Bluenose

Guess what that site is ???????

The linked page says Leadership University and shows what appear to be academic departments and stuff on the left menu.

BUT under other sites we find that Leadership "U" is the home of Johnson, Dembski, the Faculty Ministry of Campus Crusade for X, NARF et c.

I bookmarked it so I can find the original sources of what some of those people have to say.

Thanks Jayjay for a most valuable link.

[ November 23, 2002: Message edited by: Bluenose ]</p>

Vorkosigan

Vitz's stuff is all horseshit designed to provide psychological props for Christian believers. Consider that there are millions of Buddhists who are also atheists. Would you argue that they all have problems with their fathers?

Besides, if you want troubled families, look to Christians. When was the last time an atheist in the States grabbed a gun and blew away his family and hisself. Those dudes are almost always conservative religious nuts. Ditto for child molestation, which is much higher in conservative religious families...and many other similar behaviors.

LordSnooty

Love the way it attempts to pose as a serious academic document, and then gradually decends into insane religious ranting. Check out the last few sentences.

That stuff gives me the creeps.

Goliath

I am an atheist. I am not rebelling against any god, because I do not believe that any god exists. Furthermore, I did not have a bad relationship with my father.

The author of the article in the OP is therefore demonstrably wrong.

Sincerely,

Goliath

southernhybrid

As a female atheist, I found that article to be a pile of sexist psycho-babble. It's amazing the lengths that some people will go to try and justify their theist beliefs. I relate better to my Xian father than my two Xian siblings do. I wonder what that means.

Walter_Mitty

Meadow muffins! It was the rational arguments that started me to doubt. It was the nonrational religious conditioning that made it very hard to accept those arguments.

Too bad he didn't think back to Pscyhology 101 and remember the dangers of "generalizing" a whole population. Perhaps they didn't cover that at Stanford?

Too bad he didn't reflect back to his first class on experimental design.

I find it ironic that someone with a background in pschology, somone who should be familiar with the scientific method, tosses all that training aside and presupposes "God" on his hypothesis.


[ November 24, 2002: Message edited by: Bibliophile ]</p>

Frivolous

No. Not that i have heard of. Apart from just now.

Hubble head

I think you hit the nail right square on the head. Young boys/men with bad or absent fathers soon realize that their success in life depends more on their own personal interpretations, lessons and experiences since that child knows he cannot learn from said parent.

I'd bet his argument could easily be transposed to some atheist women and their mothers too.

It also seems as if he's trying to suggest famous non theists were atheist for reasons similar to his own and, therefore, because it worked that way in his little mind he wants readers to infer that those guys were not smart enough to come to his conclusions before they died.

As others here said, real mental-health professionals don't use themselves as a means to explain everything about everyone else. That's why the profession requires a difficult to obtain degree.

Also makes me wonder if he's not one of those scientists who realize they are going nowhere in their field so they create scientific sounding works for the religionists who need to hear it so bad from someone pretending to be reputable they'll pay dearly for it.

This guy is a crook or another wack job tool-boy whose psych diplomas should be rescinded.


[ November 24, 2002: Message edited by: science ]</p>

Jayjay

The Oedipus complex argument was probably intended as refutation of Freud's psychoanalysis of religious behaviour, and though I have no knowledge apart from this article what Freud thought about it, I think that mr. Vitz's reasoning is fairly sensible. However, that's akin to atheists pointing out the absurdities of bible stories despite the fact that most consider they to be unhistorical fairy tales anyway... he accepts Freud's premises only for the purposes of refuting Freud, and later alludes that he doesn't really agree with Freud anyway (naturally, he won't go into detail). And neither do I, by the way.

The "defective father" theory is what his real argument is all about, which is perhaps why it was the weakest part of the whole article.

Biff the unclean

Wait a minute.
Who would be more likely to invent an invisible super father to begin with?
Would it be a person who already had a perfectly good Dad or one who did not?

Seems to me that the reason to reject fantasy father is because your real life old man isn't being rebelled against. You would have no need of the ficticous.