WR Philosophy 2E Religious belief as a product of the human mind (Carl Jung)

3 parts of the psyche

Conscious mind- ego

Personal unconscious- repressed memories

Collective unconscious

Collective unconscious

Ideas from the earliest human experience, the oldest part of the psyche, and predates individual humans that comes from our ancestors- source of religious ideas

Archetypes

Come from collective unconscious- blueprints/ plans for human behaviour that manifest in myths, dreams, and religious symbols across cultures.

They explain similar ideas found around the world, e.g. the association with God and light.

Persona archetype

mask- self we project out into the world to be socially acceptable

Shadow archetype

less moral side to our behaviourthat represents repressed weaknesses, desires, and instincts in individuals.

Anima archetype

the feminine inner personality present in men, representing emotionality and intuition.

Animus archetype

the masculine inner personality present in women, representing rationality and assertiveness.

Self archetype

the unification of the conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche, representing the true self and wholeness.

God archetype

the universal image of the divine that reflects humanity's spiritual aspirations and beliefs, symbolizing the ultimate source of meaning and existence.

Individuation

A process of balancing the psyche, archetypes and creating good mental health, it is a quest to find “the God within”

Jung saw it as a religious process that requires mandalas and religious imagery to be achieved as they prompt self reflection and looking inward

Individuation stages

>35- mask for outward social presentation

35-40- Archetypes become balanced, let mask go and accept shadow to achieve individuation

God within

Jung says that all ideas about God come from the psyche

God is archetypal, humans create religious figures in their collective unconscious e.g Jesus and Buddha being generated in the collective unconcious and not being real historical people

Support- WW1 veterans

Jung says that individuals who lost their religion during the war had worse mental health than those who continued to believe- it caused those individuals anxiousness because they have lost their place in the world

Support- Eastern religions

Jung says that eastern religions are better for our mental health because they encourage meditation and inward reflection whereas western religions look at the outward source of existence and are more extroverted

Support- Community

Places like church and communal worship provide community and help people who have poor mental health

Support- dream analysis

Could be said that Jung has empirical evidence as he used dream analysis to identify common themes across different people/ cultures. He had a dream where God took a dump on a church in Switzerland, and interpreted it as God not liking organised worship and preferred inward reflection

Support- provides comfort

Religion is comforting because it stops the fear of death

Challenge- Reductionist

Reduces religion to being a product of the human mind, reduces God to an archetype and Christ becomes just an image of Wholeness, but to believers they are much more significant and real than that

Challenge- Lack of empirical evidence- not based on objective scientific evidence

Based on a subjective interpretation of human experience e.g. dream- dream analysis doesn’t have empirical evidence to support it

Challenge- Lack of empirical evidence- Claims we can never know if God exists

This depends on the assumption that we can never know any entity outside the physical world. We can never know whether religious experience is real or if it has just come from the mind but religious believers would reject this entirely.

Challenge- Martin Buber

Doubts religious experience comes from archetypes

Challenge- Atheism

Many people don’t believe in God, Jung responds by saying that Atheism is a form of religion in itself. Because he’s twisted the theory it is unfalsifiable and makes it unscientific.

Challenge- No evidence that common myths come from archetypes

It could just be down to humans having similar life experiences e.g. early civilisations deifying weather because it helped food grow