Sigmund Freud tackled religion in great detail and had several ideas about it.

One of his theories was that religion stems from the individual's experience of having being a helpless baby totally dependent on its parents. The baby sees its parents as all-powerful beings who show it great love and satisfy all its needs.

This experience is almost identical to the way human beings portray their relationship with God.

Freud also suggested that childhood experiences caused people to have very complex feelings about their parents and themselves, and religion and religious rituals provide a respectable mechanism for working these out.

Freud also described religion as a mass-delusion that reshaped reality to provide a certainty of happiness and a protection from suffering.


Religion comes from Emotions

Human beings believe in God because they want:
A father figure to protect them from this frightening world
Someone who gives their lives meaning and purpose
Something that stops death being the end
To believe that they are an important part of the universe, and that some component of the universe (God) cares for and respects them

These beliefs are strongly held because they enable human beings to cope with some of their most basic fears.

Even if this is true (which it probably is) this doesn't mean that God doesn't exist, but merely that we are psychologically likely to believe in God whether or not he exists.

Atheists argue that since religion is just a psychological fantasy, human beings should abandon it so that they can grow to respond appropriately to deal with the world as it is.

Occam's Razor

The argument is based on a philosophical idea called Occam's Razor, popularised by William of Occam in the 14th century.

In Latin it goes in English... "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily".

(I wonder if this applies to the ridiculous number of threads about the attempt to prove the bible is fact )

This is usually simplified to say that the simplest answer is the best answer.

The Atheist and Occam's Razor

So, says the atheist, since the entire universe, and all of creation can be explained by evolution and scientific cosmology, we don't need the existence of another entity called God.

Therefore God doesn't exist.
Does this prove God doesn't exist?

No it doesn't. It merely proves that the assumption that God exists isn't needed, and so can be abandoned.

What would William have said?
William of Occam would not have agreed; he was a Franciscan monk who never doubted the existence of God.

But in his century he wasn't breaking the rule named after him. 14th century science knew nothing about evolution or how the universe came into being. God was the only explanation available, and thus very necessary.

What William would think if he lived now is another matter ...

Humanity is nothing more than an animal with a guilt complex.

Actually the whole collection of these posts should be under jokes and funny stories ...

This is an argument about where to begin the discussion of whether or not God exists.

It says that we should assume that God does not exist, and make it the duty of people who believe in God to to prove that God does exist.

We should adopt the same policy that we do with people who insist the Loch Ness Monster exists:

Start by assuming that the Loch Ness Monster doesn't exist. Form an idea of what would constitute the Loch Ness Monster. Then see if there's anything that "proves" that particular thing exists.

The philosopher Anthony Flew who wrote an article on this said:

Reasons to be cheerful - part 1

Many people are atheists not because they've reasoned things out like that, but because of the way they were brought up or educated, or because they have simply adopted the beliefs of the culture in which they grew up.

It's the same for many believers. So someone raised in Communist China is likely to have no belief in God, because they rarely if ever, meet a believer, and because the education system and pressure from the people they meet make being an atheist the natural thing to do.

Other people are atheists because they just feel that atheism is right. In the same way, many people of faith hold their beliefs because they just seem right to them.

Law of probabilities

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence”W. K. Clifford (1879)

Many people are atheists because they think there is no evidence for God's existence - or at least no reliable evidence.

They argue that a person should only believe in things for which they have good evidence.

A philosopher might say that they start from the presumption of Atheism. They say that there is as much evidence for the existence of God (any particular god at all) as there is for the existence of unicorns.

And although they might be more polite about it, someone who follows a particular faith may have the same sort of opinion about the existence of the gods of other faiths.

Believers disagree with this in several ways:

People accept many other things as true without insisting on good evidence.
Good evidence may be difficult and complicated to understand and thus not appear to be good evidence.
Many of the "truths" at the cutting edge of science are based on "evidence" only by a complicated chain of reasoning.

Good evidence needn't provide certainty, it's sufficient for it to make something probable.

And the atheists reply:

But "people accept many things as true" without evidence on good, reliable authority, assuming that a trustworthy source has good evidence - but ultimately they require evidence.

Good evidence may be complicated - but scientists etc can understand it and are good authorities.

Theologians from the various religions are not such good authorities - disagreeing with each other even within the same religion.

Probability is OK if it is the best you can get, but the evidence does not even begin to make God probable.

Well apart from the ability to walk on water ... I do it every day in the Red Sea .. does that mean I should change my initials to JC?

probably when god turns up!

Im assuming you are talking about the christians, as no athiest I have read on this site hates anyone religious because they are religious.

Having re-read your post .. now I understand ... thanks.

Never a truer word spoken.

Is it any wonder jesus is called a shepherd ... all his followers are bleating sheep.

bleating the party line in the vain hope that the rest of the animal kingdom will follow blindly too!

they cant, and so they try to disprove science.


If god wanted us all to believe then he would plant his hairy existential butt on the planet and say "Oi! over here"

Unless this planet is a pimple on his butt!

Well that makes the majority of the female god-squadders non-religious.

Is that the same as non-believers or .... athiest?

How convenient that the method of proving the god squad wrong is being discounted as .... unreliable.

Why isnt the bible being discounted as also unreliable?

After all it is a collection of fairy stories used to subjugate women, enslave huge tracts of the population and as an excuse for war.

I dont need to give proof. You have given it to me.

You have accepted that omo1&2 were beings and all I needed you to do was that.

By you doing this, your "theory" that nothing existed before 4000 BCE is non-sensical, by your own admission.

So, YOU prove that there is nothing before 4000BCE, because I have proved and you have accepted that there was.

No ramblings please, just facts ... and not scriptures, as I see them as fairytales.

double post - oops

The earliest signs of a sedentarization process can be traced back to the Mediterranean region to as early as 12000 BC, when the Natufian culture became sedentary and evolved into an agricultural society by 10000 BCE. The importance of water to safeguard an abundant and stable food supply, due to favourable conditions to hunting, fishing and gathering resources including cereals, provided an initial wide spectrum economy that triggered the creation of permanent villages.

The earliest proto-urban settlements with several thousand inhabitants emerge in the Neolithic, while the first city to house several tens of thousands were Memphis and Uruk, by the 31st century BCE.

From National Geographic


160,000 years old ... is that older than 4000 BC?

I heard that there is a theory that god is a figment of people's imagination.

That they use god as an emotional crutch and try to convert all the freethinkers in the world to a sick cult.

But that's ok, I think I will stick with Darwin and his boys/girls.

Im sure that the discovery of the Cradle of Civilisation back to 12,000 BC is before 4000BC. (isnt it?)

and they have never left their country of origin, nor even have a passport!!!