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SOME SUMMARY POINTS:
Religion: an illusion and a delusion;
Religion was once necessary to restrain man’s violent nature in the early stages of civilization, but today science and reason can replace it (The Future of an Illusion, 1927).
Freud’s Conclusion: all religious belief can be explained through its function to society, not for its relation to the truth.
Religious rituals have the characteristics of neurotic compulsions (like washing hands):
- Repeated;
- To be performed exactly;
- Feeling good (calm) when completed;
- Anxiety if omitted or ‘not performed rightly”.
By providing a possibility for expression of collective neurosis, religion might protect us from individual neurosis.