Teach the Controversy: Question Belief!
Salvation: Emotion or Neurosis?
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, July 30, 1999
September 2004
Psychological Needs or Crutches
About half a century ago, the National Secular Society published a leaflet called Religious Neurosis. “There was a slight element of truth in it,” said Canon Edward Patey, the radio evangelist of the day. And what was that, Canon? “Emotion can play a very big part in religion.” Amazing! What would we do without them?
The truth is that some Christians love to wallow in their piety. It is certainly emotional to the extent of being self indulgent, a social display and form of obsessive hand washing. Sigmund Freud, in Obsessive Acts and Religious Practices, noted the ritual nature of obsessive behaviour, which is a sort of private religion in which the ritual will bring some sort of salvation. The religious believer joins in similar communal rites, thus accepting the “universal neurosis” of religion. Religious obsession ought to be treated like any other form of damaging obsessive behaviour.
Christianity is entirely self indulgent, and the few who sacrifice themselves for apparently altruistic reasons are scarcely a refutation of this. If they would not have been altruistic anyway, then they have done it for the usual selfish Christian reason—to save their own soul. The main purpose of Christianity is to be “saved”.
If being “saved” meant what it does in natural language, many if not most Christians would be ready to push women and children out of the lifeboats to save themselves. If God had decreed that only a few lifeboats existed for the “saved”, how many Christians would volunteer to forego their eternal life in the balmy place after death for the sake of women and children? Most Christians, certainly the evangelical variety, are convinced that they are “saved” anyway. Have they not read in Matthew:
Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Quite so, but they have found the gate, they will say. But do we not also find in Matthew?
Many are called, but few are chosen.
So, it is not merely finding the gate labelled “Believe Me!” but also then finding a place in the lifeboat beyond. The more rational of us would also be highly emotional, if we were convinced of the truth of hell fire and that we were unlikely to be chosen to avoid it. Far from convincing us that we are all saved just by believing, the bible tells us that few will be saved from the eternal sulphur. It seems an excellent reason why Christians should be neurotic, but they are too smug to bother about it. It is this fantasy induced smugness that Marx called “the opium of the people”. People think they will be rewarded with eternal life in the balmy place by convincing others of the same delusion and otherwise accepting every calumny as unavoidable acts of God sent to try them in their belief. Fortunately for them, they will never know whether they are chosen or not. They will be dead.
The answer to being too emotional about Christianity, we are told, is to balance emotion with mind, soul and strength. Each acts as a check on the excesses of the others giving a balanced Christian, but anyone who applies mind to the problem and does not finish up rejecting the whole Christian scam is seriously unbalanced anyway. Ah, but the Christian should not treat his belief as a mathematical proposition. That would be being more interested in learning about heaven than getting there. This oddly enough is a good description of the born again clappies for whom Christianity is some sort of sorority or fraternity where like-minded chums can meet and bask in God’s appreciation. They mistake receiving the application form for acceptance of them as members, according to the evangelist, Matthew, quoted above. Is this delusion an emotion?
Canon Patey told us that the emotions we should feel are:
- the need for help from someone stronger than ourselves,
- the need for forgiveness,
- the need to have prayers answered.
Canon Patey was not a Canon for nothing. He knew precisely what he was about. “A psychologist might have a lot to say about this,” he declared. Undeterred, he labelled these feelings as religious. They are “our deepest religious feelings” and are “both real and valid”. Yet, none have anything to do with God and everything indeed to do with psychology. They are symptomatic of of various degrees of neurosis and anxiety. Patey proved the point of the NSS pamphlet. They are all psychological needs that the church uses to snare unwary and vulnerable people.
John B Watson, the behavioural psychologist, considered religion a fiction imposed on ignorant people by priests. Behaviourism was able to explain how many of the methods of indoctrination used by the churches worked. Watson thought people who accepted this manipulation were ill. Religion is a disease. It needs to be cured.
To believe that God, Jesus, or Harvey the Rabbit walks with us as a guardian, answers our prayers or comforts us when we feel guilty are psychological crutches. Certainly, they work—even Harvey or just a rabbit’s foot. They act as a placebo, well known in the psychology of healing. Jesus is Harvey. When he is believed in he becomes real to the believer. It is a harmless and often a helpful minor delusion, but delusion it is, and it can become serious when people expect others to accept their imaginery pal. That is what Christians do. For grown-ups, our prayers are answered within us, and our mental strength increases. We draw upon resources that are there by using a little psychology. Christians tell us “Harvey Lives!” “Harvey Saves!”
We need not sell ourselves to confidence tricksters to draw upon our inner resources. Believe in God, if it helps, but keep it to yourself.
