Psychological and sociological challenges

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    Psychological and sociological challenges - Presentation Transcript

    1. Psychological and sociological challenges to religious belief Instructions Use this PowerPoint presentation as you would any other; press F5 on your keyboard to start presenting and use the arrow keys to go backwards or forwards. License Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 UK: England & Wales This means you‟re free to i) Copy, distribute & perform the work and Version ii) Make derivative works, as long as you i) Attribute the work (and any derivate works) to Pisp.co.uk, ii) Do not use it for commercial gain and 2 iii) License any derivative works under an identical license. More... 2007-09-28
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    4. Fast facts • The psychological and sociological challenges are a posteriori arguments challenging religious belief • Argues from psychology (relating to human psyche) and sociology (relating to society) • Critics include most religious people • Advocates include Sigmund Freud, Jean Charcot and Carl Jung
    5. Welcome • Psychological and sociological challenges to religious belief are different than other theories. • Attempt to discover what makes humans religious Most societies have, or had, a – not necessarily to religious element to them. From top-to-bottom, left-to-right: prove or disprove G/d. Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Shintoist, Sikh, Baha'i, Jain.
    6. The advent of psychological studies created new possibilities for the understanding of religion. It also created new possibilities for its explanation. In the hands of Sigmund Freud, religion becomes reduced to a psychic mechanism by which the individual falls victim to illusory hopes and dreams that have no foundation in reality. Religion can therefore be dismissed as an infantile obsessional neurosis arising from childhood experiences. These experiences centre on neurotic fears connected with the father figure, who looms large in the life of the developing child. The result is preoccupation with an idealised cosmic father figure, who will guarantee protection from the fears and anxieties of an otherwise meaningless life. This is the essence of religion – an understandable, but ultimately illusionary, world of make-believe. (P. J. Clarke)
    7. What the Freud?! • Born 1856, died aged 83 in 1939 of cancer of the jaw. • Graduate of the University of Vienna. • Surprisingly, he managed to take his attention away from his mother for long enough to marry and have What a looker! Ladies and six children! Gentlemen, this is Sigmund Freud!
    8. Freud‟s findings Freud argues that religion is an illusion, or psychic mechanism, created by humans... 1. Religion is an aid to overcome inner psychological conflict 2. Religion helps us to overcome the conflict between our desires and society 3. Religion is an illusion to overcome our fear of nature
    9. Before we delve any further, we‟ll need to understand Freud‟s work relating to the human mind, or psyche. MIND MAP
    10. The Id • Seat of the unconscious mind, controlling our basic biological impulses. • Breathing and hunger. • Potentially socially unacceptable things like the desire for sex. The Ego The Super-Ego • Stuck in the middle. • Conflicts with the Id as it • Filters the impulses from the „wants‟ the complete opposite. Id and the Super-Ego. • Develops from birth • Ensure personal safety and • Internalisation of society and social acceptance are the socially accepted norms. maintained. • Criticises and makes us feel guilty.
    11. In practise This example nicely shows the relationship between the three parts of the mind...
    12. Ego self-defence • Ego also filters our own thoughts. • Employs several „defence mechanisms‟ to protect us from ourselves, including...  Fantasy  Projection  Repression  Sublimation, amongst others • We‟re only looking at repression and sublimation...
    13. Repress yourself All things lost lie under closing water in that lake with the poor man’s daughter (G. Clarke) • The poet, Gillian Clarke, struggles to remember an incident at „Cold Knap Lake‟ where her mother saved a drowning girl. • Remembers it for the most part, but wonders whether it really happened as she remembers  What other people have told her.  Ego altering memories to suit her.
    14. Bad memories are pushed under... Bad memories are pushed under the surface of the lake, the lake being our unconscious.
    15. The first memory is sexual • For Freud, body‟s most basic drive is sex, or libido.  Babies: Libido centred around mouth and desire to suckle mother‟s breasts.  Child, adolescent, adult: Libido centres on reproductive organs and desire to reproduce. • Our first memory is our conception and being breastfed, but this is repressed. • Leads to hostile feelings towards same- sex parent.
    16. Summary of Oedipus Rex by Sophocles • Oedipus learns he may be adopted so sees an oracle for advice • Murders his biological father, without knowing he‟s his biological father • Wins the hand of the queen, who is his biological mother but he is unaware of this • Realises the queen is his mother and that he murdered his father. • Stabs himself in the eyes. The end.
    17. Oedipus complex • From that, Freud developed his ideas of the Oedipus Complex... • Here‟s a summary diagram: Mother Farther Son
    18. Oedipus complex explained... • The father has sex with his wife to conceive the son. • Son is born, father not getting any sexual attention as mother is breastfeeding son. • Baby develops into a child, no longer needs her breasts so father gets attention. • Child grows to adolescence, shifting the libido to the sexual organ.
    19. Oedipus complex explained... (2) • The father uses his sexual organ with the mother, so there is already a rival in the form of the father. This shift creates a tension between the father and the son. A hula father and son!
    20. The Ego, Id and Superego • The Id has feelings of jealousy and hatred, and ultimately wants the father dead. • The Super-Ego is concerned about respect for the father. • The Ego‟s defence mode kicks in, pushing the conflict into our unconscious mind (repression).
    21. Neurotic behaviour • However, repression isn‟t enough. • The mind struggles to keep these feelings in the unconscious and, as a result, ends up channelling out these feelings as neurotic behaviour. • For Freud, religion is the ‘universal obsessional neurosis of mankind’, thus religion is simply a response to the Ego‟s struggle with repressed memories.
    22. Pour femme... • Girls don‟t suffer the Oedipus complex since their sex organs are the same as their mothers. • Instead, they suffer the Electra complex – they believe that they‟ve been castrated. • They get jealous of the father and fearful of the mother. • It‟s almost like a case of “well, if I can‟t have it neither can you”.
    23. Charles Darwin • As you can imagine, Freud‟s theory wasn‟t popular so he sought to back it up using Charles Darwin‟s Origin of the Species.  Speculated that in early societies each group, or primal horde, would hold one male as the leader.  He got all the babes, which made all of the other males jealous so they‟d bump him off.
    24. And from that... • With the leader dead, the whole structure of society would be disrupted. • No centre of society, as there was before, so totems or idols were created to take his place. • Sacrifices and offerings could be made to the totem to starve off feelings of guilt and jealousy. • Totems are phallic symbols, too.
    25. Religion today • Eventually, this evolved into religion as we have today.  The totem took on a divine role, becoming „G/d the father‟ and the gods of religion.  Even today, Catholics still make a His Holiness Benedict XVI sacrifice in the Eucharist which celebrating the they believe to be the actual body sacrament of the Eucharist. and blood (in substance, not appearance) of Christ through the process of transubstantiation .
    26. We don‟t get our own way, ergo religion • The second reason for our supposed creation of religion is to help us get over the fact that we can‟t do everything we‟d like to do because of the laws of our land.
    27. The problem • By living in society we give up a few of our rights in order to receive protection and other benefits. • The Oedipus complex is the desire to the kill the father, but we know that our society punishes murder. We give up our right to murder our father (and anyone else) in order to receive protection from murder by the local law authorities. Well, that‟s the idea anyway.
    28. Religion helps us • Religion doubles up as another of the Ego‟s self-defence mechanisms, sublimation. • The libido‟s focus is channelled into other activities, like distraction • Religion gives us a reason to submit to society, it give us the promise of a better life after as a reward for our good behaviour in this society.
    29. Religion to help with nature • We may have domesticated cats and dogs, but we can‟t tame nature... we can‟t control the weather and we can‟t completely prevent death. • Ultimately, we are helpless in the hands of Mother Earth and her cruel ways.
    30. Acts of G/d! • An “act of G/d” is a legal term for events outside of human control. • Examples include sudden floods or other natural disasters. • No one can be held responsible since they‟re not man-made.
    31. Religion helps • Religion personifies nature by making G/d the force that controls nature. By offering sacrifices and praying to G/d, we are able to gain some control over the elements. • Religion and G/d become a father figure by providing us protection from nature in the same way a father would protect his children.
    32. “Oi, Freud... Ya mom!” CRITICISMS
    33. “Ya mom dot com” • Did you know that Freud even tried to take humour away from us? Apparently humour is another of the Ego‟s defence mechanisms! • So, we can‟t even make fun of Freud for some of his bizarre ideas because that‟s just further evidence of our love for our mother and hatred of our father! • Here are a few other criticisms to consider...
    34. Inner psychological conflict • What about „test-tube babies‟? Their conception was in a lab and so their earliest memory wouldn‟t be conception. • What about single parent families? There are a lot of cases where a mother is raising a son without a father figure, yet very few cases of sons doing things they shouldn‟t be with their mums. • What about gay children? Are they after their mum, too?
    35. Authority in society • Not all early religions had totems. In fact, Darwin merely speculated about the existence of the primal horde and there is no concrete evidence. It‟s actually now been discredited by modern science. • The theory of evolution. At some point we were animals. There is no evidence in the animal kingdom of a father figure that is both respected and hated. Funny how Freud overlooked that.
    36. Fear of nature • Freud tested on a small number of people. The bigger the test size, the more accurate the results. Since Freud tested on a relatively small number of people, his findings might not be totally trustworthy.
    37. Final thoughts • Aristotle once said that “it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it” and that‟s definitely true for anyone studying Freud. • While he may be the father of psychoanalysis, there are very few people who would actually accept his theories for obvious reasons.
    38. Final thoughts continued... • The criticisms do quash much of what he theorises and, ultimately, there are very few of us that actually want to accept that we love our mums in the way Freud suggests! Say goodbye to Freud!

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