Freud’s legacy is that many people now believe that God is a human invention designed to quell our fears of death and the afterlife. According to atheists, God and heaven are too good to be true and must be human inventions. By this logic, all theists are optimists to the point of delusion.

It will be obvious to some that this is a classic example of a scientist stepping outside of their area of expertise (psychoanalysis) and into metaphysics. There is a big difference between “science says” and “scientist A says”.

Of course, a thing doesn’t have to be nasty to be true so people’s optimism or warm, fuzzy feeling tells us nothing of the truth of the matter. I’ve never heard any Christian argue that God exists because this is a nice scenario. On the contrary, a world without God with no judgement or afterlife sounds quite good to many people desiring autonomy and self sufficiency. In fact, atheism is a nice world-view for those who want to run their own life by their own rules. Does that make it untrue?

Unfortunately, a commited atheist won’t have it either way. The nice, comfy parts are written off as “too good to be true”, the challenging, not-so-comfy parts are rejected out of hand as unacceptable or “inhumane”.