There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment, but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive.

Summary

This quote suggests that religion had already begun to lose its influence during the Enlightenment period due to the rise of rational thinking. However, Sigmund Freud's theories about human nature provided an even more significant blow to religious explanations. By exploring the depths of the human psyche, Freud's ideas made religious explanations of human purpose and behavior appear simplistic and unsophisticated. In this way, Freud played a crucial role in further diminishing the credibility of religious explanations in understanding ourselves as individuals.

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