The Fallacy of God as a Childish Illusion: An Examination and Critique of Freud's Psychological Atheism

Although Freud is not the originator of the theory that "God is a creation and projection of the human mind" (as this idea has been discussed before him), he is the founder of the psychoanalytic interpretation of this concept. Relying on his psychoanalytic findings, Freud establishes the foundation of psychological atheism, asserting that God is the product of human childish illusion. Humans always need security. This need is fulfilled through the father during childhood. But as individuals mature, this is done through a psychological process that substitutes the father figure with God. Freud attempts to support this notion by applying his psychoanalytic findings to primitive societies and subsequently to monotheistic religions. For this, he employs frameworks such as scientific worldview, Darwinism, and physicalism into his argument. In this paper, written with an analytical-descriptive approach, we demonstrate that Freud’s perspective as well as its foundation encounter significant weaknesses and challenges. One of the important challenges that this perspective face is that despite accepting scientism as a principle and considering the scientific method as the only valid means to reach the truth, Freud appears to neglect this method when expressing his own views. His perspective also lacks the conditions of a scientific viewpoint because scientific viewpoints require testability, a criterion that his perspective lacks. Furthermore, even if his perspective is assumed to be correct, it does not necessitate the denial of God.