Question

Option #2

Faith and Madness

Something you hear from critics of religion a lot is that faith really calls for a psychological explanation. Freud, you may recall, thought of faith as a kind of neurosis. Harris certainly doesn’t follow Freud in the details, but does allege that faith is akin to madness. Why? What openings for response do you see to that charge?

Answer 1

Both Freud and Harris agree that faith related to religion is a disorder, although they both used two different words to explain it. Freud calls this neurosis, which means distress and deficit in functioning where as Harris calls this madness or akin to madness.

Human beings, according to Freud have an empty space that causes mental stress and in order to compensate this, they invented God and religion. But now it has come to a stage where people have become fanatics by proclaiming that their religions are great. This has brought intolerance in the world and people fight in the name of God, which according to Freud is a psychological disorder.

Harris on the other hand is not very severe in his comments but he agrees that the faith on God and religion has turned to madness that prevents people from coming together, working together and growing together. The thought of their religion as superior to others takes them to extremes such as terrorism. They even justify killing people and converting them to their religion.

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