Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality

255 Pages·2016·3.95 MB·English

by  Jon Mills

Inventing God
In this controversial book, philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills argues that
God does not exist; and more provocatively, that God cannot exist as anything
but an idea. Put concisely, God is a psychological creation signifying ultimate
ideality. Mills argues that the idea or conception of God is the manifestation of
humanity’s denial and response to natural deprivation; a self- relation to an inter-
nalized idealized object, the idealization of imagined value.
After demonstrating the lack of any empirical evidence and the logical impos-
sibility of God, Mills explains the psychological motivations underlying human-
ity’s need to invent a supreme being. In a highly nuanced analysis of unconscious
processes informing the psychology of belief and institutionalized social ideo-
logy, he concludes that belief in God is the failure to accept our impending death
and mourn natural absence for the delusion of divine presence. As an alternative
to theistic faith, he offers a secular spirituality that emphasizes the quality of
lived experience, the primacy of feeling and value inquiry, ethical self-
consciousness, aesthetic and ecological sensibility, and authentic relationality
toward self, other, and world as the pursuit of a beautiful soul in search of the
numinous.
Inventing God will be of interest to academics, scholars, lay audiences and
students of religious studies, the humanities, philosophy, and psychoanalysis,
among other disciplines. It will also appeal to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts
and mental health professionals focusing on the integration of humanities and
psychoanalysis.
Jon Mills, Psy.D., Ph.D., ABPP is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical
psychologist. He is Professor of Psychology & Psychoanalysis at the Adler
Graduate Professional School in Toronto and is the author of many books in
philosophy, psychoanalysis and psychology. Recipient of many awards for his
scholarship, he received the Otto Weininger Memorial Award for lifetime
achievement in 2015, given by the Canadian Psychological Association. He runs
a mental health corporation in Ontario, Canada.
Philosophy & Psychoanalysis Book Series
Series Editor
Jon Mills
Philosophy & Psychoanalysis is dedicated to current developments and
cutting edge research in the philosophical sciences, phenomenology, her-
meneutics, existentialism, logic, semiotics, cultural studies, social criti-
cism, and the humanities that engage and enrich psychoanalytic thought
through philosophical rigor. With the philosophical turn in psychoanaly-
sis comes a new era of theoretical research that revisits past paradigms
while invigorating new approaches to theoretical, historical, contempor-
ary, and applied psychoanalysis. No subject or discipline is immune from
psychoanalytic reflection within a philosophical context including psych-
ology, sociology, anthropology, politics, the arts, religion, science,
culture, physics, and the nature of morality. Philosophical approaches to
psychoanalysis may stimulate new areas of knowledge that have concep-
tual and applied value beyond the consulting room reflective of greater
society at large. In the spirit of pluralism, Philosophy & Psychoanalysis
is open to any theoretical school in philosophy and psychoanalysis that
offers novel, scholarly, and important insights in the way we come to
understand our world.
Humanizing Evil
Psychoanalytic, Philosophical and Clinical Perspectives
Edited by Ronald C Naso and Jon Mills
Inventing God
Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality
By Jon Mills
Every one of the 100 billion people who came before us has died,
without a shred of evidence that they live on in some other life. Facing
the reality of our death has spawned world religions and spiritual
movements, but in this, the Age of Science, we need a new world
view that gives individuals meaning and unites us as a species. Jon
Mills’ Inventing God does just this, beautifully and powerfully outlin-
ing a humanist perspective that can be embraced by all. This book,
however, should not be read just by atheists and humanists, but by
anyone desirous of deeper meaning, which is all of us.
Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine; monthly columnist
for Scientific American; author of The Moral Arc
With this book, Jon Mills brings a considerable clarification to the
“atheism” debate by insisting, like the classic sociologist Emile Dur-
kheim before him, on the difference between God questions and reli-
gion questions. Leaving aside the sociological and political questions
of religion and investigating, instead, the God questions, Mills
enriches the debate with a hitherto rarely considered viewpoint: by not
so much focussing upon what people, when speaking of God, reveal
about God, but rather upon what they reveal about themselves—their
aspirations, wishes, needs, fears, etc. Written in a clear and elegant
style that never shows any contempt for its object, but as well never
falls into compromises with it, this book opens up a great chance for
civilizing the (sometimes aggressive) discussions between believers
and non-believers, not by making them share the same opinions, but
by allowing them to get more insight into each other’s—thoroughly
human—motives.
Professor Robert Pfaller, author of On the Pleasure
Principle in Culture
Most writers on religion focus on either philosophy—Does God exist?
—or social science—Why do persons believe in God? For example,
the New Atheists, who are discussed here, limit themselves to the first
question and ignore the second. Conversely, social scientists, includ-
ing psychologists, typically focus on the second question and ignore
the first. To his credit, Jon Mills covers both questions and connects
them. He does not reduce religion to wish-fulfilment à la The Future
of an Illusion. He roots religion in a far deeper kind of wish. He does
not argue that religion is therefore delusory but rather that the truth
claims of religion, for which he prefers the term spirituality, must start
with this wish. An amazingly wide-ranging and provocative work.
Professor Robert A. Segal, Sixth Century Chair in Religious Studies,
University of Aberdeen
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Inventing God
Psychology of Belief and the Rise of
Secular Spirituality
Jon Mills
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Jon Mills
The right of Jon Mills to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Mills, Jon, 1964– author.Title: Inventing God : psychology
of belief and the rise of secular spirituality / Jon Mills.
Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Routledge, 2016. |
Series: Philosophy & psychoanalysis book series | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015048760| ISBN 9781138195745 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138195752 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315620930 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychology, Religious. | God. | Religion–
Controversial literature.
Classification: LCC BL53 .M553 2016 | DDC 242/.1–dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048760
ISBN: 978-1-138-19574-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-19575-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-62093-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
If God did not exist, it would be necessary for us to invent Him.
—Voltaire
God (gŏd) n. 1.a. A supreme being conceived as the creator or origi-
nator of the universe. b. The principle object of faith and worship in
monotheistic religions. c. The force, effect, manifestation, or aspect of
this being. 2.a. A pervasive supernatural entity as divine person. b.
Possesses divine properties of perfection, omnipotence, omnis cience,
omnibenevolence, omnipresence, sovereignty, and aseity. 3.a. The
ultimate source, cause, and governance of the cosmos. b. The state or
quality of being completely independent, unconditioned, unalterable,
and uncaused. c. Self-derived or self-originated. 4.a. Being-from-and-
of-itself. b. Being-in-and-for-itself. c. The ulti mate ground of all
reality. d. Being.
Contents
Proslogion 1
New atheism 2
On the question of predication 11
The parallax between religion and science 16
Imagination and the creativity of logic 26
Axioms 32
1 Definition of God 32
2 The existence of God 34
3 The non- existence of God 37
1 God as a metaphysical question 39
Proof and negation 40
God as failed hypothesis 49
The logical impossibility of God 53
The problem of infinite regress 58
2 Religion as naturalized psychology 70
Defining God 72
The sociobiology of religion 77
The fallacy of divine sense 82
The trauma of cosmic loneliness 92
God as the inversion of our pathos 95
God as compromise formation 100
The idealized fixation of imagined value 104
3 The need to invent God 108
The transference unto God 108