ARGUMENTS AGAINST GOD AND RELIGION — Part II The Psychological Argument

mentally disturbed person begins to find an outlet, what is likely to come gushing out of it? Obviously the afflicted person will talk incoherently while attempting to give expression to those same hostile feelings and evil desires, which had remained suppressed in his subconscious. And, if we are to think of him as a prophet, it will be as a prophet of evil, certainly not of good. Religious thoughts expressed in prophetic diction are, by comparison, virtue and purity par excellence. The true prophet is, himself, the epitome of virtue and his purity in thought, word and deed has no parallel. His ideas, moreover, exercise such a powerful influence upon people that the very society from which, at one time, the prophet had initially to conceal his ideas—out of fear—is now so greatly attracted towards them, that even after a lapse of centuries together, it still steadfastly adheres to them. From a psychological point of view, the unconscious mind is actually a vacuum. In it, nothing initially exists. It receives all impressions through the conscious part of the mind. This implies that the unconscious stores only those experiences to which people have been exposed at one time or the other. The unconscious can never become a repository for facts which have not been experienced. But, surprisingly, religion as proclaimed by the prophets, contains truths which were previously unknown to them and for that matter, to the entire human race. It was only with the advent of the prophets that certain facts could be propagated. Had the unconscious been the repository on which they drew, they could not have become the purveyors of great, but hitherto unknown truths. The religion proclaimed by the prophets contain a great body of knowledge, touching, in one way or the other, all branches of learning. The religion proclaimed by the prophets contain a great body of knowledge, touching, in one way or the other, all branches of learning, such as astronomy, physics, biology, psychology, history, civilization, politics and sociology. No individual, however gifted, whether drawing on the conscious or subconscious minds, has ever been able to produce such an all-embracing discourse, free from erroneous decisions, vain conjectures, unreal statements, miscalculations and unsound logic. But religious scriptures are admirably and miraculously free of such deficiencies. In their approach, reasoning and decisions, they encompass