What do you think?
Rate this book
The Authenticity of Faith: The Varieties and Illusions of Religious Experience
A psychologist tests Freud's claims that faith is a form of wishful thinking and belief in God a consoling illusion.
Is faith simply a form of wishful thinking? Is belief in God merely a consoling illusion? So argued Sigmund Freud in The Future of an Illusion. And the force of Freud's argument continues to be felt as it features prominently among critics of religion such as the New Atheists.
But was Freud right? Until now, few have directly examined the plausibility of Freud's argument. But here, in a groundbreaking analysis inspired by the religious types described by William James in his seminal The Varieties of Religious Experience, Richard Beck explores the motivational dynamics among ''summer Christians'' and ''winter Christians.'' Further, across a variety of laboratory studies, Beck examines how Christians variously engage with art (exploring what Beck has dubbed ''The Thomas Kinkade Effect''), doctrine (from the Incarnation to beliefs regarding the activity of the devil), and religious difference in a pluralistic world. In each instance, Beck analyzes the underlying motivations of the religious types, sifting through the varieties and illusions of religious experience.
The Authenticity of Faith presents a radical ''New Apologetics,'' an attempt to move beyond contentious philosophical and theological disputes to examine the scientific merits of Freud's critique of faith. Here is an unlikely journey--the scientific search for an authentic faith; the outcome is sure to inspire reflection, conversation, and debate among believers and skeptics alike.
Is faith simply a form of wishful thinking? Is belief in God merely a consoling illusion? So argued Sigmund Freud in The Future of an Illusion. And the force of Freud's argument continues to be felt as it features prominently among critics of religion such as the New Atheists.
But was Freud right? Until now, few have directly examined the plausibility of Freud's argument. But here, in a groundbreaking analysis inspired by the religious types described by William James in his seminal The Varieties of Religious Experience, Richard Beck explores the motivational dynamics among ''summer Christians'' and ''winter Christians.'' Further, across a variety of laboratory studies, Beck examines how Christians variously engage with art (exploring what Beck has dubbed ''The Thomas Kinkade Effect''), doctrine (from the Incarnation to beliefs regarding the activity of the devil), and religious difference in a pluralistic world. In each instance, Beck analyzes the underlying motivations of the religious types, sifting through the varieties and illusions of religious experience.
The Authenticity of Faith presents a radical ''New Apologetics,'' an attempt to move beyond contentious philosophical and theological disputes to examine the scientific merits of Freud's critique of faith. Here is an unlikely journey--the scientific search for an authentic faith; the outcome is sure to inspire reflection, conversation, and debate among believers and skeptics alike.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 10, 2012
16 people are currently reading
206 people want to read
About the author
Richard Beck
8 books117 followersDr. Richard Beck is a Professor of Psychology at Abilene Christian University, and he is the author of the popular blog Experimental Theology: The Thoughts, Articles and Essays of Richard Beck and the books The Slavery of Death, Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality and The Authenticity of Faith: The Varieties and Illusions of Religious Experience. As an experimental psychologist and a practicing Christian, he attempts in his writing "to integrate theology with the experimental social sciences."
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 25, 2020
Surely the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries have done for religion, you might think. Haven't Freud, Darwin and Marx forever shattered the illusion that religious beliefs connect with a real world of God/gods and the Spirit/spirits? Religion serves, in their various accounts, as a psychological coping mechanism, an evolutionary adaptation to engender obedience and cooperation, and/or as an opiate to quell the inchoate revolutionary fervour of the masses.
Richard Beck’s apologetic (he is a Christian psychologist, author as well as prolific – and consistently interesting – blogger) for religious belief in the face of these critiques is simple. Admit it all.
Beck agrees with Freud, Darwin and Marx, that religious belief serves biological, psychological and social functions for many believers, and perhaps for many it can even be reduced to these functions. Beck, indeed, is as trenchant a critic of this mode of optimistic, triumphalist, self-protective religious belief as any of these Nineteenth and Twentieth Century champions of atheism – or, indeed, as any of the Biblical prophets who have made many of the same points as emissaries of the God Freud, Marx and Darwin are supposed to have dismissed or dethroned.
With a particular focus on Freud, Beck, though, argues that the critiques of these "cultured despisers" are challenged – perhaps even undone entirely – by the existence of religious believers for whom their beliefs most emphatically offer challenge, rather than comfort.
Drawing on William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience (as you might imagine from the title), Beck uses his own and others' empirical research to demonstrate the existence of believers for whom their faith does not, and cannot, be reduced to the management of existential terror. Far from conforming to the comforting or numbing stereotypes of Freud or Marx, Beck asserts,
It's a good read, although Beck has a tendency to overelaborate some of his points, and to needlessly recapitulate and summarise arguments already made. Perhaps this serves the inattentive reader, but it came to feel to me more a technique adopted to meet the word count imposed by his publisher. Further, it's not entirely clear to me that the apologetic Beck mounts is actually sustained by his argument. While it is true that there are believers for whom the almost caricatured perspectives of Freud (or Marx or Darwin) would not hold true, that is not to say that the reason for this disconfirmation relates to the truth of their belief. To be fair, Beck also admits this. The book doesn't attempt a proof of God, nor even a stirring apologetic, as much as an empirical testing of the limits of the received wisdom regarding religion as a crutch, a distraction, or an opiate.
For "summer Christians", I would recommend this book as a tool to examine ways in which faith is used to preserve cherished self-identities or protect oneself from an honest acknowledgement of pain, injustice and terror in God's world. For "winter Christians", it's an informative exploration of
the experience of believing messily. For today's "cultured despisers" of religion, it's a call to question their own dogmatic certainties.
And, perhaps, for all of us it's a call to move more deeply into an experience of pain over the suffering in the world and, from that experience, move into a way of being and believing and acting which expresses itself, finally, in love.
Richard Beck’s apologetic (he is a Christian psychologist, author as well as prolific – and consistently interesting – blogger) for religious belief in the face of these critiques is simple. Admit it all.
Beck agrees with Freud, Darwin and Marx, that religious belief serves biological, psychological and social functions for many believers, and perhaps for many it can even be reduced to these functions. Beck, indeed, is as trenchant a critic of this mode of optimistic, triumphalist, self-protective religious belief as any of these Nineteenth and Twentieth Century champions of atheism – or, indeed, as any of the Biblical prophets who have made many of the same points as emissaries of the God Freud, Marx and Darwin are supposed to have dismissed or dethroned.
With a particular focus on Freud, Beck, though, argues that the critiques of these "cultured despisers" are challenged – perhaps even undone entirely – by the existence of religious believers for whom their beliefs most emphatically offer challenge, rather than comfort.
Drawing on William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience (as you might imagine from the title), Beck uses his own and others' empirical research to demonstrate the existence of believers for whom their faith does not, and cannot, be reduced to the management of existential terror. Far from conforming to the comforting or numbing stereotypes of Freud or Marx, Beck asserts,
that some Christian believers can and often do refuse to allow their beliefs to hide or repress the uglier and more existentially ambiguous aspects of life. Existentially speaking, these believers are willing to suffer psychically in order to be more honest about the moral asymmetry, evil, suffering, and apparent absurdity of life. To be sure, this honesty places an intense strain upon faith. But as we have seen, these experiences are not antithetical to faith.As he pursues this case, there are wonderful, affirming descriptions of a kind of Christian faith that is the antithesis of the certainty and triumphalism often represented in mainstream media (and yes, the work is very much oriented towards Christians despite the generic "religious experience" of the title). James referred to them (us) as "sick souls". Beck likes the term "winter Christians".
I think the sick soul is willing to live in between faith and unfaith, belief and disbelief, because this is the only way they can remain truthful to their lived experience. The pieces of life and the life of faith are not so easily fit together. There are gaps, there are missing pieces, and someone has taken away the puzzle box showing us the grand scheme of things.Although, it should be noted, Beck is clear that this is not merely an experience of doubt, however long-lived, but rather a way of living with faith in the face of life's tensions.
It's a good read, although Beck has a tendency to overelaborate some of his points, and to needlessly recapitulate and summarise arguments already made. Perhaps this serves the inattentive reader, but it came to feel to me more a technique adopted to meet the word count imposed by his publisher. Further, it's not entirely clear to me that the apologetic Beck mounts is actually sustained by his argument. While it is true that there are believers for whom the almost caricatured perspectives of Freud (or Marx or Darwin) would not hold true, that is not to say that the reason for this disconfirmation relates to the truth of their belief. To be fair, Beck also admits this. The book doesn't attempt a proof of God, nor even a stirring apologetic, as much as an empirical testing of the limits of the received wisdom regarding religion as a crutch, a distraction, or an opiate.
For "summer Christians", I would recommend this book as a tool to examine ways in which faith is used to preserve cherished self-identities or protect oneself from an honest acknowledgement of pain, injustice and terror in God's world. For "winter Christians", it's an informative exploration of
the experience of believing messily. For today's "cultured despisers" of religion, it's a call to question their own dogmatic certainties.
And, perhaps, for all of us it's a call to move more deeply into an experience of pain over the suffering in the world and, from that experience, move into a way of being and believing and acting which expresses itself, finally, in love.
May 24, 2014
In December 1927, the New York Times announced that Freud had doomed religion with his book The Future of an Illusion. In The Authenticity of Faith: the Varieties and Illusions of Religious Experience, psychologist and professing Christian Richard Beck evaluates this claim. Beck points out that Freud did not debunk religion by refuting the classical proofs of God’s existence but by arguing that religion was ego-centric wishful thinking that we must outgrow. We could respond by suggesting that atheism is wishful thinking; a wish not to be accountable to God. There is that but there is much value in taking Freud’s critique seriously to see if it holds up to Christianity as it is actually lived which is what Beck does.
Beck turns to Ernest Becker to evaluate Freud’s thesis. Becker (the focus of Beck’s book Slavery to Death) argued that denial of death was a prime motivation in human behavior, leading us to seek “heroic” acts levels to stave off the reality of death, an example of what Freud called sublimation. It happens that there have been many scientific studies of Becker’s thesis by his followers and they tend to show that the more one is reminded of mortality, the more rigidly one defends one’s worldview and denigrates others. This applies to any worldview, not just Christianity.
Beck then brings in the Psalms of lamentation (a large chunk of the Psalter) and the spiritual darkness that Mother Teresa admitted to as counter-indications that wishful thinking is the only dynamic in Christianity. Beck could just as easily have brought in St. John of the Cross who wrote about “the dark night of the soul.” Beck then turns to William James who pre-dated Freud in his scientific study of religious experience that was published in The Varieties of Religious Experience. James distinguished between “healthy-minded” believers and “sick souls.” The terms are misleading in that “healthy-mindedness” is superficial and leads to denial of life’s difficulties and so is not really that healthy. Meanwhile, “sick souls” wrestle with cognitive dissonance and inner darkness in a way that makes them more resilient and authentic in the long run. The Psalmist of lament, Mother Teresa and St. John of the Cross would be “sick souls.” Beck notes that the charges Freud and Becker make about wishful believers applies well to what James called the “healthy-minded” but not at all to the “sick souls.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous distinction between “cheap grace” and “costly grace” seems to fit James’ distinction quite well.
Since there had been no scientific investigations of James’ categories, Beck has filled this gap with his own field work. First, participants were given a questionnaire to give ratings as to how “healthy-minded” or “sick-souled” they were and then they were given a task such as to evaluate an essay by a Christian and one by a Buddhist. Not surprisingly, the “healthy-minded” respondents denigrated the Buddhist while the “sick souls” were much more tolerant in their attitudes. The same result came with tests on comfort with the Incarnation (such as whether one admits Jesus might have had diarrhea) or evaluating two works of art, one imaging healthy-mindedness, the other more focused on life’s pain. In each case, there was strong confirmation of James’ distinction of different believers.
It is worth mentioning René Girard’s theory of the origin of religion in collective violence in this context. Girard does not think that early humans wished for pie in the sky and then made up a religion to get it. Rather, they responded to social crises by killing or expelling a victim. The camaraderie that resulted from this act and the institutionalization of sacrifice was the payoff. In fact, belief in a heavenly afterlife is quite a latecomer in world religion. The social solidarity of collective violence can easily be achieved these days without a deity. Freud himself made a dogma of his ideas and expelled all dissenters. In Girard’s thinking, it is the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ suffering and death that expose sacred violence for what it is. Girard’s thought adds weight to the correlation between being “healthy-minded” and prone to expelling those who differ. Beck does not say anything about the Paschal Mystery, but the cross at the center of Christianity should be enough to suggest that Christianity has its own built-in critique of wish-fulfillment in Freud’s sense or “healthy-minded” religion in James’ sense. One need only read the Epistles of Paul to see this self-critique at the origins of Christianity. I think Beck would agree since he sees a much deeper love among the “sick souls” than among the “healthy-minded” and he notes that in 1 Corinthians Paul says that love is the greatest virtue of all.
Beck’s exploration of Freud and James is of great importance for coming to grips with a theological anthropology and pointing in the direction of authentic faith and genuine spirituality.
Beck turns to Ernest Becker to evaluate Freud’s thesis. Becker (the focus of Beck’s book Slavery to Death) argued that denial of death was a prime motivation in human behavior, leading us to seek “heroic” acts levels to stave off the reality of death, an example of what Freud called sublimation. It happens that there have been many scientific studies of Becker’s thesis by his followers and they tend to show that the more one is reminded of mortality, the more rigidly one defends one’s worldview and denigrates others. This applies to any worldview, not just Christianity.
Beck then brings in the Psalms of lamentation (a large chunk of the Psalter) and the spiritual darkness that Mother Teresa admitted to as counter-indications that wishful thinking is the only dynamic in Christianity. Beck could just as easily have brought in St. John of the Cross who wrote about “the dark night of the soul.” Beck then turns to William James who pre-dated Freud in his scientific study of religious experience that was published in The Varieties of Religious Experience. James distinguished between “healthy-minded” believers and “sick souls.” The terms are misleading in that “healthy-mindedness” is superficial and leads to denial of life’s difficulties and so is not really that healthy. Meanwhile, “sick souls” wrestle with cognitive dissonance and inner darkness in a way that makes them more resilient and authentic in the long run. The Psalmist of lament, Mother Teresa and St. John of the Cross would be “sick souls.” Beck notes that the charges Freud and Becker make about wishful believers applies well to what James called the “healthy-minded” but not at all to the “sick souls.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous distinction between “cheap grace” and “costly grace” seems to fit James’ distinction quite well.
Since there had been no scientific investigations of James’ categories, Beck has filled this gap with his own field work. First, participants were given a questionnaire to give ratings as to how “healthy-minded” or “sick-souled” they were and then they were given a task such as to evaluate an essay by a Christian and one by a Buddhist. Not surprisingly, the “healthy-minded” respondents denigrated the Buddhist while the “sick souls” were much more tolerant in their attitudes. The same result came with tests on comfort with the Incarnation (such as whether one admits Jesus might have had diarrhea) or evaluating two works of art, one imaging healthy-mindedness, the other more focused on life’s pain. In each case, there was strong confirmation of James’ distinction of different believers.
It is worth mentioning René Girard’s theory of the origin of religion in collective violence in this context. Girard does not think that early humans wished for pie in the sky and then made up a religion to get it. Rather, they responded to social crises by killing or expelling a victim. The camaraderie that resulted from this act and the institutionalization of sacrifice was the payoff. In fact, belief in a heavenly afterlife is quite a latecomer in world religion. The social solidarity of collective violence can easily be achieved these days without a deity. Freud himself made a dogma of his ideas and expelled all dissenters. In Girard’s thinking, it is the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ suffering and death that expose sacred violence for what it is. Girard’s thought adds weight to the correlation between being “healthy-minded” and prone to expelling those who differ. Beck does not say anything about the Paschal Mystery, but the cross at the center of Christianity should be enough to suggest that Christianity has its own built-in critique of wish-fulfillment in Freud’s sense or “healthy-minded” religion in James’ sense. One need only read the Epistles of Paul to see this self-critique at the origins of Christianity. I think Beck would agree since he sees a much deeper love among the “sick souls” than among the “healthy-minded” and he notes that in 1 Corinthians Paul says that love is the greatest virtue of all.
Beck’s exploration of Freud and James is of great importance for coming to grips with a theological anthropology and pointing in the direction of authentic faith and genuine spirituality.
November 17, 2023
Really interesting but somewhat repetitive book that raises important questions about the role of lament in an authentic Christian faith experience. Would be interested to find out how intelligence impacts whether or not one would classify as a “sick soul.”
November 24, 2021
I just finished "The Authenticity of Faith: The Varieties and Illustrations of Religious Experience," by Richard Beck.
First off is you've not read Beck yet then you're missing out. Just stop and go buy "Stranger God" and "Reviving Old Scratch" now. I'll wait.
This is a fantastic book but be forewarned, if it were a tree I summarize the trunk; there are massive branches in here that are awesome but would take up too much room.
So I am a fan of Beck who is of the Restoration Movement and Abilene Christian U psych Prof with no social media accounts (not bitter at all...but if you have his number text him and let him know my concern on this matter). This is his first academic work I've read and it is along the psychological and religious line.
An opening quote by Abraham Heschel says "We are in greater need for proof of authentic faith than a proof for the existence of God." This sets the tone for the goal of the book "Why do people believe in God?" p 15. Which is the God question from thinkers like Marx, Darwin and Freud. Historically apologetics has dealt with "does God exist and how do you know?" This is an epistemological approach which deals with one's foundation of knowledge: how do you know what you know? But Marx critique that religion is the opiate of the masses isn't necessarily speaking about if God exists or not but what human oriented worship of God does. It is a shift from reasons to function, says Beck. So the shift--in Marx, Freud and Darwin--has been that the church (mosque, temple, etc) exists not because of its Justification, as is answered by apologetics, but because of its social function it serves. This raises another question, "why is life after death attractive?"
"Is it possible that I believe in the resurrection because I am motivated by a deep and unconscious fear of death?" p 20.
At this point in the conversation religion has become a mechanism to help me cope with my forthcoming demise. To make headway out of this morass we need to have an understanding of how religious belief functions in the mind of the believer.
Yall see the issue? It's really interesting. This account about belief places its origins in human angst (Freud) that evolved (Darwin) to solve an issue that we don't really believe or know we have and yet our having it has kept the simple folk drugged against revolution (Marx). To speak to this Beck will place Freuds work against that of William James in a bare-knuckle cage match to see if religion is the product of mere wishful thinking burried in human psyche.
Out the gate Beck tells us that he believes the modern school of suspicion began with Darwin but only because his theory gave Nietzsche, Freud and Marx the tools to articulate said suspicion (belief in God and an afterlife has evolved in mankind due to human angst of death). Reproduction and differential survival (survival of the fittest) as the mechanism took one from attributing any number of natural marvels like the peacocks tail from the reason or purpose being answered "...for the glory of God and enjoyment of humans...." to one of function (natural selection).
A Freudian example has to do with OCD being a manifestation of ritual (Christian, Hindu, it doesn't matter because his thrust here would pull the foundation of all faith-belief out). In sum the repetitive activity (washing hands over and over) is a means of avoiding punishment or repentance and this is similar to overt religious ritual. The link Freud makes here is just as OCD is seen atypically so is religious ritual; your religion is a sign of sickness; an action of defense motivated by one's neurosis.
Hold on to that and remember how Freud thinks and also places the thrust of his argument at a deeper level than the existence of God; his is at the existence of man creating God to give meaning to all existential crises like the meaning of life, freedom and responsibility, isolation, and death.
At the end of part 1, the evidence of Freud that religion was a comfort in the face of lifes existential crises, Beck reminds us that this was his theory. And not just a theory, Freud was offering us a set of empirical predictions which can be tested in psychological experiments. What we are left with after the experiments backs Freud. We are left with the need for a proof of authentic faith more than anything.
[Shifts gears]
Enter William James:
James wrote Varieties of Religious Experience which were his Giffors lectures for 1901-1902. No punches pulled: therein he notes many things similarly to Freud, that at times religion can serve to assuage existential angst. "If a creed makes a man feel happy, he almost inevitably adopts it." But James ends up moving away from Freud on mostly epistemological (how do you know what you know?) grounds. James was a pragmatist while Freud was a positivist. Freud wanted beliefs to ve scientifically verifiable while James looked to if the view worked, if it got things done. This means that positivists didn't allow metaphysics (the realm of God) but pragmatists did. James suggests a "healthy-minded religious belief" which is healthy because it cures the personal existential angst and yet is glaringly subjective. And then James considers what he called the sick (=angst) soul; these categories are detail Freud left out of his analysis. The healthy soul seeks to minimize evil while the sick soul seeks to maximize (realize it in its full rather than obscure it) evil. The healthy minded believer deal with their existential issues via denial while the sick minded can not swiftly throw off their existential chains; evil is real and they stare it in the face.
So why would one ever be a sick soul? James believes that this is for some the route to the deepest parts of themselves, the "key to their life's significance." But this research also places us back up against Freud and Marx because it is the exactly the antithesis of religion being one's opiate. There is nothing calming about being a sick soul; this is not a religions vacation from life. Rather this is an example of one dealing with death and evil daily, staring it in the face and accepting its existence. Before Marx had religious in one category and claimed "the religious" use religion to remove pain. James claims two categories for "religious" and Marx and Freud spoke to but one.
Now to test this: in Christianity if followers are tested we should see two types emerge, the healthy who, like Freud said, use religion to make them feel better about their existence plight, and the sick soul, who James contends exist beside the healthy and grounds themselves in their faith expression while dealing with their existential angst.
As a young Nun, Mother Teresa entered the institute for the blessed virgin Mary in Ireland. She had reoccurring visitations for the Lord which she wrote out to her archbishop telling her to build in and care for the poor and diseased of India. As soon as she was greenlighted, moved and began to work her previous visits from and closeness to the Lord ceased. She pressed on for forty years finally finding some comfort in her loneliness as closeness, forsakeness as union. Towards the end of her life when she knew she may be a candidate for sainthood she said the following:
"If I ever become a Saint--I will surely be one of 'darkness'," p 124.
We have an example of a sick soul who looked death, disease and poverty in the face while being the hands of Christ in India. She had no religious comfort of ever-presence, nor was she lost in a Marxist "opiate of the masses"; she felt betrayed, lost and forsaken to the point where she ceased praying. Her faith was her source of distress and pain.
Let's approach this difference between the healthy and sick theologically:
The modern church doesn't make room for lament/complaint/protest Psalms. This seems to negatively reinforce that there are no persons in the church dealing with existential angst; if we don't talk about it it will go away/isn't real. When not dealt with as the church the sick soul who is privately dealing with quite a lot of angst feels singular and keeps the problems under lock and key.
For instance, Ps 1 is exestentially comfortable. It suggests reward for the righteous and punishment for the wicked. We may call this a symmetrical universe where the happy sould hears and sees reality reflected back to them. This is not a dishonest Psalm; there are times in life when things work out like that. Mother Teresa went 40 years without a Ps 1 day and there's probably people in the pew beside you like her; there are plenty who won't sit in a pew because Ps 1 all the time is unrealistic, and yet the church seems to lack this insight.
Beside the above is Ps 13 (How long, O Lord...?) where the subject matter is Theodicy (how can a God who is all powerful and loving coexist with evil?). This is an exestentially uncomfortable Psalm asking where is justice? At the end the Psalmist is rescued.
What we see in Ps 13 is that faith and complaint are not antithetical.
Against the above Ps 1 and the end of Ps 13 we have the disassociated Psalm or Lament. This is the domain of the sick soul looking into the abyss. This posits an asymmetrical universe where the faithful doesn't get the good. Beck also points out that the metaphorical language in scripture showing the Divine to human relationship is not always parent to child; scripture utilizes differing forms of relational language to express how the biblical writers experienced God. Just like all relationships on a human to human level often times there is strain and stress in a Divine to human relationship. The sick soul dwells here.
So far the research backs up the following:
"Exestentially speaking, [sick souls] are willing to suffer psychically in order to be more honest about the moral asymmetry, evil, suffering, and apparent absurdity of life. To be sure, this honesty places an interest strain upon faith. But as we have seen, these experiences are not antithetical to faith," p 146.
This is a tough critique for the Freudian and Marxist camp where Religious belief is only to numb one to reality. While some use it for that, such a truncated analysis is partial at best.
Beck moves into how one's theology can express and reflect one's religious experience. Not finding anything in the psychology of religion literature he created the Defensive Theology Scale (DTS) which analyzes one's answer to 22 questions and scores them. The tests questions fall into five categories which have to do with Providence and where the person taking the test falls in regards to a deterministic worldview.
In part 3 Beck gets into tests he has conducted that at their root ask if the (Christian) believer responds uniformly in experiments or not. If uniformly then Freud was right. If not do we find a Jamesian healthy/sick soul dichotomy or something else?
Beck conducted the first study at Abilene Christian University on undergraduates. The filled out the DTS and then were given similar tests as ones which supported Freud but didn't take into account James healthy/sick categories. Those who scored as sick sould, or very existential, showed differently in interaction with death than the happy souls thus showing that the "believer" isn't a homogeneous category and that therein there is variety of believer, as per James. This variety of the healthy and sick souls showed that there are some (healthy) who use religion as an opiate to forget about the pain of life. But also the sick soul "embraces" the angst, or at least spends time looking at it recieving no blinding comfort from their religion.
Can you have a non-narcotic faith?
#TheAuthenticityOfFaith #RichardBeck
#PsychologyOfReligion #AbileneChristianUniversity #AbileneChristian #AbileneChristianUniversityPress #Psychology #ReligiousExperience #RestorationMovement #SigmundFreud #Freud #WilliamJames #KarlMarx #Marx #Darwin #Nietzsche #Existentialism
First off is you've not read Beck yet then you're missing out. Just stop and go buy "Stranger God" and "Reviving Old Scratch" now. I'll wait.
This is a fantastic book but be forewarned, if it were a tree I summarize the trunk; there are massive branches in here that are awesome but would take up too much room.
So I am a fan of Beck who is of the Restoration Movement and Abilene Christian U psych Prof with no social media accounts (not bitter at all...but if you have his number text him and let him know my concern on this matter). This is his first academic work I've read and it is along the psychological and religious line.
An opening quote by Abraham Heschel says "We are in greater need for proof of authentic faith than a proof for the existence of God." This sets the tone for the goal of the book "Why do people believe in God?" p 15. Which is the God question from thinkers like Marx, Darwin and Freud. Historically apologetics has dealt with "does God exist and how do you know?" This is an epistemological approach which deals with one's foundation of knowledge: how do you know what you know? But Marx critique that religion is the opiate of the masses isn't necessarily speaking about if God exists or not but what human oriented worship of God does. It is a shift from reasons to function, says Beck. So the shift--in Marx, Freud and Darwin--has been that the church (mosque, temple, etc) exists not because of its Justification, as is answered by apologetics, but because of its social function it serves. This raises another question, "why is life after death attractive?"
"Is it possible that I believe in the resurrection because I am motivated by a deep and unconscious fear of death?" p 20.
At this point in the conversation religion has become a mechanism to help me cope with my forthcoming demise. To make headway out of this morass we need to have an understanding of how religious belief functions in the mind of the believer.
Yall see the issue? It's really interesting. This account about belief places its origins in human angst (Freud) that evolved (Darwin) to solve an issue that we don't really believe or know we have and yet our having it has kept the simple folk drugged against revolution (Marx). To speak to this Beck will place Freuds work against that of William James in a bare-knuckle cage match to see if religion is the product of mere wishful thinking burried in human psyche.
Out the gate Beck tells us that he believes the modern school of suspicion began with Darwin but only because his theory gave Nietzsche, Freud and Marx the tools to articulate said suspicion (belief in God and an afterlife has evolved in mankind due to human angst of death). Reproduction and differential survival (survival of the fittest) as the mechanism took one from attributing any number of natural marvels like the peacocks tail from the reason or purpose being answered "...for the glory of God and enjoyment of humans...." to one of function (natural selection).
A Freudian example has to do with OCD being a manifestation of ritual (Christian, Hindu, it doesn't matter because his thrust here would pull the foundation of all faith-belief out). In sum the repetitive activity (washing hands over and over) is a means of avoiding punishment or repentance and this is similar to overt religious ritual. The link Freud makes here is just as OCD is seen atypically so is religious ritual; your religion is a sign of sickness; an action of defense motivated by one's neurosis.
Hold on to that and remember how Freud thinks and also places the thrust of his argument at a deeper level than the existence of God; his is at the existence of man creating God to give meaning to all existential crises like the meaning of life, freedom and responsibility, isolation, and death.
At the end of part 1, the evidence of Freud that religion was a comfort in the face of lifes existential crises, Beck reminds us that this was his theory. And not just a theory, Freud was offering us a set of empirical predictions which can be tested in psychological experiments. What we are left with after the experiments backs Freud. We are left with the need for a proof of authentic faith more than anything.
[Shifts gears]
Enter William James:
James wrote Varieties of Religious Experience which were his Giffors lectures for 1901-1902. No punches pulled: therein he notes many things similarly to Freud, that at times religion can serve to assuage existential angst. "If a creed makes a man feel happy, he almost inevitably adopts it." But James ends up moving away from Freud on mostly epistemological (how do you know what you know?) grounds. James was a pragmatist while Freud was a positivist. Freud wanted beliefs to ve scientifically verifiable while James looked to if the view worked, if it got things done. This means that positivists didn't allow metaphysics (the realm of God) but pragmatists did. James suggests a "healthy-minded religious belief" which is healthy because it cures the personal existential angst and yet is glaringly subjective. And then James considers what he called the sick (=angst) soul; these categories are detail Freud left out of his analysis. The healthy soul seeks to minimize evil while the sick soul seeks to maximize (realize it in its full rather than obscure it) evil. The healthy minded believer deal with their existential issues via denial while the sick minded can not swiftly throw off their existential chains; evil is real and they stare it in the face.
So why would one ever be a sick soul? James believes that this is for some the route to the deepest parts of themselves, the "key to their life's significance." But this research also places us back up against Freud and Marx because it is the exactly the antithesis of religion being one's opiate. There is nothing calming about being a sick soul; this is not a religions vacation from life. Rather this is an example of one dealing with death and evil daily, staring it in the face and accepting its existence. Before Marx had religious in one category and claimed "the religious" use religion to remove pain. James claims two categories for "religious" and Marx and Freud spoke to but one.
Now to test this: in Christianity if followers are tested we should see two types emerge, the healthy who, like Freud said, use religion to make them feel better about their existence plight, and the sick soul, who James contends exist beside the healthy and grounds themselves in their faith expression while dealing with their existential angst.
As a young Nun, Mother Teresa entered the institute for the blessed virgin Mary in Ireland. She had reoccurring visitations for the Lord which she wrote out to her archbishop telling her to build in and care for the poor and diseased of India. As soon as she was greenlighted, moved and began to work her previous visits from and closeness to the Lord ceased. She pressed on for forty years finally finding some comfort in her loneliness as closeness, forsakeness as union. Towards the end of her life when she knew she may be a candidate for sainthood she said the following:
"If I ever become a Saint--I will surely be one of 'darkness'," p 124.
We have an example of a sick soul who looked death, disease and poverty in the face while being the hands of Christ in India. She had no religious comfort of ever-presence, nor was she lost in a Marxist "opiate of the masses"; she felt betrayed, lost and forsaken to the point where she ceased praying. Her faith was her source of distress and pain.
Let's approach this difference between the healthy and sick theologically:
The modern church doesn't make room for lament/complaint/protest Psalms. This seems to negatively reinforce that there are no persons in the church dealing with existential angst; if we don't talk about it it will go away/isn't real. When not dealt with as the church the sick soul who is privately dealing with quite a lot of angst feels singular and keeps the problems under lock and key.
For instance, Ps 1 is exestentially comfortable. It suggests reward for the righteous and punishment for the wicked. We may call this a symmetrical universe where the happy sould hears and sees reality reflected back to them. This is not a dishonest Psalm; there are times in life when things work out like that. Mother Teresa went 40 years without a Ps 1 day and there's probably people in the pew beside you like her; there are plenty who won't sit in a pew because Ps 1 all the time is unrealistic, and yet the church seems to lack this insight.
Beside the above is Ps 13 (How long, O Lord...?) where the subject matter is Theodicy (how can a God who is all powerful and loving coexist with evil?). This is an exestentially uncomfortable Psalm asking where is justice? At the end the Psalmist is rescued.
What we see in Ps 13 is that faith and complaint are not antithetical.
Against the above Ps 1 and the end of Ps 13 we have the disassociated Psalm or Lament. This is the domain of the sick soul looking into the abyss. This posits an asymmetrical universe where the faithful doesn't get the good. Beck also points out that the metaphorical language in scripture showing the Divine to human relationship is not always parent to child; scripture utilizes differing forms of relational language to express how the biblical writers experienced God. Just like all relationships on a human to human level often times there is strain and stress in a Divine to human relationship. The sick soul dwells here.
So far the research backs up the following:
"Exestentially speaking, [sick souls] are willing to suffer psychically in order to be more honest about the moral asymmetry, evil, suffering, and apparent absurdity of life. To be sure, this honesty places an interest strain upon faith. But as we have seen, these experiences are not antithetical to faith," p 146.
This is a tough critique for the Freudian and Marxist camp where Religious belief is only to numb one to reality. While some use it for that, such a truncated analysis is partial at best.
Beck moves into how one's theology can express and reflect one's religious experience. Not finding anything in the psychology of religion literature he created the Defensive Theology Scale (DTS) which analyzes one's answer to 22 questions and scores them. The tests questions fall into five categories which have to do with Providence and where the person taking the test falls in regards to a deterministic worldview.
In part 3 Beck gets into tests he has conducted that at their root ask if the (Christian) believer responds uniformly in experiments or not. If uniformly then Freud was right. If not do we find a Jamesian healthy/sick soul dichotomy or something else?
Beck conducted the first study at Abilene Christian University on undergraduates. The filled out the DTS and then were given similar tests as ones which supported Freud but didn't take into account James healthy/sick categories. Those who scored as sick sould, or very existential, showed differently in interaction with death than the happy souls thus showing that the "believer" isn't a homogeneous category and that therein there is variety of believer, as per James. This variety of the healthy and sick souls showed that there are some (healthy) who use religion as an opiate to forget about the pain of life. But also the sick soul "embraces" the angst, or at least spends time looking at it recieving no blinding comfort from their religion.
Can you have a non-narcotic faith?
#TheAuthenticityOfFaith #RichardBeck
#PsychologyOfReligion #AbileneChristianUniversity #AbileneChristian #AbileneChristianUniversityPress #Psychology #ReligiousExperience #RestorationMovement #SigmundFreud #Freud #WilliamJames #KarlMarx #Marx #Darwin #Nietzsche #Existentialism
November 17, 2018
Richard Beck’s book is a masterful attempt at both explaining and addressing the problems with faith that Freud uncovered in "The Future of an Illusion". Beck writes, “The questions prompted by Freud, Darwin and Marx sweep past the issues involved in classical apologetics (i.e., rational justification) to ask questions about the biological, social, and psychological functions of religious belief. Specifically, might religion be doing some sort of useful biological, social, or psychological work for us? Perhaps religion aided in evolutionary survival as an adaptive trait handed down by our ancestors. Perhaps, as Marx suggested, religion is helpful in keeping political order. Or perhaps, following Freud, religion is a defense mechanism, a way of repressing our existential fears in the face of an unpredictable existence and an eventual death. Maybe, in short, religion has a function: a biological, social, and/or psychological role that explains its existence and ubiquity. Religion exists not because of its justifiability but because of the function it serves.”
Beck further acknowledges that “Freud is not simply offering a theory; he is articulating a set of empirical predictions that can be tested in psychological experiments. The ultimate arbiter regarding the argument in The Future of an Illusion is not going to be philosophy or theology. The issues here are empirical.” Beck clearly articulates that Freud has in large part been proven right about the function of faith for many (most) religious people. But the point of this book is to investigate whether that is universally true for all people who have faith, or if there are exceptions to this.
And Beck candidly writes, “In the end, though, this book will not offer a proof for the authenticity of faith. If our apologetical approach is going to lean on psychological science the outcome cannot be determined a priori. The data will be what it will be. So, there is real risk in this approach.”
The book is essentially laying out Freud’s conclusions about the purpose of all faith in the “The Future of an Illusion” and comparing them to “The Varieties of Religious Experience” by William James. The issue at hand is that James, while in large part agreeing with many of Freud’s conclusions, identifies a type of faith that does not fit in Freud’s understanding of all faith. Where James agrees with Freud, he calls those types of people “healthy-minded”. But he identifies a person who does not use faith to manage existential dread, and called that type of person a “sick soul”.
Beck writes, “Based upon empirical psychological research and the biblical narrative, we can readily identify the sick soul and healthy-minded types within the Christian experience, or what I have called summer and winter Christians or believers. If this is the case, it suggests that some Christian believers can and often do refuse to allow their beliefs to hide or repress the uglier and more existentially ambiguous aspects of life. Existentially speaking, these believers are willing to suffer psychically in order to be more honest about the moral asymmetry, evil, suffering, and apparent absurdity of life. To be sure, this honesty places an intense strain upon faith. But as we have seen, these experiences are not antithetical to faith.”
Much research has been done with regard to “Terror Management Theory” (TMT), empirically showing that Freud is right. Faith does in fact function with the purpose of comforting people from existential anxiety. But Beck was unable to find any research that would indicate whether “healthy-minded” folks and “sick soul” folks behave the same way under these tests.
And so, Beck sets out to do the research himself. He has four experiments that he does, where he first separates “healthy-minded” and “sick soul” types, and then proceeds to see how the results might differ. And Beck does indeed find that they differ. And so, Beck demonstrates that it certainly appears that at least some people of faith are not religious for the “biological, social, and/or psychological” functions the Freud suggested.
Beck summarizes it best in his last chapter when he writes,
“I think the sick soul is willing to live in between faith and unfaith, belief and disbelief, because this is the only way they can remain truthful to their lived experience. The pieces of life and the life of faith are not so easily fit together. There are gaps, there are missing pieces, and someone has taken away the puzzle box showing us the grand scheme of things. Or, to use another metaphor, life is experienced as broken glass. Life is experienced as shattered. The puzzle pieces here are shards, bit of brokenness that we try to piece together again into a whole. And as we handle the pieces, we are often cut and wounded. Life resists our attempts at putting the pieces together, intellectually and emotionally.”
“I can only assume that for the sick souls some piece of the puzzle is their experience of God, the Divine, and the transcendent. The movement toward disbelief is untenable for sick souls because it would involve ignoring these pieces within their life experience. And in a similar way, the overall experience of shattered brokenness also prevents a drift toward healthy-minded consolation, the too easy belief that life makes sense, that the pieces of the puzzle are easily fit together. As a result the sick soul lingers, perhaps for a lifetime, in this ambiguous location, holding onto pieces, God among them, that don’t quite fit together.”
“In addition, while the journey of the sick soul is emotionally difficult, many sick souls may eventually come to embrace one of its particular virtues, so much so that the experience of the sick soul might be actively cultivated to reap this potential benefit. Here the sick soul is a way of believing, a mode of living with faith that is sought as an end in itself.”
The book is an incredibly fascinating read. The only complaint I had is that I feel like it could have been a good 25% shorter, because he repeats, summarizes, and restates the important talking pointes multiple times. I found myself skimming the ends of each chapter, because they were not really giving any new information, but were simply restating what he had already articulated.
And while this was a primarily intellectual look at faith through a psychological/apologetic lens, I found his final conclusion compelling in a deeper way. First of all, it appears that the ways in which we use our faith to protect ourselves from existential dread results in some fairly negative end results. For the Christian, some of the empirically proven fruit of using faith in this way appears to be in opposition to plain imperatives in the Bible. And so, this book is helpful in identifying in ourselves the way we may be unconsciously using faith to protect ourselves, rather than truly desiring to know God.
Beck concludes his book by writing, “Perhaps then in the final analysis, faith, dogmatically understood, must be traded for love. Doubts are the burden that believers must carry to keep their eyes opened to the suffering of others. It is as Moltmann (1993) described it, “The more a person believes, the more deeply he experiences pain over the suffering in the world.” What, then, might be the ultimate proof of the authenticity of faith? Perhaps it is as simple as St. Paul suggested in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)”
I highly recommend this book.
Beck further acknowledges that “Freud is not simply offering a theory; he is articulating a set of empirical predictions that can be tested in psychological experiments. The ultimate arbiter regarding the argument in The Future of an Illusion is not going to be philosophy or theology. The issues here are empirical.” Beck clearly articulates that Freud has in large part been proven right about the function of faith for many (most) religious people. But the point of this book is to investigate whether that is universally true for all people who have faith, or if there are exceptions to this.
And Beck candidly writes, “In the end, though, this book will not offer a proof for the authenticity of faith. If our apologetical approach is going to lean on psychological science the outcome cannot be determined a priori. The data will be what it will be. So, there is real risk in this approach.”
The book is essentially laying out Freud’s conclusions about the purpose of all faith in the “The Future of an Illusion” and comparing them to “The Varieties of Religious Experience” by William James. The issue at hand is that James, while in large part agreeing with many of Freud’s conclusions, identifies a type of faith that does not fit in Freud’s understanding of all faith. Where James agrees with Freud, he calls those types of people “healthy-minded”. But he identifies a person who does not use faith to manage existential dread, and called that type of person a “sick soul”.
Beck writes, “Based upon empirical psychological research and the biblical narrative, we can readily identify the sick soul and healthy-minded types within the Christian experience, or what I have called summer and winter Christians or believers. If this is the case, it suggests that some Christian believers can and often do refuse to allow their beliefs to hide or repress the uglier and more existentially ambiguous aspects of life. Existentially speaking, these believers are willing to suffer psychically in order to be more honest about the moral asymmetry, evil, suffering, and apparent absurdity of life. To be sure, this honesty places an intense strain upon faith. But as we have seen, these experiences are not antithetical to faith.”
Much research has been done with regard to “Terror Management Theory” (TMT), empirically showing that Freud is right. Faith does in fact function with the purpose of comforting people from existential anxiety. But Beck was unable to find any research that would indicate whether “healthy-minded” folks and “sick soul” folks behave the same way under these tests.
And so, Beck sets out to do the research himself. He has four experiments that he does, where he first separates “healthy-minded” and “sick soul” types, and then proceeds to see how the results might differ. And Beck does indeed find that they differ. And so, Beck demonstrates that it certainly appears that at least some people of faith are not religious for the “biological, social, and/or psychological” functions the Freud suggested.
Beck summarizes it best in his last chapter when he writes,
“I think the sick soul is willing to live in between faith and unfaith, belief and disbelief, because this is the only way they can remain truthful to their lived experience. The pieces of life and the life of faith are not so easily fit together. There are gaps, there are missing pieces, and someone has taken away the puzzle box showing us the grand scheme of things. Or, to use another metaphor, life is experienced as broken glass. Life is experienced as shattered. The puzzle pieces here are shards, bit of brokenness that we try to piece together again into a whole. And as we handle the pieces, we are often cut and wounded. Life resists our attempts at putting the pieces together, intellectually and emotionally.”
“I can only assume that for the sick souls some piece of the puzzle is their experience of God, the Divine, and the transcendent. The movement toward disbelief is untenable for sick souls because it would involve ignoring these pieces within their life experience. And in a similar way, the overall experience of shattered brokenness also prevents a drift toward healthy-minded consolation, the too easy belief that life makes sense, that the pieces of the puzzle are easily fit together. As a result the sick soul lingers, perhaps for a lifetime, in this ambiguous location, holding onto pieces, God among them, that don’t quite fit together.”
“In addition, while the journey of the sick soul is emotionally difficult, many sick souls may eventually come to embrace one of its particular virtues, so much so that the experience of the sick soul might be actively cultivated to reap this potential benefit. Here the sick soul is a way of believing, a mode of living with faith that is sought as an end in itself.”
The book is an incredibly fascinating read. The only complaint I had is that I feel like it could have been a good 25% shorter, because he repeats, summarizes, and restates the important talking pointes multiple times. I found myself skimming the ends of each chapter, because they were not really giving any new information, but were simply restating what he had already articulated.
And while this was a primarily intellectual look at faith through a psychological/apologetic lens, I found his final conclusion compelling in a deeper way. First of all, it appears that the ways in which we use our faith to protect ourselves from existential dread results in some fairly negative end results. For the Christian, some of the empirically proven fruit of using faith in this way appears to be in opposition to plain imperatives in the Bible. And so, this book is helpful in identifying in ourselves the way we may be unconsciously using faith to protect ourselves, rather than truly desiring to know God.
Beck concludes his book by writing, “Perhaps then in the final analysis, faith, dogmatically understood, must be traded for love. Doubts are the burden that believers must carry to keep their eyes opened to the suffering of others. It is as Moltmann (1993) described it, “The more a person believes, the more deeply he experiences pain over the suffering in the world.” What, then, might be the ultimate proof of the authenticity of faith? Perhaps it is as simple as St. Paul suggested in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)”
I highly recommend this book.
December 5, 2021
“The goal of this book is to answer a question: Why do people believe in God?” – this is the first line of Beck’s book. In particular, the focus is on Sigmund Freud and his classic The Future of an Illusion and whether Freud correct? Freud argues that religion functions as a salve to the struggle of life. Religion is a consolation that turns out to be merely an illusion. We project our hopes and fears and thereby create a loving God that watches over us. In the absurd reality of death, we believe in heaven and one day being reunited with our loved ones. In short, religion is wish fulfillment.
Beck’s argument throughout is not “that faith is necessarily authentic. It will only, in the end, conclude that faith can be authentic – that an authentic faith, while rare, is possible.”
Table of Contents (with added details):
Part 1: Illusions of Religious Experience
1. Masters of Suspicion – Reason is at root a slave of the passions, moral dumbfounding, Darwin, Marx, and Freud.
2. The Future of an Illusion – a deeper look at Freud’s classic book.
3. The Existential Turn
4. Terror Management
Part 2: Varieties of Religious Experience
5. The Two Families
6. Sick Souls, Winter Christians, and Saints of Darkness
7. Defensive and Existential Believers
Part 3: Varieties and Illusions: Four Case Studies
8. Worldview Defense Revisited
9. Feeling Queasy About the Incarnation
10. The Thomas Kinkade Effect – Why Christian Art is usually so bad
11. The God Who Cracked
12. Conclusion: The Authenticity of Faith
For Freud religious belief and ritual is “an action of defense” motivated by illicit, unconscious impulses originating in existential anxiety.
Few authors do I agree with more, and few do I enjoy reading more. This is my third Beck book, and although it’s probably my least favorite of the three (other two are Unclean and Slavery to Death), I just bought two more of his right after finishing this one.
Beck is not one for flowery sentences, and he isn’t immensely quotable. His style of repeating main ideas, summarizing and reviewing, might rub wrongly (it did me), but the ideas shine. I don’t plan on reading this one again, and I felt he could have cut the book in half on word count, but it is one I will treasure. In twenty years, I will remember reading Beck.
Lastly, the book is written from a defensive stance. If apologetics is like a soccer match, this book is played on our side of the field. Beck’s goal here is not to score points – he is never offensive in his argument. In fact, it’s clear Freud is the one who scored. Rather Beck’s hope is merely to keep playing the game. For an honest look at our reasons for faith, you will find no better guide. Beck is insightful, thorough, and nuanced in his arguments.
I will add that I right after finishing Authenticity of Faith, I tore into his newest one, Hunting Magic Eels. It is clear to everyone, including Beck, that he has changed tremendously over those 9 years between books. He no longer takes a defensive posture, and is now able to embrace his faith with confidence. Perhaps, and I need to think more about this, but perhaps Beck isn’t asking the most helpful questions in Authenticity. Without a doubt, I would encourage you to read his other books first.
Also – Beck is one of the most consistent, prolific, and insightful bloggers out there and his book ideas start there first.
Beck’s argument throughout is not “that faith is necessarily authentic. It will only, in the end, conclude that faith can be authentic – that an authentic faith, while rare, is possible.”
Table of Contents (with added details):
Part 1: Illusions of Religious Experience
1. Masters of Suspicion – Reason is at root a slave of the passions, moral dumbfounding, Darwin, Marx, and Freud.
2. The Future of an Illusion – a deeper look at Freud’s classic book.
3. The Existential Turn
4. Terror Management
Part 2: Varieties of Religious Experience
5. The Two Families
6. Sick Souls, Winter Christians, and Saints of Darkness
7. Defensive and Existential Believers
Part 3: Varieties and Illusions: Four Case Studies
8. Worldview Defense Revisited
9. Feeling Queasy About the Incarnation
10. The Thomas Kinkade Effect – Why Christian Art is usually so bad
11. The God Who Cracked
12. Conclusion: The Authenticity of Faith
For Freud religious belief and ritual is “an action of defense” motivated by illicit, unconscious impulses originating in existential anxiety.
Few authors do I agree with more, and few do I enjoy reading more. This is my third Beck book, and although it’s probably my least favorite of the three (other two are Unclean and Slavery to Death), I just bought two more of his right after finishing this one.
Beck is not one for flowery sentences, and he isn’t immensely quotable. His style of repeating main ideas, summarizing and reviewing, might rub wrongly (it did me), but the ideas shine. I don’t plan on reading this one again, and I felt he could have cut the book in half on word count, but it is one I will treasure. In twenty years, I will remember reading Beck.
Lastly, the book is written from a defensive stance. If apologetics is like a soccer match, this book is played on our side of the field. Beck’s goal here is not to score points – he is never offensive in his argument. In fact, it’s clear Freud is the one who scored. Rather Beck’s hope is merely to keep playing the game. For an honest look at our reasons for faith, you will find no better guide. Beck is insightful, thorough, and nuanced in his arguments.
I will add that I right after finishing Authenticity of Faith, I tore into his newest one, Hunting Magic Eels. It is clear to everyone, including Beck, that he has changed tremendously over those 9 years between books. He no longer takes a defensive posture, and is now able to embrace his faith with confidence. Perhaps, and I need to think more about this, but perhaps Beck isn’t asking the most helpful questions in Authenticity. Without a doubt, I would encourage you to read his other books first.
Also – Beck is one of the most consistent, prolific, and insightful bloggers out there and his book ideas start there first.
May 16, 2023
This will turn out to be an important book for me. I like that there is room in this discussion for skepticism and an acknowledgement of how screwed-up everything is.
Turns out these thoughts are not mutually exclusive to a life of faith.
The writing is so clear. The author continually reiterates what has been discussed throughout, but never to the point of belaboring, which is very helpful.
Turns out these thoughts are not mutually exclusive to a life of faith.
The writing is so clear. The author continually reiterates what has been discussed throughout, but never to the point of belaboring, which is very helpful.
February 2, 2021
I appreciate the chain of custody/thought other reviews have called needless repetition that guides logically throughout the entire book.
This was a good reminder that the scope of The Christian experience is easily lost on those who merely want to regulate it to such things as a death coping mechanism.
This was a good reminder that the scope of The Christian experience is easily lost on those who merely want to regulate it to such things as a death coping mechanism.
January 14, 2013
This book is framed as a comparison of Sigmund Freud's view of the purpose of religion with that of William James'. What it ends up being is a thoughtful exploration of existential anxiety and the systems of meaning we build to handle it. Beck explores the assertion that religion is nothing more than a way of dealing with existential anxiety and concludes that while there is a large degree to which religious and non-religious systems of meaning are largely defense mechanisms, there are people who are able to believe in a way that does not turn away from the complications of existence, so to say that religion is nothing more than a defense mechanism is false.
Beck doesn't approach the question of whether or not religions are little more than existential blindfolds to evaluate whether or not religious claims are true. He approaches the question because threats to these meaning systems cause defensiveness which leads to conflict; in essense, this book is an introduction to Beck's Terror Management Theory. To quote the book:
(Note that it is not necessary to have read The Future of An Illusion, The Varieties of Religious Experience, or Becker to follow this book. Beck provides a fair amount of explanation of the sources he builds off of.)
Beck doesn't approach the question of whether or not religions are little more than existential blindfolds to evaluate whether or not religious claims are true. He approaches the question because threats to these meaning systems cause defensiveness which leads to conflict; in essense, this book is an introduction to Beck's Terror Management Theory. To quote the book:
As our world grows smaller and more pluralistic, we are confronted with a bewildering diversity of values, customs, ethical systems, and religious beliefs. ... This daily exposure to alternative hero systems threatens our belief that our particular cultural heroics, our way of life, are eternal and timeless. ... Pluralism hints that worldviews are relative and not timeless and eternal. And if this is so, is anything to be counted on?As we struggle with the fundamentalism we encounter as individuals and as a society, worldview defense is a valuable frame. That, more than anything else, is what makes this book a worthwhile read.
... the mere existence of ideological Others will call your faith into question. How do you know you have the Truth when everyone around you believes something different, and believes they have the Truth as well? Why are you so special?
(Note that it is not necessary to have read The Future of An Illusion, The Varieties of Religious Experience, or Becker to follow this book. Beck provides a fair amount of explanation of the sources he builds off of.)
August 20, 2012
The book is a good introduction to Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory, especially as Becker and TMT relate to religion.
For those familiar with Becker and TMT, I recommend that you skip this book and instead read Beck's relevant journal articles, many of which are available online, all of which are very readable. Read especially:
* Beck, R. (2007). The winter experience of faith: Empirical, theological, and theoretical perspectives. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 26, 68-78.
* Beck, R. (2004). The function of religious belief: Defensive versus existential religion. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 23, 208-218.
* Beck, R. (2006). Defensive versus Existential Religion: Is religious defensiveness predictive of worldview defense? Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34, 142-151.
* Beck, R. (2009). Feeling Queasy about the Incarnation: Terror Management Theory, death, and the body of Jesus. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 36, 303-312.
* Beck, R., McGregor, D., Woodrow, B., Haugen, A. & Killion, K. (2010). Death, art and the Fall: A terror management view of Christian aesthetic judgments. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 29, 301-307.
For those familiar with Becker and TMT, I recommend that you skip this book and instead read Beck's relevant journal articles, many of which are available online, all of which are very readable. Read especially:
* Beck, R. (2007). The winter experience of faith: Empirical, theological, and theoretical perspectives. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 26, 68-78.
* Beck, R. (2004). The function of religious belief: Defensive versus existential religion. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 23, 208-218.
* Beck, R. (2006). Defensive versus Existential Religion: Is religious defensiveness predictive of worldview defense? Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34, 142-151.
* Beck, R. (2009). Feeling Queasy about the Incarnation: Terror Management Theory, death, and the body of Jesus. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 36, 303-312.
* Beck, R., McGregor, D., Woodrow, B., Haugen, A. & Killion, K. (2010). Death, art and the Fall: A terror management view of Christian aesthetic judgments. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 29, 301-307.
May 16, 2013
This book is simultaneously a call for, and an exercise in, a newer form of Christian apologetics. Beck argues that a shift has happened whereby focusing upon the function of religious faith has overtaken the actual contents of religious faith in discussions about the truthfulness of religion. Social science, then, is the new realm which apologetics must focus on.
He outlines Freud's main views on religion, that it functions as an alleviator of existential anxiety, and argues that based on certain social scientific data Freud was largely correct. With a major exception. That Freud only saw part of the picture. Following William James, Beck posits other functions of religion which Freud missed, and executes a variety of social scientific studies in order to test James's hypotheses.
The book's style is very accessible, as Beck constantly provides recaps and roadmaps to keep readers on track. At times such recaps get to be a bit much. It remains to be seen whether other social scientists will take up his call to apply social scientific approaches to religious faith with the sort of variation that James argued for, but it seems like a fruitful project.
He outlines Freud's main views on religion, that it functions as an alleviator of existential anxiety, and argues that based on certain social scientific data Freud was largely correct. With a major exception. That Freud only saw part of the picture. Following William James, Beck posits other functions of religion which Freud missed, and executes a variety of social scientific studies in order to test James's hypotheses.
The book's style is very accessible, as Beck constantly provides recaps and roadmaps to keep readers on track. At times such recaps get to be a bit much. It remains to be seen whether other social scientists will take up his call to apply social scientific approaches to religious faith with the sort of variation that James argued for, but it seems like a fruitful project.
May 5, 2012
Putting William James and Sigmund Freud to the test
A popular strategy among contemporary critics of religion is to explain religiosity as an evolutionary adaptation -- a behavior pattern that exists simply because it helped our early human ancestors thrive. An effective response to this type of argument requires the ability to integrate social scientific research, philosophical viewpoints, and theological beliefs. Using social scientific research, Beck identifies the flaws in Freud's dismissal of religion as a neurotic defense against mortal dread. Instead, Beck draws on the writings of William James to show the complexity of religious belief, which emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual believer. Written in a way that is accessible to readers who aren't trained in social scientific research, but rigorous in meeting the standards of the social sciences, The Authenticity of Faith is a masterful example of the "new apologetics".
A popular strategy among contemporary critics of religion is to explain religiosity as an evolutionary adaptation -- a behavior pattern that exists simply because it helped our early human ancestors thrive. An effective response to this type of argument requires the ability to integrate social scientific research, philosophical viewpoints, and theological beliefs. Using social scientific research, Beck identifies the flaws in Freud's dismissal of religion as a neurotic defense against mortal dread. Instead, Beck draws on the writings of William James to show the complexity of religious belief, which emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual believer. Written in a way that is accessible to readers who aren't trained in social scientific research, but rigorous in meeting the standards of the social sciences, The Authenticity of Faith is a masterful example of the "new apologetics".
April 5, 2013
Fascinating research into "varieties of faith," the "sick soul" and "healthy-minded" as well as the pyschology behind certain beliefs/the effect of certain beliefs/overly fundamental beliefs/using faith as coping mechanism rather than struggle.
Only complaint is that he tends to open and close chapters like a textbook–ie, with recaps and reviews. Makes for a very clear text but gets a bit too repetitive after a while.
Only complaint is that he tends to open and close chapters like a textbook–ie, with recaps and reviews. Makes for a very clear text but gets a bit too repetitive after a while.
April 23, 2016
Another phenomenal book by Richard Beck, using the insights of both Freud and Williams James to present an illuminating overview of the psychological dynamics of religious belief. Highly recommended for those who want to squarely face the challenge of functional accounts of religious faith with a highly nuanced and candid look at what experimental psychology has to say about the varieties of belief and experience. Makes so much sense of my almost fundamentalist upbringing.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews