Masters of Suspicion

The Masters of Suspicion Some of the greatest minds to argue the existence of God with vigor were Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell and Karl Marx. Each of these great minds gave several excellent arguments that could convince the believer that their belief’s center did not hold and therefore collapses. This paper will focus on a particular piece of theory that developed out of anti-religion arguments; “God is our construct.” This statement on how humans have created the idea of God for comfort. Sigmund Freud believed religion to be an ‘illusion’ of the people, which can seem like he makes this statement from a wish more than from evidence. Freud gives the argument against religion based on the idea of totemism beginning from Frazer’s essay. Then moving through his work he uses data from Darwin’s research on apes, slowly reducing humanity to nothing more than animals. He speaks about how a totem is considered sacred in the totem clan and slowly describes the processes of the totem clans. These descriptions have many elements of Christianity and Judaism; showing his wish for the non-existence of God with little respect to the lack of understanding to these religions. This goes into the presumed theory of Freud that the idea of God is just our own personal totem pole. The concept of God being our totem which has the qualities we admire in ourselves. Freud describes how the members of the totem clan claim themselves to be descended from the totem itself. Freud continues in his ideas of the human construct of God in the following way. As a human child grows, the child relies on the protection of its father. The father protects the child from the terrifying world around them. As the child grows up and moves out into the world, the child still holds onto his fears of the world and childish desires for fatherly protection. Thus humans project their ideas of a father who protects them into the concept of God. Threatening everyone