Skal vi leve i illusjoner, eller skal vi våge å se sanheten i øynene?

For 15 år siden i år skrev jeg min første bok, mitt «litterære gjennombrudd» – «Balansert Seksualitet – Alfa og Omega». Ikke noen pen design og dårlig satt sammen med dagens øyne, men alt inni der står jeg for. Boken var et partsinnlegg i barnefordelingsakene som feide over nasjonen som en mare på den tiden, hvor fedre ble utelukket fra sine barns liv ved samlivsbrudd. Min konklusjon ble at dette vil skade barna på sikt psykologisk, at vi får en hel generasjon med fraværende fedre. Skaper sår en ikke aner konsekvensene av. Jeg tok også opp hvordan forholdet til sin egen far, er med på å definere eventuelt forholdet til en «far i himmelen»; Gud. En skaper seg bilder i hodet av hva en er vant med i praksis. De som ikke blir elsket av sin far, kan sjelden heller elske, og utvikler seg til pøbler. En kan formelig sense at det er noe som mangler i deres oppbygging. Der er ingen balanse mellom feminin og maskulin i deres psyke og sjel. De har mistet en dimensjon.

På vår vandring gjennom livet kan vi treffe på mange mennesker som beviser dette, om en er bevisst på forholdet.

Hele min hensikt med mitt bokprosjekt den gangen dreide seg om å gjøre oppmerksom på at folk som får et dårlig forhold til sin far, eller at han blir gjort fraværende av en eller annen årsak, kan bli skadet på sjelen, for livet. Nå langt i ettertid vet jeg jo at det er meningen at det skal være slik, fordi ett av Illuminatis credo, iflg. Weishaupt, jfr. også Albert Pike, er å ødelegge religion, som familier, som nasjonalfølelser, etc. (søk Riksavisen etter «Weishaupt’s credos» for å få hele listen og bakgrunnen). Grunnen til at de vil dette er å destabilisere samfunnene og få makt over psykene til folk, fordi de herved lider av en traumabasert kontroll mekanisme. Folk blir mer medgjørlig sånn. Kan styres lettere. Manipuleres lettere. De har mistet sin retningssans.

Ateisten Richard Dawkins, skriver i sin bok, “The God Delusion,” at mange av verdens konflikter er basert på religiøse morderiske impulser. Kommentatoren Robert Kuttner hevder at “Inkvisjonen slaktet millioner i Jesus’ navn. Inkvisjonen bragte tortur og mord av millioner flere. Etter Martin Luther, førte kristne blodige slag mot andre kristne for ennå tre århundrer.”

«Gut Mit Uns» – «God Bless America». Disse menneskene er ikke mer kristne enn imperialisten Joseph Stalin; eller som Mao Tse Tung for den del, ateistiske kommunister som er ansvarlig for mer enn 100 million drepte mennesker, fra disse militante ateistene, bare siden begynnelsen av det 20ende århundre. Så kan vi legge til et ukjent antall millioner av Pol Pot, og andre ateister. Tyrkiske muslimer mot Armenerne mellom 1915 og 1918; estimert at 1.5 million kristne Armenere ble drept i den nedslaktningen.

Vi gjentar – Stalin’s ateisme = ca. 60 million, sies det en annen plass.

Men til sammenligning; Kristendommen tok 25 personer i hekseprosessene i Salem. I den spanske inkvisjonen ble ca. 10,000 individer dømt og drept. Noen historikere hevder at 100,000 døde i fengsel i tillegg. Korstogene som varte i 1400 år, var en forsvarskrig mot at muslimene la under seg mer kristent land i midt-østen, og ikke en imperialistisk handling, ifølge den britiske historiker Paul Johnson.

Ikke enhver som hevder seg kristen er det. Handlingen viser hvem og hva de er, ikke tomme ord. Hva makter og myndigheter har foretatt seg i Guds navn, kan ikke legges det kristne individ til lott,  uavhengig av omde definerer seg som et «kristent» land eller ikke.

Folk, individer, med en åndelig basis, religiøse, blir mer fryktløse, de er ikke redd døden, de blir en større fare for makthaverne. Der er en hensikt med å ødelegge religionen, som Keiser Kontantin begynte med allerede i år 325 på Kirkemøtet i Nikea. Det var kristne som fikk skylden og måtte ta straffen når Caeser brant ned Rom, for å skylde på de kristne (en av de første kjente «false flag» operasjoner). De utgjorde en for stor trussel, siden de var trygg i sin tro, og fryktet hverken Gud eller Keiser (eller fryktet Gud mer enn Keiseren kanskje). Det var en kristen som ofret sitt liv, som fikk slutt på gladiatorkampene til forlystelse for Roms adelskap. Det var kristne som fikk slutt på slavehandelen som britene og amerikanerne stod for.

Gud er kjærlighet. Hva vi kaller Gud er kanskje ikke annet enn hva som er vår egen kjerne; «Gud er inni dere» sier evangeliene. Å fjerne oss fra Gud, blir dermed beste middel til å fjerne oss fra oss selv, og den vi opprinnelig er. Vi blir fremmedgjort fra oss selv, – fra Gud i oss. For eksempel av kirken den forbudte gnostisisme går ut på å søke «gnosis» = kunnskap, om den vi virkelig er. Veien tilbake til oss selv.

Dr. Paul Vitz, professor i psykologi ved New York University (Columbia), forsket på, foredrar og skriver om «The Psychology of Atheism», mener at det er en nær sammenheng mellom forholdet til sin far, og ens forhold til Gud; hvor nært eller fjernt en plasserer seg i forhold til hva vi kaller Gud. I dette religiøse spektrum har ateismen plassert seg aller lengst borte fra Gud. Han sier:

The Psychology of Atheism
Dr. Paul Vitz
September 24, 1997

These are notes of the lecture taken by an audience member.

The talk was meant as an encapsulation of a book on which Dr. Vitz has been working and that he intends to publish in a year. The talk takes the opposite apprach to that usually taken in psychology and much linked to its origin: explaining religious belief.

The concepts of psychology are two-edge swords that can explain not only religious belief, but also the lack of belief.

He makes two assumptions about atheism:
1. major barriers to belief are non-rational, that is, psychological
2. all of us have a free choice to reject or accept God

The point is to identify factors that predispose one to atheism.

First, Dr. Vitz elaborated on the simpler, more shallow reasons for atheism.

He reviewed his own personal story as an example. He was raised with a somewhat Christian upbringing in Ohio, but became an atheist in college at age 18 , and remained so until the age of 38, when he converted, or re-converted to Christianity. Reflection on his own life showed him that his reasons for being an atheist were superficial.

Superficial reasons for atheism:

1. General Socialization– social unease
e.g. Vitz is from the Mid-west, which is boring and he wanted to be comfortable in the glamorous secular world.

Voltaire was embarrassed of his provincial origin cf. flight from Jewish ghetto or fundamentalist Southern background

2. Desire to be accepted by powerful and influential professors.

He noted that his professors at Stanford animadverted on every psychological topic, but were united in two things: professional ambition and disbelief in God.

3. Personal convenience.

Belief in God means having to give up pleasures and free time.

Mortimer Adler, in his How to Think about God, leaves the impression the the main obstacle to belief for him lies in his own will.

Next, Dr. Vitz moved on to the deeper psychological reasons some people do not believe in God. He reviewed Freud’s critique of belief, his projection theory: human beings are weak and need protection so they project their need by concocting an all-powerful father figure,
God. The problem with ad hominem arguments is that they also work on any other belief people might hold, such as belief in scientific theories, and can also be used to reject psychoanalysis as well.
Furthermore, the projection theory is refuted by the fact that pre-Christian religions didn’t emphasize God as benevolent father.

Essentially, he summarized, the projection theory is really an autonomous argument and is not dependent on psychology. Bolstering this assertion is the fact that Freurbach had previously formulated the same argument in a book that Freud had read. So psycholoanalysis is neutral to the projection argument.

Dr. Vitz described an explanation of atheism using Freud’s psychology of the Oedipus Complex. Freud posited that this is a psychological disorder that all males suffer from and consists of the desire to kill one’s father and sleep with one’s mother. Now, psychologically God and one’s father are the same. Thus, the desire to kill one’s father means one also desired to eliminate God. Atheism is Oedipal wish fulfillment.

E.g. Voltaire wasn’t an atheist, but a deist: he rejected a personal God. He strongly rejected his own father. In his twenties (1718) he published a play called Oedipus that included heavy allusions to religious and political rebellion.

Diderot was an avowed atheist and he claimed that if man were left to himself, he would strangle his father and lie with his mother.

Freud noted a link between diminishing of a father’s authority and belief in God.

Dr. Vitz outlines his «Theory of the Defective Father,» which attemptes to explain atheism:

1. father present but weak
2. father present but abusive
3. father absent

Freud’s father, Yakov was weak and had trouble supporting his family and was a sexual pervert. Also he was a liberal Jew, so Freud linked his weakness to his religion.

Hobbes– his father was an Anglican clergyman who abandoned his family.

Freurbach– his father was a famous legal theoriest. At 13, his father abandoned the family to live with another woman, though he later returned when that woman died.

Schopenhauer– couldn’t stand his mother and intially (ages 8-12) was relatively close to his father. At age 16, his father committed suicide.

Other staunch atheists show the remarkably common pattern of having a father who died while they were young. For example, Nietzche, Bertrand Russel, Sartre and Camus.

More recent examples:

Madeline Murray O’hare hated her father and tried to kill him with a butcher knife, according to her son’s book.

Albert Ellis is a psychologist hostile to religion. Dr. Vitz was on a panel with him and outlined his theory of the defective father to him.
Ellis said the theory didn’t fit him because he got along with his father. In casual conversation, a friend told Vitz that the theory «fits Ellis perfectly.» According to a biography of Ellis, his father abandoned the family and his weak mother was unable to support, so Ellis and his brother ended up providing everyhting for themselves.
In his twenties, Ellis was polite to his father, though.

Anthony Flew (sp?) is a philosopher who’s an atheist and the son of a well-known English divine. At a party Flew beat on the floor exclaiming «I hate my father!»

David Hume’s father died when he was two.

As a control group, Dr. Vitz took well-known theists who were contemporaneous to their atheist counterparts and from the same culture: Barkeley, Burke, Wilbeforce, G.K. Chesterton, de Tocqueville, Buber, Pascal, and others. In every instance each had a good
relationship with his father.

J.S. Mill, an atheist, also had a good relationship with his father and so inherited his father’s atheism.

To conclude, Dr. Vitz read a selection from Russel Baker, the New York Times columnist, describing his sadness and anger at age five when his father died, and how he then became a skeptic.

Question period
[Sorry, I didn’t get the questions down.]

Dr. Vitz noted other common factors he noted in the famous atheists he’d profiled: they were all smart and arrogant.

The point of the profiling of atheists is to remove psychological motives from explaining religious belief. The ad hominem attack on theism posits an immature need for support, but there are psychological causes for atheism as well as theism. So when the atheist attacks a theists beliefs for being childish, the theist can counter, «and so’s your old man!»

So, this argument more or less levels the playing field as far as psychological explanations of belief/disbelief are concerned.
However, no one disputes that having a loving father is better than having an unloving father. A loving atheist father will likely set up his children for theism, just as an S.O.B. theist father will set up his children for atheism.

Examples of figures who don’t fit the theory:

Dederot had a relatively positive relationship with his father, though he did have a serious dispute with his father at age twenty (too late to count). Another explanation of Diderot’s atheism may be his place in the birth order of his family (cf. «Born to Rebel»).

Karl Marx

Don Bosco’s father died when he was two. He saw priests a father figures and founded an order that helped orphan boys.

Hillaire Belloc’s father died when he was two, but he sought substitute fathers.

———————————————————————-
Vitz is professor of psychology at New York University. He is also an
adjunct professor of the John Paul II Institute on Marriage and Family
in Washington, D.C. He formerly taught at Pomona College and
Claremont Graduate School. During his early years at N.Y.U., Vitz’s
research interests focused on experimental psychology; since his
conversion to Christianity over fifteen years ago, he has been working
in the area of psychology and religion. He holds a B.A. from the
University of Michigan and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.
———————————————————————-
The Augustine Club at Columbia University, 1997
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/vitz.txt
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De uelskedes sår, ateismens faderløse basis

De uelskedes sår, ateismens faderløse basis

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