Since atheism is one of the most inconsistent and irrational worldviews that we have to choose from, what are its causes? Here are some thoughts on this:
Freud himself observed that young people tend to lose their religious faith as soon as they lose the authority of their earthly fathers. This can happen in several ways:
1. The father is present, but he is weak, cowardly, unworthy of respect.
2. The father is present, but is physically, psychologically or sexually abusive.
3. The father is absent, whether through death or abandonment.
Another example of a prominent atheist with a poor paternal relationship is Thomas Hobbes. His father was an Anglican clergyman. Although the exact circumstances are unknown, he got into a fight with another man in the churchyard, following which he abandoned his family.
- As for Ludwig von Feuerbach, his father abandoned the family and lived with a married woman in the same town, then returned after the woman died. Feuerbach was twenty at the time of his father’s return. It is also to be noted that his father’s nickname was “Vesuvius”.
- Schopenhauer was rejected by his mother, and his father committed suicide when Schopenhauer was sixteen.
- Nietsche’s father died when he was four. Camus and Hume also lost their father’s in early childhood.
- Our contemporary Madeleine Murray O’Hare also had an unhappy family life. She often fought with her father, and on one occasion tried to kill him with a butcher’s knife. We cannot know the reason for her hatred, but it probably was not without cause.
- Another well-known living atheist is Albert Ellis,...Ellis grew up in New York. His mother did not function well, and his father was a philanderer who abandoned the family when Ellis was twelve. He and his brother had to take care of their mother and themselves. As an adult Ellis is polite to his father, but we can only guess how great the pain of his childhood must have been.
- Dr. Antony Flew is another famous contemporary atheistic psychologist. Some while ago he was at a party and, having had too much to drink, ended up lying on the floor, hitting it and saying over and over, “I hate my father. I hate my father.” (Antony Flew recently changed his mind from Atheism to Intelligent Design.
Perhaps the most prominent bible critic today Bart Ehrman, can trace his hurt feelings to losing his father to cancer while a young church leader tried to get him to confess sins and then tried to anoint him with a bottle of shampoo in a motel room. He was pretty hurt about that.
We know that emotional trauma can shut down certain brain functions. At least one study suggests that when you shut down the part of the brain most associated with logic and reasoning, greater levels of atheism result.
Does religious trauma and/or loss of a father figure (like shunning) predispose someone to embrace irrational atheist views?
I think there is evidence to suggest that personal pain and myopic, self-centered indulgence of is a major factor.