Freud had some interesting things to say about faith and religion:
''Freud’s best-known ideas regarding faith centre on the individual’s wish to have a protective father figure with whom he or she can feel identified. One of his texts describes what religion undertakes to do for people as follows:
It gives them information about the origin and coming into existence of the universe, it assures them of its protection and of ultimate happiness in the ups and downs of life and it directs their thoughts and actions by precepts which it lays down with its whole authority. Thus it fulfils three functions. … t satisfies the human thirst for knowledge; it soothes the fear that men feel of the dangers and vicissitudes of life, when it assures them of a happy ending and offers them comfort in unhappiness…[and] it issues precepts and lays down prohibitions and restrictions[1]
Freud goes on to explain that what unites these three seemingly disparate aspects of religion (instruction, consolation and ethical demands) is the fact that they are all tied to the child’s view of his or her father. The God-creator whom believers call father, Freud writes, ‘really is the father, with all the magnificence in which he once appeared to the small child’.[2] He created us, he protected us and he taught us to restrict our desires. Freud explains that when one grows up one still remains helpless in many ways in the face of the dangers of the world, but one recognises that the father cannot really be a source of protection from them. Thus, Freud explains, the believer, harks back to the mnemic image of the father whom in his childhood he so greatly overvalued. He exalts the image into a deity and makes it into something contemporary and real. The effective strength of this mnemic image and the persistence of his need for protection jointly sustain his belief in God.[3]
These needs and wishes for the protective father explain not only the idea of there being a personal God who created us and loves us, but also our sense of guilt in relation to him. Our feelings of guilt are expressions of our conscience, which we form with the critical inner voices of our parents in an effort to be assured of their love. These voices are now perceived as coming from God. Freud concludes:
''The amount of protection and happy satisfaction assigned to an individual depends on his fulfilment of the ethical demands; his love of God and his consciousness of being loved by God are the foundations of the security with which he is armed against the dangers of the external world and of his human environment. Finally, in prayer he has assured himself a direct influence on the divine will and with it a share in the divine omnipotence.[4]''