Veovis

First off, I'd like to say Hi, I'm new. Secondly, I found this a while ago and thought it was absolutely atrocious. Have a look for yourself.

http://www.boundless.org/2000/depart.../a0000223.html

:banghead:

I for one think it's a bit too arrogant and presumptuous for anyone to "diagnose" others' beliefs. Any thoughts on this?

Mageth

To find the answer, Vitz began scanning the last four centuries for patterns--patterns that distinguish the lives of atheists from the lives of comparable theists.

What he found is nothing less than astonishing. After studying the lives of more than a dozen of the world's most influential atheists, Vitz discovered that they all had one thing in common: Defective relationships with their fathers. By defective, Vitz means the fathers were dead, abusive, weak, or abandoned their children.

Wow, more than a dozen? With a sample size THAT large, no wonder Vitz reached such an "astonishing" conclusion!

(Just how many influential atheists, or even run-of-the-mill atheists, who had good relationships with their fathers did Vitz choose to ignore, BTW?)

French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre also fits the defective father theory

Well, that kind of says it all. Form a theory and then find some subjects that fit the theory...

Vitz decided to compare the family circumstances of influential atheists to those of influential theists from the same era. What he discovered backs up his theory. It seems that every theist enjoyed a strong, loving relationship with his father--or, if the father was dead, with a father substitute.

Every theist he chose to include, anyway...

Koyaanisqatsi

Hi, and welcome. Quite a quagmire you brought with you on your first post .

Yes, it's all "Daddy's" fault that we're all godless heathens, because every single atheist all shares absolutely identical relationships with their fathers as all others.

Who could argue with that kind of rock-solid "logic?"

As I'm sure you've no doubt already noticed in your own dealings with cult members, they must demonize atheism (and claim it to be just another religion; just like their own) since they can't address any of the arguments atheists typically raise in objection to their beliefs directly.

The irony is that it simply strengthens certain atheist arguments (such as the Problem of Evil--PoE for short) since there is no reason an omnibenevelont god (as many cults believe in) should punish a Nietsche or a Freud with eternal damnation simply because (as the theory of Vitz's purports) their fathers were bad fathers. Indeed, it's counter-intuitive, since who would logically most need such a god's presence in their lives, but children who were abused by their own fathers?

Damn the human father and you ultimately damn your own god.

Veovis

Thanks, the reason I found this so disturbing is that my mother and father have been divorced since I was very young (3 or 4) and I never considered my deconversion from Christianity anything to do with my father. He is not exactly the churchly type and I don't think it would have made a difference if they stayed together. The main reason for my deconversion was the death of my grandma and the theory of evolution. A few epiphanies later I was an agnostic.

As far as evil, fascist fundies demeaning atheism, I really never had a problem with it (probably because I'm still 'closeted'). I have never encoutered door-to-door witnessing and only a few anti-evolutionists. The only problem I had was my geometry teacher who wore Christianity on his sleeve and once implied something bad about "unbelievers". I'm actually looking forward to encountering a creationist/fundie so I can tell them off .

NonHomogenized

Well, I don't *quite* fit the mold that Paul Vitz made for me.

While it is true that my parents divorced when I was 6 or 7, he could hardly be called "dead, abusive, weak, or [deadbeat]". Although he traveled/s a lot, he still makes it a point to visit me fairly often (even though I live 8 1/2 hours away). When I still lived in my hometown (where he lives), I saw him probably around every other day, on average. He certainly is not, and has never been abusive, and, while he's always been a bit of a "buddy"-type dad, he still managed to be authoritative when he wished to be.
Oh, and, needless to say, he's still alive and well.

Come to think of it, I look at all the atheists I know, and, well, although none come from particularly "traditional" families, I certainly can't say that any of them met his description, unless by weak, you mean "not completely dominating everyone around them".

Furthermore, as I continue to read this article, I was struck by the following:
You know, when I read Leviathan, by Hobbes, for philosophy last spring, I got a rather different impression of Hobbes. I was not in the least given the thought that Hobbes was an atheist. However, I must say that his philosophical writings make a lot more sense than most of Descartes, whom we compared him too (especially in terms of the origin of knowledge. And Descartes' argument for god was just dumb.

Then, of course, he calls Hitler an atheist.

and then:
Every single atheist had a bad father, and every single theist had a good father, eh? This reeks of pure bullshit.

And, after all that shit, he shovels it on with:
So, wait, smart, well-educated people tend to be atheists? Hmmm. Imagine that. I wonder why those people would reject religion, when everyone else accepts it (according to the author, anyhow )

Well, Ms. Morse has an explanation:
No, wait, that makes absolutely no sense. How about my explanation: those with better education will tend to be able to see through the lies and fallacies in religion, and so will reject it. Needless to say, those with better educations tend to be found in Universities, the intellectual world, and certain professions...

Roland98

I heard that theory awhile ago, when I was first asked why I was an atheist posting on a Christian forum. None of the atheists on the board had any truly traumatic experiences in childhood--at least, not more so than any of the Christians. The whole theory is just bunk--akin to saying homosexuality is caused by being molested as a child.

Vandrare

hmmmm..... does this mean that for female atheists, their mothers had to be weak, dead, or abusive???? because i can say with complete conviction that my mum is one of the most amazing people i know! if i could be half the person she is i'd be set!
but then, maybe females just dont count - it was such a logical and resonable argument after all

:-D Anna

ebolamonger

Of course, this means fundy fathers are models of parental responsibility. Why, just look at Fred Phelps.

Rachel

No. It's based on the belief that God is our father and that he is being rejected because those who have non-existant or abusive fathers can't accept that the existance of another father who is loving and accepting. The sex of the child isn't what's being discussed. You really should understand an argument before dismissing it.

It has a certain logic to it, and I'm sure there are cases where that is true. The problem is that some christians are stating that is the reason all or the majority of atheists don't believe and that simply isn't the case. For me it's right up there with stating all intelligent folk are atheists. A load of baloney and neither are a help to their causes.

mfaber

Professor Vitz has developed a hypothesis of why some people become atheists. His hypothesis is that it is often the result of having had a "defective father." This may be a result of absence, death, indifference, hostility, weakness, cowardliness or any characteristic which would make the father deficient.

To buttress his "defective father/abusive" hypothesis, NYU professor Vitz uses the biographies of famous, well known individuals histories of well-known atheists from the past three hundred years including, Nietsche, Hume, Bertrand Russell, Satre, Camus and Schopenhauer, Thomas Hobbs, Meilier, Voltaire, d'Alembert, d'Holbach, Feuerbach, Samuel Butler, Freud, H. G. Wells, Carlile, Madalyn Murray O'Hair and Albert Ellis. All of these individuals were shown to have negative relationships with their fathersduring their youth.

Vitz examines examines the lives of individuals known for both their piety and their writings defending Christianity or Judaism (his "control group"). These individuals were shown to have had positive relationships with their fathers "as there were no early deaths of the father, no abandonment and recorded reciprocal love". Those include, Pascal, George Berkeley, Joseph Butler, Thomas Reid, Edmund Burke, Moses Mendelssohn, William Paley, William Wilberforce, Chateaubriand, Schleiermacher, Cardinal Newman, de Tocqueville, Samuel Wilberforce, Kierkegaard, von Hugel, G. K. Chesterton, Albert Schweitzer, Buber, Karl Barth, Bonhoeffer and Abraham Heschel.

[size=2.5]Does anyone spot the problem with the above groups?[/size]
In the "atheists group, Vitz picked only those that supported his hypothesis. If one really wants to know what makes an atheist "tick", this is NOT the way one goes about picking a group to see if the group really has some kind of common psychological "profile". What he should have done is advertise for those who considered themselves atheists and then picked a random sample (need more than 30 particpants) and then questioned and tested them. There would be no shortage of candidates...if the 7-10% of the US population are atheists, which means that the pool contains 20-28 MILLION "sample points".

Another example of this kind of biased sampling that makes any conclusion drawns from it worthless is the claim made by anti-abortionists. They claimed that 95% of all women who had abortions were afflicted with guilt after having an abortion. Where did they get this figure and who were the women they "sampled"? ONLY women who came to THEIR pregnancy crisis centers for counciling already afflicted with that guilt! It doesn't take Einstein figure out that if one only asked women you know who are suffering from guilt after having an abortion if they feel guilty for having had an abortion that the answer will be YES!!. If the anti-choicers were fair they would have taken women at random who had abortions and asked them if they were "suffering" because they had an abortion (with 1.1 million abortions performed every year, the pool from which to draw a sample is large).

When I first heard of this book, I was astounded that Vitz would have made such a fundamental mistake. Dr. Vitz is an NYU professor whose academic credentials are first-rate. His book reads more like a propagandist hack job than a real study of why people become atheists. It made me wonder if he didn't have some political axe to grind rather than do any kind of serious science. I checked him out....

He loves to blame the "decline in morality and the natural family" on the usual Religious Right suspects-->evolution, feminisim, abortion, secular humanism, yadah, yadah. Paul C. Vitz has described "personal convenience" as an important reason why people become atheists, claiming that he could be motivated to reject serious theism so that he could enjoy more sex! He also adds the motivations of avoiding going to church on Sundays and meeting with church groups, avoiding prayer and scripture reading, and even avoiding helping others!

Herr Professor Vitz also HATES Sigmund Freud with a passion (not a surprise since Freud had some very unflattering things to say about the psychology of theists). If you really want to see what a looney-toon Vitz is (in spite of his education), just read his biography so dear old Siggy. He opines that Freud’s "unconscious" hostility toward Christianity was a consequence of a curious pre-occupation with the Devil, Damnation and the Anti-Christ and even wonders if Freud made a Faustian pact with the devil! (Chapters 4 and 5 of Sigmund Freud’s Christian Unconscious, by Vitz==>online HERE)

Vitz is one of the darlings of the Religious Right and is on the board of directors of such archconservative organizations as the World Congress of Families. From more on the WCF go HERE.

He especially hates feminists, who he blames for the decline of the "family", (read his defense of Christian patriarchy HERE). In his book on atheism, he says that men and women have different concepts of God after rejection by their fathers. Men consider God more as a symbol for order and justice in the world. Women seem to place their relationship with God in the forefront of their feelings based on their relationship with their father. Thus, without a divine relationship, the void is filled by other substitute relationships.

These women with missing or unloving fathers may become interested in a Mother Goddess, such as Gaia. Feminists substitute God the Mother for God the Father. Sometimes maleness in itself is rejected and the world of the "sisterhood" becomes emphasized which can reveal itself in lesbianism.

Even though his book is not science, it is sited as such by the likes of paragons of integrity like Charles Colson in pieces such as Why Women Reject God. His book on atheist "psychology" is sited on virtually every right wing site (from National Right to Life to Christian Identity, the KKK etc) as "proof" that atheists, if not downright evil", are just emotionally scarred defectives, lashing out at the ultimate father figure, i.e., God.

Some publications by Vitz:
1.
The Problem with Self-esteem (another "Christian how-dare-you" about thinking for yourself or feeling good about yourself....don't you know suffering is good for you!)

2. Psychology as religion: The cult of self-worship.

3. No God But God: Breaking with the Idols of Our Age

4. A preferential option for the family?: Political and religious responses. The Family in America, 12 (6), 1-8.

5. Paul C. Vitz. "Scholars Say Textbooks Censor Out Religion." National Federation for Decency (because it's out-of-print, an excerpt)
His review of A Plea for Purity-Sex Marriage, and God
The point here is that if you see some theist say that "atheists don't believe in God because their fathers rejected/abandoned/abused them" (or some variant of this ad hominem attack) you can bet the farm that they are relying on the Vitz's book. This book is most certainly not an unbiased psychological analyis and not scientific because

• The "atheists group" was deliberately picked from those with KNOWN family problems, but used as though it were an unbiased sample space, representing ALL atheists.
• The "control" group consisted of famous theists with KNOWN good family relationships. Vitz obviously wants us to believe that ALL theists are "believers" because ALL theists have had their brains groomed for "right" thinking by loving families (only Biblical patriarchal families qualify for this title according to Vitz). More on the very biased sample selection==>John Dewey, a prominent 20th century American, and John Stewart Mills (atheists with good father/son relationships) are not used in his "analysis". Prominent theists like T. S. Eliot and C. S. Lewis do not come in for examination either, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why. Eliot, in fact, does not seem to have had an especially good relationship with his father. Lewis also described a psychological separation from his father after his mother died.
• Each so-called "group" consists of less than 30 individuals. There are not enough individuals in either "group" to make conclusions drawn from them to be "statistically significant". Since the groups were deliberately picked to confirm Vitz's biases against atheists, this last point is moot to say the least!!!
• Because Vitz's sample spaces are so biased, no main-stream psychologist or scientist takes his work seriously. Only theists looking for any excuse to dismiss atheists take this tome as fact.

BOTTOM-LINE--Vitz's analysis doesn't prove anything because it didn't abide by any of the rules for unbiased sampling. His groups were designed specifically to justify his opinions about atheism==>atheists are just emotionally-damaged, angry people who substitute their God-hatred for their subconscious father-hatred. As such it is nothing but a propaganda piece, whose only purpose is give the vilification of atheists scientific "justification" (hey, these atheists are just "damaged goods" mentally...what do you expect from these mental cripples other than they would reject our God?).