Religious Neurosis?

"The general idea of Christ the redeemer belongs to the world wide and pre-Christ theme of the hero and rescuer who, although he has been devoured by a monster, appears again in a miraculous way, having overcome whatever monster it was that swallowed him. When and where such a motif originated nobody knows. We do not even know how to go about investigating the problem. The one apparent certainty is that every generation seems to have known it as a tradition handed down from some preceding time. Thus we can safely assume that it originated at a period when man did not yet know that he possessed a hero myth; in an age, that is to say, when he did not yet consciously reflect on what he was saying. The hero figure is an archetype, which has existed in time immemorial." This idea has been presented by Carl Jung in his book Man and His Symbols.

In contemporary times, this idea explains the nature of why humans create religions. Jung proposes that ideas of Gods and "God-men" are inherent in the human unconscious. We do not create the ideas of Gods or mystical beings, rather our unconscious creates them for us in order to keep our minds stable, and avoid neurosis. It is a necessary part of human existence. Before we had the ability to intellectualize and conceive things on a conscious level, homage was paid to these unconscious figures purely out of instinct. In our current age of intellectual thought however, many people ignore their unconscious and their natural instincts.

In the times of ancient Egypt, people did not try to rationalize why they made sacrifices to their many gods, they just did because it helped them with their daily processes and relieved anxiety. They had ideas of the Hero, like Jesus, in the form of the Osiris-Horus myth, which is a direct parallel to the idea of Christ the Redeemer. The people who followed the Catholic Church for the many years during the dark ages never questioned their beliefs in the way we do now, but again, practiced rituals, like confession and prayer, to aid in their daily lives.

In the age of scientific thought, many of the unconscious elaborations of spirituality and the existence of archetypal themes are forgotten. This leads to neurotic thought, and instability of the human psyche.

The first five minutes of this clip from the film Zeitgeist elaborates on the many themes of religion that seem to reoccur throughout time and history. Check it out!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2740987755232169561