Religion and Psychology Freud s various theories about the origins and nature of religion are presented in Totem and Taboo , The Future of an Illusion , and Moses and Monotheism . Freud's basic approach to religion is through his analysis of the psychological structure of the human person, together with the assumption that if you can produce a sufficient explanation of religion without invoking God, then you ought not invoke God. The explanation of religion without reference to God does not imply that there is no God, or that traditional theological assertions are necessarily false. But Freud argued against those assertions independently. The real interest in Freud, and the real challenge to theology, however, lies in his alternative explanation of religion.
Religion is thus illusion.
More than this, however, religion is dangerous. Consider the religious belief in God as a perfect father this is in compensation for our own imperfect fathers. But then belief in God perpetuates the infantile longing for a perfectly loving, comfortable parental figure. Religion, in other words, retards human development. It also interferes with the larger goal of attaining human maturity, because science aims to be clear about what is real and what is illusion, and religion systematically blurs this distinction.