Is religion healthy?

If religious beliefs can be justified rationally and are based on a realistic understanding of life, then most people would conclude that religion is healthy. On the other hand, if we find things are believed without any basis in reason or evidence, there is a chance that they are simply delusions- things we would like to be true, but for which we have no good reason to believe they are actually true- and holding such beliefs makes people vulnerable, since their view of life does not fit reality, and that may be regarded as unhealthy.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), famously described religion as a ‘universal obsessional neurosis’ and did so because he saw parallels between the compulsive washing and tidying routines of his obsessive neurotic patients and religious rituals designed to assure people that their sins were forgiven. Like the compulsive who constantly returns to wash his or her hands, but never feels clean, religious people are continually forgiven their sins, but need to return to hear that forgiveness proclaimed over and over again.

In this, Freud identifies religious activity with the symptoms of illness, rather than its cure. The logic of this is that attending a religious ceremony actually removed a sense of guilt and set that person right, then he or she would do it only once. The fact that religion becomes a routine activity suggests that it maintains a sense of need and dependency, rather than eliminating it.

These are two very different aspects to Freud’s work on religion. The first, set out in his Totem and Taboo (1913), looks at the origin of religion in early tribal society. It develops his ideas about the idea of God and of social taboos that are given moral and religious authority. It also considers magic as the mistaken attempt to control the physical world through the mind. The second, in the future of an illusion (1927), looks at religion and evaluates what it does, taking the view that it is an illusion, and that people would be better served by addressing the reality of their lives. It is the second aspect that has continuing relevance for the philosophy of religion, since it argues that religion is an ‘illusion’-a systematic attempt to shield people from the threatening aspects of the world. It raises fundamental questions about why religion continues to appeal, and whether what it offers is true or helpful.

Just as, in an ideal world, a small child can look to their physical father for protection and reassurance, so an adult, facing the hazards of life and recognizing his or her frailty, is tempted to use the idea of god as a father substitute. God controls the world and looks after you to make sure that, in spite of evidence to the contrary everything is going to plan and you will be okay. Freud saw such religious belief as a human construct and therefore an illusion.