What causes someone to become an atheist? Does objective rationality eventually lead to the rejection of God, or does the experience of life lend itself to the same conclusion? In Faith of the Fatherless: the Psychology of Atheism, Paul Vitz examines the concept of atheism from an interesting angle, by studying the psychology of the leading atheists. He attempts to discover what psychological factors might lead a person to embrace atheism. What he finds is a startling similarity in the family life of many notable atheists, particularly with regard to their relationship with their fathers.
Today, atheism is a widespread phenomenon that has received much social, economic, and cultural support. Nevertheless, atheism originated in the lives of specific people, often the leading intellectuals of their time. Upon inspection, the lives of many of these atheists are strikingly similar. Atheists tend to come from within narrow social and economic boundaries, typically in universities and the intellectual world, and make up a significant amount of the governing class. Given these similarities, it is not a far stretch to expect their psychologies to be
…show more content…
One of his main ideas, the Oedipus complex, is in the male’s case based on repressed hatred for the father, and a desire to usurp the father. The Oedipus complex provides a fairly straightforward framework for understanding atheism. The desires to usurp the father translate into a desire for the non-existence of God and the replacement of God with the self. One example of this is Voltaire, who was a deist who believed in a depersonalized, unknown God. The important thing about Voltaire is that he strongly rejected his father. This rejection, along with his rejection of God, can all be seen as reflections of the same basic need, or an unresolved Oedipus complex, and according to Freud’s own logic are unworthy of a mature