Feuerbach
- Created by: Emma
- Created on: 02-04-15 18:52
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- Feuerbach
- Then man said "Let us make godkind in our image, according to our likeness"
- Humans have created God in their image according to their desires and fears
- Consciousness
- All we can be certain of is our consciousness
- Descartes
- It sets us apart from other life forms
- Beliefs emerge from consciousness
- All we can be certain of is our consciousness
- Dependence on Nature
- We depend on nature for food, protection and love
- We try to explain our dependence using religion
- Religion grew from human sensual experience of nature
- We overcome our dependence on nature by representing it in symbolic terms (gods)
- Symbols are made into abstract objects such as infinite, transcendent God
- God is not necessary for our existence but is a symbol for what we need
- His attributes are a projection of human desires
- Religious feeling of dependence is the "self-feeling feeling"
- Alienation
- We are alienated from humanity by projecting it on God
- We are alienated from our dependence on nature through the illusion of God
- Humans are predicated on God so are useless alone
- If we see ourselves as predicates, we lose our freedom to act for ourselves
- What do we do about it?!
- Reject God and religion to live in conjuction with nature
- Secular religion beginning and ending with natural world (humans)
- Will allow humans to work with nature and be liberated from dependence on it
- Existential liberation
- Proper understanding of religion is anthropological - "God is a word the sole meaning of which is man"
- Ontological status of God must be exposed as error about existential meaning - humans are liberated to rediscover sensual place in world
- Proper understanding of religion is anthropological - "God is a word the sole meaning of which is man"
- Self-love and reversal
- Begin by questioning nature of God's existence and not his ontology
- Christ is sensual expression of human self-love
- Christianity offers state of love and blessedness which were falsely objectified in theism
- Secular religion beginning and ending with natural world (humans)
- Reject God and religion to live in conjuction with nature
- Evaluation
- Post Enlightenment - suspicious of religions lacking rational objectivity
- Religion still plays important role in understanding human consciousness
- Reductionist - explains characteristic in terms of human consciousness
- Essentialist - says what religions are
- Religious orientation is an illusion and unhealthy as it alienates and deprives the believer from true autonomy, virtue and community
- Post Enlightenment - suspicious of religions lacking rational objectivity
- Then man said "Let us make godkind in our image, according to our likeness"
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