Stamp out anti-science in US politics

[Viking]

Sorry to revive such a contentious thread from its peaceful slumber, but I just re-discovered a particularly striking passage from Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents" that I underlined years ago:

"The whole thing [religion] is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life.  It is still more humiliating to discover how large a number of people living to-day, who cannot but see that this religion is not tenable, nevertheless try to defend it piece by piece in a series of pitiful rearguard actions."

meh, I hate it when other people think and say things I really really wish I thought or said myself 150 years before I think or say them myself.

[Neil]

In 1930, the average man was still the same ignorant wretch that he had been for the last fifty years.  Until you educate them without treating them contemptuously, they won't learn and will continue to believe in their silly hedge gods.  Moreover, back then, they didn't have the level of science and knowledge (which disprove the existance of the popular gods) that we take for granted today.

[Razgovory]

See, but that's just stupid, even moreso when it was written than it is today.

I don't know, I think I understand where he's coming from.  He was writing in 1930, having watched all the material bourgeois progress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, having virtually pioneered what we consider psychology, and yet the mystifications of organized religion held sway as much as ever.    Hard not to be a little disappointed.

I try to be especially respectful of peoples' religious views since I had the mixed blessing of being part of the small amount of Americans who grow up in essentially atheist families.  My father's grandmother kept kosher and was apparently an observant Jew, but that is the closest hereditary link I have with any kind of religion. I'm as much a cultural atheist as others are cultural Catholics, so I try to acknowledge that my biases against religion are as much an unthinking reflex as other peoples' biases towards religion are.  But at the end of the day, I find it totally incomprehensible.  To think that a major contender for the presidency of the United States finds merit in praying for rain is mind-boggling.

Freud was a charlatan.  His beef against Religion was that it stood in the way of his new witchdoctory.  I mean, he was sitting around interpreting dreams like a shaman.  He falsified his findings, and put back psychology back twenty years.  The guy was fucking useless.  He claimed that the reason Jews were so neurotic is because they had secretly murdered Moses out in the desert 3,000 years ago.

[Queequeg]

General comment: it is common for people who do things for a living to be clueless about them.

What an amazing piece of wisdom. You should write for the Bible.

I may steal this at some point.

[CountDeMoney]

Freud was a charlatan.  His beef against Religion was that it stood in the way of his new witchdoctory.  I mean, he was sitting around interpreting dreams like a shaman.  He falsified his findings, and put back psychology back twenty years.  The guy was fucking useless.  He claimed that the reason Jews were so neurotic is because they had secretly murdered Moses out in the desert 3,000 years ago.

Honestly, if you're going to rail against religion, there are a hell of a lot more convincing and credible critics than Freud to use.  I mean, really now.

[Grallon]

This coming from the man who invented "Psycho-history".  I think that settles it, Freud said it was bad so it has to have something going for it.

So tell us all about the details of the pill-induced delirium episode you found God.





G.

[Razgovory]

This coming from the man who invented "Psycho-history".  I think that settles it, Freud said it was bad so it has to have something going for it.

So tell us all about the details of the pill-induced delirium episode you found God.





G.

How does this follow from what I said?

[The Brain]

Freud was a charlatan.  His beef against Religion was that it stood in the way of his new witchdoctory.  I mean, he was sitting around interpreting dreams like a shaman.  He falsified his findings, and put back psychology back twenty years.  The guy was fucking useless.  He claimed that the reason Jews were so neurotic is because they had secretly murdered Moses out in the desert 3,000 years ago.

Honestly, if you're going to rail against religion, there are a hell of a lot more convincing and credible critics than Freud to use.  I mean, really now.

I may be completely wrong but my guess is that it's primarily the quote itself that Cap finds some worth in, not the source.