Mageth

If anyone's interested, there's a virtually identical <a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=44&t=000886" target="_blank">thread</a> in MD.

[ June 11, 2002: Message edited by: Mageth ]</p>

DougI

Here's the book review I wrote for American Atheist Magazine:

The goal of psychological science is to make predictions about human behavior given a particular
variable or variables. Through empirical research a scientist disregards insignificant variables while
focusing on those variables which show correlational or causational strength. Vitz has held his Defective
Father Theory for over ten years now. In that time he has not bothered to participate in any research to
confirm his hypotheses.
The book is an updated version of his search to explain the origins of Atheism in the realm of
psychological theory. Serving as a perfect example of fools who profess themselves to be wise Vitz’s latest
work is more like a last minute research paper written by a undergraduate suffering the pains of a hangover
and nicotine withdrawal. The book is more of a collection of contradictions, bad science, grandiose claims,
and overgeneralization. The unscholarly work is tantamount to anti-Atheist propaganda.
Vitz explains the “why” of Atheism as being a product of numerous factors. First he explains
Atheism in terms of a perverted perception of the Freudian Oedipus Complex. Freud’s Oedipus (widely
discredited as unscientific) revolves around the male child’s sexual desire for the mother and hatred of the
father as standing in the way of the child’s acquiring the object of his affection. Vitz takes the Oedipus and
removes the motivation for ego development, the mother. Rather he says the focus of the Oedipus is the
father, which is always generalized as God. It is the father of the Oedipus who the Atheist effectively
destroys and replaces with himself. In other words the Atheist resolves the Oedipus (which would free
Atheists from acquiring any defense mechanisms known as neuroses) and becomes God. However Vitz’s
version is incomplete since there is no means for motivation, it fails to explain personality development as
it relates to psychoanalytic theory, nor is it a credible explanation since it is grounded in the realm of
untestable theory, void of scientific meaning.
The second explanation of Atheism is what Vitz terms as the “Defective Father Theory.” This
theory builds from Vitz’s Oedipus by declaring that Atheists are Atheists because they lose respect for their
father. This disrespect can occur in a few ways. One, the parent is dead during the Atheist’s early
childhood. This is interpreted by the child as a sign of rejection by the father so the father cannot be
respected by the child. Another cause for Atheism is an abusive, neglectful or weak father, essentially any
father who is less than perfect runs the risk of raising an Atheist child, and thusly all Christians are the
result of good parenting.
To support his theory he presents short biographies of a few select Atheists. Vitz defines an
Atheist as anyone who does not believe in the Judeo-Christian god, the heavenly father. Therefore his
evidence does not just include Atheists but Deists (like Voltaire), Wiccans (like Jill Johnston) and even
Karl Marx (a Jew who converted to Protestantism) and Adolph Hitler, a Catholic. So the underlying thesis
of Vitz’s work is anyone who is not a good, correct Jew or Christian is a product of a poor parental
relationship. In an attempt to prove this he selects a number of notable Christians who he says are a
product of proper parental upbringing. He refers to this group as his control group. A control group is
unnecessary because control groups are needed for experimental situations to demonstrate the extent of
change a group experiences with the manipulation of a variable. Vitz’s study contains neither.
For women, with the exception of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Vitz provides an alternate explanation
since the Oedipus does not apply to women. Vitz claims that it is either a poor relationship with the father
or the mother that causes unbelief. As a result of a poor relationship with either parent the daughter
generalizes her disgust to all men, including God. As a result these women become feminists and Vitz
claims feminists are lesbians because they need to fill their man void with the love of a woman. Vitz
attempts to include Ayn Rand among his list of lesbian feminists. However, according to her biography,
Rand was not a lesbian and she had a great admiration for men which was so evident in her novels. Vitz
explains this contradiction by exclaiming that she created an ideal man who was not God therefore her
Atheism is explained. However what Vitz misses is that everyone, male and female, has their ideal mate in
mind. For men it may be Pamela Anderson, for women it may be Brad Pitt.
Even a poor relationship with a parent is not enough to explain Atheism. Vitz includes his own
autobiographical except of his brief experiment with Atheism as evidence. Although he does not mention
his relationship with his parents he concludes that people chose Atheism for superficial reasons. These
reasons are the desire to be an individual who wants to be a part of a group. That would essentially apply
to every reason why any person, not just Atheists, has an identity. Either they want to be their own person,
outside a group norm, or they want to fit into a group norm. The other reason Vitz gives for his Atheism is
out of convenience. Atheists are just too lazy to give the commitment of time to be a proper Christian.
Vitz entails not only what it takes to be an Atheist but what it takes to be a Christian. Vitz inadvertently
declares that only Christians who regularly attend church (not just on Sunday), read their Bible regularly,
and donate time to charitable activities. Vitz, not surprisingly, could not make this time commitment while
working for his Ph.D. so he concluded that he was an Atheist, not because he did not believe in God.
According to research conducted by Altmeyer and Hunsberger (Altmeyer & Hunsberger, 1997) people are
most likely to become Atheists because they critically analyzed the issues in religion, and the answers to
their questions provided by clergy and parents were unsatisfactory. In the conducted interviews none of the
respondents brought up issues of a defective father, desire to be God, or the selfish reasons Vitz became an
Atheist. This is not surprising since Vitz selected those Atheists at random which would satisfy his
hypothesis. He did not, like Hunsberger and Altmeyer, gather Atheists at random and bother to ask them
why they became an Atheist. Vitz behaves like a middle age witch hunter searching for any mark on a
woman’s body so he can cry, “See I told you she was a witch!”
Recognizing the weakness of relying solely on the Defective Father Theory by observing the
biographies of such “Atheists” as Karl Marx and Denis Diderot who had good relationships with their
father Vitz proposes another explanation, birth order. Vitz cites the research of Frank Sulloway where birth
order was correlated with challenging beliefs held by parents. Marx and Diderot were not the first born and
therefore that is a reasonable explanation for why they became Atheists. However he fails to apply this
explanation to all his chosen Atheists and Christians, only those which were exceptions to his proposed
defective father hypothesis. Even in his examples of Christians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who happened to
be the sixth of eight children, Vitz’s alternative explanation does not appear to apply. It appears Vitz is just
using birth order to fill in any gaps in his theories, but manages to succeed in producing more holes in his
desperation to explain Atheism.
Paul Vitz’s novel will appeal to those people who seek a secular confirmation of their disgust
towards Atheists. The same groups who find creationism scientific will find Vitz’s psychoanalytic treatise
scientific. Had Vitz bothered to test his theories empirically or open them up to peer review, or even look
up the definition of Atheist in a dictionary he would have to abandon them in favor of searching for a
reasonable explanation to Atheism. Yet for ten years Vitz actively avoiding participating in a professional,
scientific manner informs the public that his true purpose for writing the book was simply to demean
Atheists as a product of family or mental dysfunction.

Reference:

Altemery, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1997). Amazing Conversions: Why Some Turn to Faith & Other Abandon Religion. New York: Prometheus Books.

Mageth

Thanks, DougI. A revealing article, and it solidified the opinion of Vitz's work I formed from listening to him.

Perhaps at the core of it is a desire to direct the "cause" of atheism to a sin source (weak or absent fathers - obviously a result of sinfulness in America!) rather than at a rational source - as you said, "because they critically analyzed the issues in religion, and the answers to their questions provided by clergy and parents [and I would add, through self-study and thought] were unsatisfactory."

[ June 12, 2002: Message edited by: Mageth ]</p>

babelfish

I'd really love to see some actual research done in this area, just to satisfy my curiosity.

Not that it really matters, in the end. Atheism/theism are not valid/invalid nonbelief/belief systems simply because of how one arrives at them.

Choy Lee Mu

My father was a VERY strong theist, not abusive in the least, and I turned out to be an atheist.

Has anyone done a study on intelligence and it's effects on people regardless of the "faith of their fathers"?

-Choy Lee Mu