Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism

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More About This Book

Editorial Reviews

Booknews
Vitz (psychology, New York U.), an atheist himself until his 30s, exposes atheism to the same psychological analysis atheistic apologists have used to debunk religious belief. Beginning with Freud's notion that belief in God is a product of humanity's desire for security, he argues that psychoanalysis is actually a better explanation for denial of God, concluding that the absence of a good father is at the core of militant atheism. Surveys of the leading intellectual defenders of atheism and Christianity, show that the atheists had "defective fathers" while the believers did not. Vitz does not intend to suggest that atheism is psychologically determined, but rather hopes to counteract the idea that irrational psychological factors lead one to believe in God. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781890626259
  • Publisher: Spence Publishing Company
  • Publication date: 4/28/2000
  • Pages: 194
  • Product dimensions: 11.34 (w) x 3.76 (h) x 0.27 (d)

Table of Contents

Preface xi
1 Intense Atheism 3
The Projection Theory of Belief in God 6
Freud's Unacknowledged Theory of Unbelief 9
A New Theory of Atheism: The Defective Father Hypothesis 15
2 Atheists and Their Fathers 17
Dead Fathers 20
Friedrich Nietzsche 20
David Hume 25
Bertrand Russell 26
Jean-Paul Sartre 28
Albert Camus 31
Arthur Schopenhauer 32
Abusive and Weak Fathers 34
Thomas Hobbes 34
Jean Meslier 36
Voltaire 38
Jean d'Alembert 40
Baron d'Holbach 42
Ludwig Feuerbach 43
Samuel Butler 44
Sigmund Freud 47
H. G. Wells 48
Minor Atheists 51
John Toland 51
Richard Carlile 53
Robert Taylor 54
Contemporary Atheists 54
Madalyn Murray O'Hair 54
Albert Ellis 55
3 Theists and Their Fathers 58
Blaise Pascal 59
George Berkeley 60
Joseph Butler 62
Thomas Reid 62
Edmund Burke 64
Moses Mendelssohn 67
William Paley 69
William Wilberforce 69
Francois Rene de Chateaubriand 71
Friedrich Schleiermacher 72
John Henry Newman 73
Alexis de Tocqueville 75
Samuel Wilberforce 77
Soren Kierkegaard 78
Baron Friedrich von Hugel 81
G. K. Chesterton 82
Albert Schweitzer 85
Martin Buber 86
Karl Barth 88
Dietrich Bonhoeffer 89
Abraham Heschel 91
4 Extensions and Qualifications 94
Substitute Fathers 94
Don Bosco 95
Hilaire Belloc 98
Walker Percy 100
Political Atheists 104
Joseph Stalin 104
Adolf Hitler 105
Mao Zedong 107
The Atheist Father as a Positive Influence 107
Men and Women: Some Differences 109
Simone de Beauvoir 113
Ayn Rand 116
Jill Johnston 118
Kate Millett 120
Exceptions 122
Denis Diderot 122
Karl Marx 124
Other Psychologies of Unbelief 126
5 Superficial Atheism: A Personal Account 130
General Socialization 134
Specific Socialization 135
Personal Independence 136
Personal Convenience 136
Another Exemplary Case 137
6 Conclusions 139
Intelligence, Ambition, and Will 140
The Complete Model 143
Notes 149
Index 166
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Sort by: Showing all of 5 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted December 4, 2004

    I'd give it zero stars if I could

    Without doing any research involving atheists whatsoever, Paul Vitz writes a book that has no basis in reality--except, perhaps, his own. It's yet another attempt by people with an agenda to pigeonhole atheists into a stereotype that doesn't apply. If you really want to learn something about atheists, I recommend meeting them.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 26, 2002

    Good Read

    Really enjoyable book, although I caution atheists to leave pride "at the door." Dr.Vitz makes a compelling argument that atheism is quite possibly the result of a poor family life and a lack of a father figure. No doubt this book will anger many atheists as no one likes to have there beliefs challenged or said to be incorrect. However if you would like to see atheism get some of its own medicine, then I think you will find this book to be quite enjoyable.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 16, 2002

    Atheism? Not likely...

    It is not actually a book about any atheists. The three most notable examples are: Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong. Hitler certainly was not an atheist by any stretch of the imagination. Nice try, but assigning the three greatest murder's in history to the atheist camp is bogus. Mao wouldn't have understood the distinction. Once again as other reviewers have noted, anyone not a monotheist Christian is an atheist by this guy's definition. Hardly a working definition. Most importantly the whole Freudian analysis angle is weird. He is neither academically or professionally qualified to render an opinion in that area. The 'missing father' syndrome simply does not hold up. I have read the biographies and autobiographies of many of his case studies and find no consistancies between them. Their sole unifying characteristic has been free thinking.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 1, 2000

    Typical

    This book does nothing but further convince me that people who are not atheists simply have no idea what an atheist actually is. I suppose that I find nothing surprising about that, but I figured this book might have told me something about myself while it only tries to further the Chrisitian doctrines. Jibberish, nonsense.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 27, 2008

    No text was provided for this review.

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