Review article

Tamas Pataki, Against Religion

Russell Grigg

PARRHESIA Dergisi, Sayı 4'te yayımlanmıştır.

In this book Tamas Pataki makes two principal claims: that religious beliefs are irrational beliefs; and that religion is a pernicious influence on human society that we would be better off without. Pataki also thinks that neither the irrationality of religious belief nor the insidious nature of religion can be properly understood unless we look to psychoanalytic explanations of some underlying unconscious motivations.

If we assume that people who hold religious beliefs don’t do so on rational grounds, how do we explain the fact that they can adhere to such extravagant claims about the nature of reality? This is a major task of this book, which doesn’t attempt to address any of the claimed rational grounds for belief in God. There is not one argument for the existence of God; it is assumed that these all fail and that the attempt to find a valid one can be put down to no other source than wishful thinking.