... reason Freud claims we turn to religion is as a way of expressing psychological anguish from our childhood. The second is we turn to religion as a way of overcoming and preventing dangers from the natural world, in hoping to gain control "the necessity of defending oneself against the crushingly superior force of nature." The third is that religion is used as a stress relief, stress that has developed from living in a suppressive society that condones the expression of sexual desire. A final key reason Freud developed is that we follow religion to prevent the feeling of helplessness we can get when we no longer have the protection of our parents or guardians: "And thus a store of ideas is created, born from man's need to make his helplessness tolerable and built up from the memories of the helplessness of his own childhood and the childhood of the human ...

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