Theists and Atheists
kylebingman quotes Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, “Lecture XXX,” Lectures On The Essence Of Religion
“…God is nothing other than the abstracted, phantasmagoric essence of man and nature, hypostatised by the imagination; hence theism sacrifices the real life and nature of things and of men to a being who is a mere product of thought and imagination. Thus atheism is positive and affirmative; it gives back to nature and mankind the dignity of which theism has despoiled them; it restores life to nature and mankind, which theism had drained of their best powers. God, as we have seen, is jealous of nature and man; He wants man to honour, love, and serve Him alone; He wants everything else to be nothing and Himself alone to be something; in other words, theism is jealous of man and the world and begrudges them any good. Envy, ill will, and jealousy are destructive, negative passions. Atheism, on the other hand, is liberal, open-handed, open-minded; an atheist acknowledges every being’s will and talent; his heart delights in the beauty of nature and the virtue of man: joy and love do not destroy, they are life-giving, affirmative.”
I’m fascinated by this atheistic description of God. On one hand, there is the denial of God’s existance. On the other, there is the elaboration of the qualities and desires of God, as if to construct something worth denying. How can Feuerbach explain that God is an extension of human thought, reject God as jealous and destructive, then claim to delight in the beauty of that same thought?
I think Feuerbach has it backwards. God is not the product of our imagination. Rather, we are the creation of a divine imagination, breathed to life by divine love. A virtue of theism is not jealousy but humility. When God is the fount of meaning reality and we are but beloved shadows, self-worship may not be obscene—but is certainly absurd. The atheist is right to rejoice in the reflected beauty of nature and the reflected virtue of man—but wrong to assume they are self-contained and self-produced.
