Freud’s inability to see the necessity of religion and the benefits that can be gained from it, seem to take away from the strength of his work. Although an interesting concept, Freud’s constant focus on the child and those first few years as well as his emphasis on the father, does not explain many religious experiences, for it is certain that not all people experience religion the same way. There is no fear of god in the Buddhism, but a necessity for inner peace. Freud dismisses religion simply because some of the characteristics that are held over from childhood are transferred to one’s feelings about God, a dismissal that is an unfair and unwarranted assessment.

According to James, without religious ideas (whatever their origin) there is no proper reasoning for difficult moral choices, or hardships, and therefore, the quality of human life diminishes. For James the varieties of religious ideas that exist are important in that they lead humanity to perform moral and useful actions. He believes that without such encouragement these actions would not naturally take place. James emphasizes the individual experience, but states that the ideas that are shared and communal provide humanity with a means toward progress.

Freud believes that the relationship of humanity and nature bears a great similarity to that of the relationship between the child to the parents. In that respect deities must put forward the following attributes; they must exorcise the terrors of nature, they must reconcile humanity to the cruelty of fate and they must compensate humanity of the sufferings and privations which a civilized life has condemned them.(197). Freud acknowledges that through time the roles of Gods and Goddesses have evolved but their tasks have remained generally the same; to protect humanity against the dangers of both nature and fate and to protect humanity against the injuries which threaten us from human society itself. In that way to protect us the way a parent protects and shields a child from the dangers of the world. Freud sees divinity as monotheistic, as the relationship between that of a parent and child and the intimacy that is shared there is the same as that of the divine and humanity.

Freud suggests that it is natural for humans to personify nature and the life as humans know from the beginning that the wa

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