The atheist view is that such longings are not to be trusted as indications of the supernatural, and that our translation of those sensations of awe into a belief in God represent nothing more than wishful thinking, inventing an answer because we want it to be true. This particular view reached its widest audience in the writings of Sigmund Freud, who argued that wishes for God stemmed from early childhood experiences. Writing in Totem and Taboo, Freud said, “Psychoanalysis of individual human beings teaches us with quite special insistence that the God of each of them is formed in the
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