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Is atheism irrational?

Is atheism irrational?

Last updated on: October 30, 2017 at 5:49 am by Dan Peterson

Is atheism irrational? 2017-10-30T05:49:08-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The Manhattan New York Temple, across the street from Lincoln Center in New York City
(LDS.org)

Another selection from my notes:

Harvard psychiatrist Armand Nicholi, Jr., suggests that one motivation for Freud’s atheism may have been his overpowering desire, as an unfashionably Jewish intellectual in fin-de-siecle Vienna—where anti-clericalism and secularizing contempt for religious belief were common among the educated elite—for personal acceptance and the acceptance of his new theory of psychoanalysis.[1]

Freud’s early experiences with anti-Semitism critically influenced his attitude toward the spiritual worldview. In Austria over 90 percent of the population registered as Catholic. Freud said that in this environment “I was expected to feel myself inferior and an alien because I was a Jew.” One can understand Freud’s motivation to discredit and destroy what he called the “religious Weltanschauung” and why he referred to religion as “the enemy.” Without this “enemy” he would not be in a tiny minority and expected to feel himself “inferior and an alien.” [2]

Freud’s philosophical works are not characterized by the objective, dispassionate tone of the clinician or scientist. Instead, they exhibit an intense, emotional, argumentative and, at times, desperate and pleading tone. Freud obviously feels intensely about these issues. He appears to be determined to destroy every possible reason for accepting the spiritual worldview. [3]

[1] Nicholi, The Question of God, 20.

[2] Nicholi, The Question of God, 21-22.

[3] Nicholi, The Question of God, 53.

***

An interesting and provocative article on a related topic:

“Is Atheism Irrational?”

***

But now for some good passages from the late Hugh Nibley:

“Don’t be like anybody else. Be different. Then you can make a contribution. Otherwise, you just echo something; you’re just a reflection.”

“Apocryphal Writings,” Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 12:292

“The only person you try to impress is your Heavenly Father, and it is awfully hard because he can’t be fooled—not for a minute. I have always felt driven in this way. The gospel is so wonderful. There is so much to find out. It opens the doors to so many things. It is sort of an obsession, a sort of personal thing. As long as you are going to be doing something, why not be doing something that hasn’t been done before?”

“Nibley the Scholar,” 2

If you take yourself seriously, you won’t take the gospel seriously and the other way around. If you take the gospel seriously then you will say, now I know that man is nothing. . . . Oh, the nothingness of man. We can joke about ourselves once we take the gospel seriously and once we know its blessings and promises. Then we can relax and breathe easily and have some fun, which I don’t do enough of.

“Nibley the Scholar,” 2

***

A reflection from China on one of the talks delivered at the October 2017 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

“The Secret Behind Guanxi: Earned Trust”

Posted from New York City

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