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Religion: A Chimaera ... a Figment of Imagination
-=Introduction=-
Religion… It has been present for a very long time and probably will never fade away because of the power it exemplifies. Have you ever asked this to yourself? Where did this come from? If we will observe our environment, wherever we are, majority of the people believe in “G-O-D.” Do you think God really exists? Religion just came up claiming that they have authority, that they are true. How would you know if you picked the right one? Will you wait for any consequence before getting out from your chosen religion? Why not choose Buddhism… or other religions? Why Catholicism?
Mind makes illusions. It creates illusions in order for us to understand whatever is not clear. The human mind just creates ideas on what things are and God is just one of them! He’s an idea. We believe in him to comfort ourselves. We see him as a protector, as a guide in everyday life (gives direction to our lives) and as someone who’ll lead us to eternal happiness. Religion is our illusion! We depend on it. We let it think for ourselves. We become irresponsible when we believe in such thing that is based on unconvincing grounds. Each person should decide for himself on what he believes, and not follow anyone else’s illusion. Because, who really cares what anyone else believes? What matters most to you is what you believe.
Illusion is not a mistake, not necessarily. Illusion is a contradiction of reality, but it doesn’t mean that it is wrong. Do you think we will readily believe on the teachings of the Church? They are not provable to believe. We can’t force ourselves to believe… to accept it as truth. They are illusions! They can’t be proved, and therefore they can be disproved. Illusion is based on our hopes, our feeling, but this is not necessarily false.
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-=LUDWIG FEUERBACH=-
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), father of modern atheism, is a strong-minded and knowledgeable German thinker, who’s best known for his view of the belief that “God is a projection of man’s ideals.” He never denied God in the sense of a construction of human imagination but as a Creator. Actually, God was his first love, and his interest is theology. However, in his campus, he was shocked by the revolt of the students against the religious authorities. Shaken by this incident, he began to move away from theology into philosophy.
Feuerbach was a member of the “Young Hegelians.” The Young Hegelians were an intellectual group whose common theme was the ongoing application of Hegel's dialectical method rather than acceptance of Hegel's philosophical conclusions. Hegel’s Philosophy was actually about reason as the universal, the one, the infinite. Reason for him is the supreme, the first of all causes, and above all definitely. This materialized in radical critiques of religion. Feuerbach criticized Hegel’s reduction of Man's Essence to Self-consciousness, and went on to prove the connection of philosophical idealism with religion. His criticisms call for tolerance towards religions, cultures and different perspectives of understanding. He by no means wishes to abolish religion; he wants to perfect it. Philosophy itself must be absorbed in religion.
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-=VIEW OF GOD AND MAN=-
Man's God is nothing else than the deified essence of man. God is the created image of man. God is a creation of dependency. God didn’t create nature, nature by means of man’s consciousness gave us the concept of God. God is an abstraction, not reality. God is known through feelings (intuition). But if feeling was from God, then would it be possible that feeling would have been Divine? God and Divine are feelings. Feeling is really our own – the Essence of Man, and the reverence we have for God is reverence for man and an essence in ourselves.
Feuerbach identifies God with the essence of man. If the divinity of nature is the basis of all religions, then divinity of man is its final aim, that is, when man becomes aware that the only God of man is man himself. The distinction between man and God is neither more nor less than the distinction between the individual and mankind.
God is an object and, indeed, an object just like any other sensuous object; but, at the same time, he is also a subject, just like the human subject. God creates things that are apart from him, relates himself to himself and to other beings that exist apart from Him. In short, man transforms his thoughts and even his emotions into thoughts and emotions of God, his essence and his viewpoint into the essence and viewpoint of God. Consciousness/Knowledge of God is self-consciousness/self-knowledge. God is man, man is God. They are identical.
Man is an object to himself, under a form of another man. Hence, man realizes his attributes through his created image of God – which is perfect, wise, good, powerful, etc. and is therefore same with his (objective). Religion shows man the attributes out of himself. Religion, specifically Christianity, assures man that in God, man will find all the power he needs to overcome his obstacles in life.
God is self-contradictory, for he is supposed to be a non-human and superhuman being, but in truth he is a human being. On the other hand, God is in contradiction to man. He is supposed to be the essence of man, but in truth he is a non-human and superhuman – an abstract being. God is an imagination, a fantasy, an illusion. God doesn’t need to be reformed, but man himself; and man doesn’t need to be rescued from God, but from his own illusions about God. Reduction of God to being of a man is like reduction of theology to anthropology. Study of God is now the study of man.
God is the infinite being - the being without any limitation. That which is not a limit for God is also not a limit for reason. Whoever thinks of a sensuous being, will also have a God limited by senses. Reason conceives of God its unlimitedness. Reason satisfies itself only in the infinite being. The essence of reason is disclosed to us only because of this being.
God, for Feuerbach, is merely a myth of the aspirations of human consciousness. Those who have no desires, have no God. God is man’s desires of corporeal, material things.
A. FIRST PROOF: To deny the qualities of a being is denying the being himself
Atheism is the negation of the subject, and is irreligion. Realization of God is at the same time the affirmation or negation of God - theism and atheism. For God is God only as long as he is conceived as a being distinct from the being of man and nature. Affirmation of God is at the same time the negation of God, or conversely as the negation of God is at the same time still the affirmation of God.
Limiting God by positive predicates is to banish God from the mind. God without predicates is an empty subject, which has no demand for our attention. Only through his predicates that he has such demands. Existence without qualities is nothing. Only when man loses his passion for religion, God would be nothing – existence without qualities.
B. SECOND PROOF: WHAT GOD IS IN HIMSELF, WHAT GOD IS FOR ME
God in himself, or God as God exists for himself and not for the religious man. He is objectively true, having himself as he is. God himself is his own conception of God. He is a transcendent being that will become sooner or later an object for man. But what lies in the other world for religion lies in this world for philosophy; what is no object for the former is precisely the object for the latter.
God as God is an abstracted being, non-human, non-sensuous being. He is the object of reason and is nothing but the essence of reason itself. He is conceived by means of the imagination as a being distinct from and independent of reason. The essence of reason - which is now separated from it - be finally identified with reason, that the divine being be recognized as the being of reason.
God is necessary being. His necessity lies on the fact that he is a rational, intelligent being. Matter doesn’t have a cause of its being. The world is completely indifferent. The world necessarily presupposes another being as cause and, indeed, an understanding, a self-conscious being that acts according to reason. The necessary being is the being that can think for himself. Through reason, one can prove his reality.
God is independent, self-sufficient being who needs no other to exist. He exists by and through himself. Sensuous being needs other external objects for its existence. The thinking being just relates to itself.
All objects are in God, that is true and not just an imagination. For if these objects exist only in the then they are imaginary in God and definitely outside God. But, if we have no more objects and no world apart from God, then we’ll not have a real being.
God to man is what he can alone be to man. Man takes a point of view based on his criterion of truth – a subjective view. When man transfers his attention from God to his own consciousness of God, then there will be destruction in the peace of religion. Man is the beginning, the middle and the end of religion.
Distinction between the object and the conception is a skeptical one and therefore, irreligion. Religion is satisfied when it demands God himself, because when it gives up the nature of God, it will then give up its own existence, too. To ask whether God is in himself what he is for me is to ask whether God is God, to rise up against him.
C. MAN AS AN OBJECT OF GOD
He who makes God act humanly, declares the human activity to be divine. Man makes himself an object to the projected image of himself (converted into a subject), he thinks of himself as an object to himself, but as object of a being other than himself. Man is an object of God. Man places the aim of his actions to God, but God has no other aim of action than the moral salvation of man. Man has no other aim than himself. The divine activity is not distinct from that of the human. Man has only his own activity as an object. God is the highest subjectivity of man abstracted from himself. Man can do nothing of himself. All goodness comes from God. Man abstracts more and more from God, and attributes more and more to himself. God was the first thought, reason was second and man is third, last. We deny in order to affirm. We deny the projection of religion in order to affirm the real essence of man. While reducing theology to anthropology, we exalt anthropology to theology. While lowering God into man, man is made to God. God is conceived more of ordinary humanity, as man detracts from himself.
On the contrary, alienation arises. Man finds in himself weakness, and at the same time, a force of attraction for good deeds. He finds in his nature his changeable being, and the unchangeable being of the Absolute. The divine attributes then appear to man as more perfect than himself. Man projects in himself greatness of the fantastic being of the Absolute. God, thus, is the product of man’s imaginations. In affirming God, man denies himself; the poorer he becomes, the richer God becomes; nothing really exists in the Divine Being except what is in the heart of man. Man is dreaming; he equates his duties in life with God. Man strips off himself of his best attributes and creates good, moral values for his God. Man must die in order for God to be born. Religion is the product of alienation. Man must lose himself in order to find himself.
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-=ESSENCE OF RELIGION=-
Religion is a projection of the human values onto the conception of the divine. Atheism is the secret of religion; Religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature. What yesterday was still religion is no longer religion today. And what today is atheism is tomorrow a religion.
Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity. Religion takes the apparent, the superficial in Nature and humanity for the essential, and hence conceives their true essence as a separate, special existence. The present age . . . prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence . . . for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Religion is illusion; it is sacred. Atheism is truly profanity.
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-=CRITIQUE=-
In Feuerbach’s philosophy, man is said to increase, God to decrease. Religion is not seeking God in Himself and for Himself, but rather seeking God in man and for man. God was discovered in men, not everywhere. Not only man is the measure of all things, but also the origin and end of all values. Man is the assurance of human existence. Well, actually, Feuerbach’s idea of God was all-too-human. He led man to suspect God as illusion of illusions. He made the abstract man as the science of real men. Feuerbach’s philosophy even led to the dialectic materialism of Marx and Engels. Honestly, his theory was very shallow. He even refused to address himself to the reality of death and misunderstood the nature of moral evil. For him, man who has experienced good and evil is a better man, like God, and God himself. And the acceptance of this illusion will cause tragedy, a destruction … foundation of slavery. He was a lousy philosopher. He just argued that God is only a product of human imagination. He never even tried to observe whether God is imaginary or an infinite, true being.
In conclusion, he wanted to liberate man from enslavement of God. He also wanted to help man secure his greatness in sharing the religion of humanity. These were his goals. But, what did he do to man and for man? He actually cut the vision of man down. Instead of broadening man’s intellectual inquiry in nature and transitory purposes of life, he imprisons the mind of man in the mysteries of an anti-Christian religion. He makes men slaves. And this may lead man to solipsism …
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REFERENCES:
Feuerbach, Ludwig A., Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, 1843
Hick, John, Philosophy of Religion
Lavine, TZ,The Gods of Atheism
Dr. Paul Gerard Horrigan's page
Feuerbach
Marx's Theses on Feuerbach
World's Greatest Philosophers of all Time
greatest among the greatest?
Send E-Mail to: kath_perez@hotmail.com
Copyright © 2002 Kathleen O. Perez. All Rights Reserved