusing theories, along with the Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUHH).
:^)
I can't accept any of that because it's wrong, and completely undermines my position. I think we are going to have to gracefully part ways on this one.
The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence--which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
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