Today we discussed Feuerbach and his interesting approach on religion. Feuerbach argued that God comes from inside not outside ourselves. He says "if we have sensed the divine all along, and it turns out there is no God, then what we called divine was coming from us in the first place. His view suggest that we are divine, for God is a projection of ourselves. During our discussion we talked about the implications on human nature that arise from this theory. We came up with two questions.
Factual: True or False- Feuerbach believed we project ourselves onto what we think is the divine.
Discussion: If there is no God and we project our own values as the divine, could vengefull and aggressive religions show the true nature of man?
And for next time:
Factual:Which ancient is usually given credit for atomism by moderns?
Answer:Democritus
Discussion:Do you believe that all things can be explained by force and matter?
It is interesting that different societies highlight different characteristics of their Divinities. This, to me, tells more about religion as a coping mechanism. Although I am definitely not saying religion is JUST a coping mechanism. There is merit to much about religion. It is good that aspects of Divinities change over time as there is no doubt that there has been change in people over time. My question would be which direction do these traits flow? Do they flow from the divine to us and then we project them onto God? Or do we create the traits and then project them to WHAT WE WANT a God to be like? Who is to say that a divine being would possess qualities that we can even understand? I believe that a creator would be so vastly different from ourselves that none of the qualities we find important would exist. When people study animals, they try and fit human characteristics to their behavior. Things like a loyal dog or a sly raccoon. If the animal were to describe its behavior (bear with me for this analogy), I doubt it would be in terms of loyalty or slyness. A God would likely describe itself in a similarly divergent way.
ReplyDeleteFactual
TRUE or FALSE
Darwin was careful to avoid religious controversy when authoring his piece "On the Origin of Species"
TRUE
Discussion
Does science lead to certainty or evermore doubt?