The Human Question

I sometimes wonder (perhaps b/c I don't understand Freud), whether -- just as a lot of purportedly non-sexual things can be interpreted as sublimated expressions of sexual desire -- so too sex can be interpreted as a reworking of (but not necessarily a sublimation of) the desire to eat.  Just as he might say, "that's an unwitting sublimation of sexual desire" of desires we might otherwise think unique to humans, we might reply, "and who is to say that the sexual desire is a kind of reworking of the instinct for food"? Just a thought...

A lot of what Freud said seems unscientific in the sense that it's hard to imagine how to test, or, if it has been tested, it has not been found to be universal trait in human nature (Oedipus complex, for example). How ready have some been to accept Freud's speculative remarks.  But how much higher they place the bar for ID. Truth is, I don't think ID can clear the bar.  If I took the double standardness as supporting the genuiness of ID, then that would be pretty lame.  But it is interesting how we raise our standards of demonstration when someone proposing something that we don't want to believe.

Back to the accusation that it's infantile to long for eternal happiness... First question: What does an infant enjoy that adults don't? One can imagine that infants enjoy a conflict free unconditional love of the other who takes care of all of their needs. It is worth pointing out, however, that life as an infant is in no way conflict-free or pure bliss. Not at all: not even from day one. But infants typically enjoy least periods of carefree union and bliss. If one grants that humans can remember their infancy, or it least what it felt like during their infancy, then there is room for the objection that the desire to unending bliss is nothing other than the desire to return to one's infancy. But that is not the only possible source of the desire for bliss. For adults have a much better memory of their adulthood than their infancy (in fact, the latter is non-existent). And a good part of the adult population are able to enjoy or at least imagine what it's like to e...

It is noteworthy that LaPlace, inspired by Newtonian physics, got rid of both divine Providence and human freedom. Something similar can be said about Freud: he considered belief in a provident God a delusion, and regarded human freedom more or less in the same way. So divine freedom (as manifest in divine Providence) and human freedom go (and come) together: this is worth investigating more.

Are there reasons why some might wish that there is no God? Certainly, if there are if one sees belief in God as cramping one's lifestyle for one reason or another. The desire to live a more satisfactory lifestyle may (mistakenly) motivate one to presume that atheism is correct or to adopt atheism when the arguments for it are weak or to look only into arguments for atheism and neglect to look into arguments for theism. That said, the fact that some may adopt atheism simply because they find it more comforting to despair of God's existence does not prove that atheism is false--not any more than the fact that some adopt theism because of the comfort that its hope offers. But it's worth pointing out that wish fulfillment is a two-way street.

To the proposal of eternal life with the loving Father the Freudian atheist objects with the ad hominem sounding retort that it is to wish to return to infantile bliss. To that objection, one might reply: surely this is a scientifically testable thesis, so how would you test it? I have an idea: look for someone who surely did not experience infantile bliss yet does wish to experience eternal life in union with the loving Father. If the Freudian atheist is correct, then no such person exists, for the only plausible cause of such a wish is the memory of having experienced something like it in the past. Has this experiment been conducted? No? If not, then why does the Freudian atheist pontificate so confidently? What would happen if we found an individual who most definitely did not experience anything like infantile bliss yet desires eternal happiness. Would the Freudian, ala Popper, simply admit that their (as in "her" or "his") claim was false? No, the...