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Feuerbach
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So on the flight today (annual girls' ski trip) I'm reading Bryan Magee's book Wagner And Philosophy. I've just got to an interesting bit about Feuerbach. I'm typing this on my phone (so forgive any messy layout) and I'll post it when we get to Geneva.
Feuerbach suggested that religion should not be seen as fairy tales, but as revealing the essence of human nature.
Realising that we are not entirely in control of our own lives causes us to attribute power or control to a force outside ourselves. In ancient religions, each of the elements affecting our lives was attributed to a separate being - God of Love, God of Wisdom, God of War, etc. Because these are human attributes, the supreme beings were themselves assigned human attributes ... We made them look like us - a fact later turned round to suggest that they had made us look like them.
As the gods later merge into one "God", holding all the powers, it is inevitable that the one god is attributed with all the characteristics we most desire. We fear death, so God is immortal. We fear the lack of control of our destiny, so God is omnipotent. And so on. Once we have given God all the features that we most desire, we see in Him all the things we wish we were, but are not, and we find ourselves worshiping Him, in the same way that teenagers "worship" the pop stars they want to be.
We begin to regard God as being divine, and having made us. We changed ourselves from subjects (in the transitive verb sense), to objects. But not objects of a real subject. We have made ourselves the objects of another, artificial, object. We come to regard ourselves as having been created by an entity whom, in reality, we created.
Anyway, that's part of Feuerbach. I'll post this from Geneva. Have a fab weekend, guys. And remember to be nice to God. We made him, so we have a responsibility to look after him. x
Feuerbach suggested that religion should not be seen as fairy tales, but as revealing the essence of human nature.
Realising that we are not entirely in control of our own lives causes us to attribute power or control to a force outside ourselves. In ancient religions, each of the elements affecting our lives was attributed to a separate being - God of Love, God of Wisdom, God of War, etc. Because these are human attributes, the supreme beings were themselves assigned human attributes ... We made them look like us - a fact later turned round to suggest that they had made us look like them.
As the gods later merge into one "God", holding all the powers, it is inevitable that the one god is attributed with all the characteristics we most desire. We fear death, so God is immortal. We fear the lack of control of our destiny, so God is omnipotent. And so on. Once we have given God all the features that we most desire, we see in Him all the things we wish we were, but are not, and we find ourselves worshiping Him, in the same way that teenagers "worship" the pop stars they want to be.
We begin to regard God as being divine, and having made us. We changed ourselves from subjects (in the transitive verb sense), to objects. But not objects of a real subject. We have made ourselves the objects of another, artificial, object. We come to regard ourselves as having been created by an entity whom, in reality, we created.
Anyway, that's part of Feuerbach. I'll post this from Geneva. Have a fab weekend, guys. And remember to be nice to God. We made him, so we have a responsibility to look after him. x
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