Very late randome thoughts

I've been reading the posts as people post and post and post and didn't understand why there was so many posts for this week... then I got it.

First the religious view quite struck me. (Never did we learn about what Freud thought of religion..)
It was fascinating (as other people mentioned) to see he said that religious attitudes compes from the feeling of infantile helplessness. I agree to this except for the fact that Freud treats religion as a feeling or an attitude rather than a real thing (because I believe in it). However, the part that I couldn't quite get was the mention of the father figure. "I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection" (on page 19.) Why would he say "father"'s protection rather than the caregiver or the mother? I mean everytime I learn or discuss about the infant development, the mother figure is more often mentioned because the mother is (and was in Freud's time) the primary caregiver not because of the cultural bias but because the mother feeds the baby. From the baby's perspective, the presence of the person who feeds him/her, and who takes care of him/her will matter, not specifically mother or father. So, why would Freud indicate a father? I don't mean to disappoint Letisha, I too think that the father's parenting is and should be very much important for child development. But I just can't get off the feeling that once again, Freud is all about male rather than females.

Then I went on to read more of his thoughts about religion. He mentions again that the religion is "patently infantile". Again I can't disagree with this remark. Religion IS based on the humans helplessness in saving thier souls. So there comes God who saves the world, and the souls of all humans.
I don't want to go deeper into the Christian principles, but I do want to mention that I hate it when people at church make the people feel unnecesarilly infantile and make them depend on external things rather than to hold onto one's faith.

Another interesting things is that he talks about happiness. (never knew that he talked about such area!) "What decides the purpose of life is simply the program of the pleasure principle" (23p). Is he arguing that even though the humans are built to be happy (when they follow the id by the pleasure principle)? But that the civilization is what makes such limitations and rules to follow against the id that makes us unhappy (and thus suffer from the superior natural power, the bodily limiations, and the relationships with others...)? I was thinking that why the society exists, and why does it confer so much boundaries and limiations to our behaviors (and the realization of the id)? What does it get from doing that? What good does it do?