Shattering the Illusion

Essay I wrote on the history of religion and progression towards atheism.

Upon considering the institution of religion, certain universal criteria come to mind, namely: ritual, community, doctrine, various practices and perhaps the most important, faith. Without faith or a belief system, one cannot differentiate religion from secular philosophy. It is precisely a faith in God or the supernatural that is the underlying fundamental commonality of all religion. Although – like ritual and doctrine – the conception of God varies from religion to religion, it is undoubtedly this concern with divinity or the supernatural, which constitutes religiosity itself. And while the content of religious faith varies, I would argue that the function, mainly God’s function, remains basically unchanged. Interestingly, the conception of God is the most powerful and widely recognized symbol in human history. Yet, it is also the most difficult concept to define, agree upon, and therefore study. God has many roles, and functions in a number of ways as: the “one whom humans call in a time of desperate need”, “the creator of the world and of all that is in it”, “the protector and savior who provides for creaturely wants and who sustains women and men undergoing evil of all sorts” and of course “the central object of worship and the ultimate court of appeal in all major crises of life”.[i] So somehow it seems that God, although completely beyond the human sphere of understanding, functions primarily in serving humans’ practical needs. God makes us feel good. He provides comfort, security, answers, protection, and meaning in our lives. The question is not how God provides these luxuries (for we have already concluded that God is beyond our comprehension), but rather how human belief in God serves to better our lives. Understanding God is essential to studying any religious framework, which is why many great thinkers have set out to draw conclusions about human nature based on a proper analysis of God. By examining the progression of thought about God in the writings of these great thinkers, one can also better understand the bigger picture of what role religion plays in the world. I would argue that the ambiguity of God’s nature is a direct result of God being a manmade concept created to provide wish fulfillment and to make humans feel better about their existence.

            In his Natural History of Religion, David Hume sets out to trace a natural or human, progression of religious belief. Hume is the first prominent philosopher to challenge the supposedly ‘revealed’ foundations of religion. He wrote his history of religion in 1779, a time in which challenging the validity of religion, especially the Christian church, was social suicide and being accused of atheism could result in severe penalty. Hume’s central argument is that religion does not arise out of a revelation from God, as commonly believed; but rather is the product of man’s fear and anxiety. As Hume says, “the primary religion of mankind arises chiefly from an anxious fear of future events.”[ii]  This is a radically different view from what the bible says, namely that God revealed himself to man and offered him protection in a covenant exchange for worship. Hume studies the progression of the human belief in God in hopes to show that religion is manmade. In fact, if Hume succeeds in proving that religion is truly manmade, the idea of God is at risk for being determined manmade as well.

            David Hume is an empiricist, believing that the source of all human knowledge and understanding lies in our experience. It is through an empiricist foundation that he examines and critiques the religious framework. In observing the history of religious belief, Hume points out that “mankind, in ancient times, appear universally to have been polytheists”[iii], believing in a vast pantheon of Gods. This multiplicity of gods arises out of the anthropomorphism of nature. Lacking a proper understanding of the natural world, early humans found nature to be both awesome and terrifying. For such primitive people, Hume believes, “the whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion.” The natural world seemed so vast and beyond human comprehension that it came to be worshipped as above human nature. Thus each God comes to represent a specific natural force – wind gods, rain gods, etc. These are not the omnipotent creator Gods people believe in today, but rather a more limited and quasi-human (yet divine) representations of nature. To Hume it is logical that man first saw the Gods as limited beings. He points out, “it seems certain, that, according to the natural progress of human thought, the ignorant must first entertain some groveling and familiar notion of superior powers, before they stretch their conception to that perfect Being, who bestowed order to the whole frame of nature.”[iv] It is this lack of understanding or ignorance that creates the many gods of polytheism and it is not until later that the supreme deity is abstracted. These gods seemed to be directly modeled after human beings. Mythology is riddled with stories of petty gods engaging in human quarrels and trivial affairs. Hume asserts that it isn’t until centuries later that “the Deity appeared to them [humanity] a pure spirit, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, before he was apprehended to be a powerful, thought limited being, with human passions and appetites, limbs and organs.” [v]Most important to Hume’s religious framework is the idea that these Gods are born out of fear and anxiety of nature. By anthropomorphizing nature, man hopes to gain control over these otherwise haphazard powers.

            Hume sees polytheism as a primitive and barbaric worldview and thinks the shift to monotheism represents forward progression in man’s logic and quest for perfection. He also sees this shift as a natural process that could not have happened any other way. In fact, Hume says, “if men were first led into the belief of one Supreme being…they could never possibly leave that belief, in order to embrace polytheism.”[vi] This, Hume thinks, would be a backwards step in the evolution of human intellect. As, “the mind rises gradually, from inferior to superior: by abstracting from what is imperfect, it forms an idea of perfection”[vii]. Although the content of religion has greatly changed since the days of polytheism, the God of monotheism still serves the same function as the many gods of ancient men. And this God is still born out of the “incessant hopes and fears, which actuate the human mind.”

            Hume seems to imply that it was competition among polytheism gave rise to monotheism. Groups of people come to worship and adore particular gods, and this naturally creates competition. Each god thus becomes more powerful in the eyes of its worshippers. About this, Hume asks, “How much more natural, therefore, is it, that a limited deity, who at first supposed only the immediate author of the particular goods and ills in life, should in the end be represented as sovereign maker and modifier of the universe.” [viii] The god is raised from a mere personification of a natural force to a God most high, and thus more promising to appease man’s struggles. Why pray to dozens of Gods when one will suffice?

            Hume argues that the individual Gods of monotheism do not escape the same anthropomorphic features as those of the gods of polytheism, and thus are equally as manmade. Yahweh for example, infinitely more powerful than the nature gods, also seems to be modeled after a profanely human prototype. Hume says he is represented as “jealous and revengeful, capricious and partial, and, in short, a wicked and foolish man, in very respect but his superior power and authority.”[ix] What more evidence does one need than the Old Testament to conclude God is a manmade deity? The stories of Yahweh characterize him as having man-like qualities: misogyny, homophobia, jealousy, etc. In fact, the first four of the Ten Commandments – man’s supposed revealed moral code of law – concern themselves only with the necessity of man’s loyal relationship to their jealous God. Hume believes we ascribe these human qualities to the divine to “bring them nearer to a resemblance with ourselves.”[x] Man then becomes dependent on supposed or imaginary relationships with this divine being to receive protection and security in his darkest times. This dependency on the divine explains why men are “much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.”[xi]

            Where as David Hume uses God primarily to analyze man’s religious progression, German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach seems to directly criticize the idea of God itself. Therefore, Feuerbach does not begin his analysis with polytheism but addresses monotheism and Christianity specifically. Although Feuerbach wrote nearly a century after Hume, he too describes the material basis for God residing in man; but he opposes man’s conception or idea of God and wants rather an actualized God. It precisely because of this opposition that he challenged “everything that has to do with religion” proposing that it is all “an outgrowth of the human mind that, unbeknownst to itself, has “projected” its own internal experiences onto the “blank screen” of the universe and made these images seem externally real by divining them in the hypostasis of a projected Godhead.”[xii] Consistent with Hume, Feuerbach was concerned with God’s function in describing man’s need for God. However, where Hume thought God primarily served to lessen mans fear and anxiety of future events, Feuerbach proposes God fills the gaps in man’s limited knowledge and understanding of the universe. God is able to answer man’s most profound questions, which is why “man in relation to God denies his own knowledge, his own thoughts, that he may place them in God.”[xiii]  God appeals to mankind’s toughest questions, death, meaning, salvation etc. and offers an easy solution – believe in God and you will be saved. However, these securities come at a great price. Feuerbach seems to think that faith or belief in God is a detrimental quality of mankind and unless God becomes somehow manifested or actualized, we must discard faith entirely.

            According to Feuerbach, in projecting their desires to onto God, humans create an oppressive dictator they cannot escape, and in his creation, degrade their own nature. Of this, he says, “man gives up his personality; but in return, God, the Almighty, infinite, unlimited being, is a person.”[xiv] In order to strengthen and uphold God’s personality, man must sacrifice part of his own, and then remain the subject of His power. Man denies his own egoism only to further God’s. Thus “God is the very luxury of egoism.”[xv] Unfortunately for his believers, such affirmation of his superior being necessarily degrades human existence. It seems that in nearly every monotheistic religious tradition, there is some inherent quality of man rendering him imperfect. Feuerbach supposes that this flaw is a direct product of man’s belief in God. God is inherently good and so therefore man is naturally less than good. To Feuerbach, belief in God “denies goodness as a quality of human nature; man is wicked, corrupt, incapable of good; but, on the other hand, God is only good – the Good Being.”[xvi] Interestingly. Feuerbach makes the point that if God is supremely good and man is inherently wicked, then how then could humans have any conception of a deity so outside their nature. This incoherence in the God-human relationship further proves that He is a manmade idea, not an actualized being.

            Feuerbach characterized man’s entire relationship with God as a cyclical process of giving and receiving pleasure. Man offers up himself to please God, and in return, God answers mans most difficult questions and provides safety and protection. Feuerbach claims that, “when man makes his moral improvement an aim to himself, he has divine resolutions, divine projects; but also, when God seeks the salvation of man, he has human ends and a human mode of activity corresponding to these ends.”[xvii]Put more simply, man lives his life for God, while God functions to improve man’s life. As Feuerbach says, “God acts, that man may be good and happy.”[xviii] The mystery of religion, according to Feuerbach, is in man projecting himself into objectivity. He projects himself to an image of God, creating a divine subject and thus objectifying himself in relation to God. But because God is merely a projection of the human mind, man thus becomes an object to himself. Man no longer attributes his greatest qualities to human nature, but rather to the realm of the divine. Feuerbach argues that when man attributes a quality to God, he is actually reaffirming the quality as being most valuable to human nature. For example, “to affirm that God is love, for example, is to affirm that love is divine.”  But unfortunately for man, “by projecting these qualities onto an object other than the human species, one alienates the human species from itself.”[xix] So although Feuerbach concludes that man’s relationship with God is cyclical, it clearly is not equal relationship of mutual benefit. The idea of God alienates humanity from itself. So it seems there is more to be lost than gained in putting one’s faith in God.

            Sigmund Freud wrote his work on religion, The Future of an Illusion, in the early twentieth century – a time when modern psychology was developing into the vast field it is today. Naturally, Freud is most interested in the role God plays in the psychology of man. In his work, he argues that religion is man’s most compelling illusion, born out of human desire. Freud differentiates between faith being an illusion rather than merely being an error in logic. He says, “what is characteristic of illusions is that they are derived from human wishes. In this respect they come near to psychiatric delusions.”[xx] Where Hume was more concerned with man’s fear and anxiety, Freud, perhaps elaborating on Feuerbach, bases his religious framework around wish fulfillment. But like Hume, Freud believes God originally was conceived out of anthropomorphizing of nature. He says that, “it is in fact natural to man to personify everything that he wants to understands in order later to control it.” However, Freud goes further by psychoanalyzing man’s relationship with God, concluding that is based on an infantile prototype.

            In his essay, “Totem and Taboo”, Freud claims, “the psychoanalysis of individual human beings…teaches us…that the god of each of them is formed in the likeness of his father…and that at the bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father.” But where did this parental relationship begin? Freud suggests that primitive man comes to worship his father out of fear and guilt. He thinks that primitive man was organized similarly to the gorilla horde. Often, the alpha-male gorilla would be overthrown and killed by his sons out of jealousy of women and power. Freud believes that early human tribes were no different in their organization and that this Deed, as Freud calls it, of killing the father, later gives rise to father becoming God. The sons feel guilt for the Deed and later come to worship the father God out of fear, hoping for forgiveness.

            Freud characterizes the human relationship to God as ambivalent. Man, like a child, is both scared and dependent on his father for protection. He comes to love his father because of the securities the father provides, but never ceases to fear him. Freud says, “as the growing individual finds that he is destined to remain a child forever…he creates for himself the gods whom he dreads, who he seeks to propitiate, and whom he nevertheless entrusts with his own protection.”[xxi] Man is incapable of being fully independent, so as he ages he transitions his trust from his earthly father to that of the heavenly father. Protecting man from the cruelties of nature is not enough; God must also fulfill man’s desires by reconciling “men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown in death” and also by compensating them for the “sufferings an privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on them.”[xxii]Praying to this exalted father for answers and wish fulfillment and attributing the goodness of one’s life to God is all part of the illusion.

            One might wonder what is so bad about giving into this illusion of God. It seems only to make people feel better about their existence. However, I would argue that the pleasure a certain belief generates does not justify the belief. If ones considers all the hours of productivity lost to prayer and worship done in the egoic hope of wish fulfillment or the like, it becomes clear why man must see past the illusion. If all the hours spent building churches or temples were used in attempt to eliminate suffering here and now, God would no longer have a place in the world. Although Hume, Freuerbach and Freud each have a different approach towards analyzing God, they all seem to agree that He is manmade and degrading to human nature. Feuerbach points out that man is reduced to mere filth in relation to God. He says, “ every tendency of man, however natural – even the impulse to cleanliness was conceived by the Israelites as a positive divine ordinance.”[xxiii] And as these profane human qualities like cleanliness are attributed to God, man detracts qualities from himself until he reaches a state of self-humiliation.  Freud goes further by predicting that this “universal obsessional neurosis of humanity” will eventually bring about its self-destruction. He asserts that this illusion is dangerous and “civilization runs a greater risk if we maintain our present attitude to religion than if we give it up.”[xxiv] We can only hope that in the twenty-first century, when we now have the technology destroy human civilization, those in power do not become too entangled in the illusion. Perhaps if Hume was right, that the natural progression of human thought was from polytheism to monotheism, the next evolutionary step (and only hope for mankind) would be to remove one more God and shatter the illusion forever.

 

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[i]  Taylor 137.

[ii] Hume 176.

[iii] Hume 135.

[iv] Hume 136.

[v] Hume 136.

[vi] Hume 137.

[vii] Hume 136.

[viii] Hume 155.

[ix] Hume 142.

[x] Hume 142.

[xi] Hume 143.

[xii] German Essays on Religion 86.

[xiii] Feuerbach

[xiv] Feuerbach 90.

[xv] Feuerbach 90.

[xvi] Feuerbach 90.

[xvii] Feuerbach 91.

[xviii] Feuerbach 91.

[xix] Taylor 147.

[xx] Freud 39.

[xxi] Freud 30.

[xxii] Freud 22.

[xxiii] Feuerbach 92.

[xxiv] Freud 45.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Taylor, Mark. Critical Terms for Religious Studies. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1998.

Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo. Norton and Company Inc: New York, 1961.

Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. Norton and Company: New York, 1961.

Feuerbach, Ludwig. The Essence of Christianity. Continuum: New York. 1994.

Hume, David. The Natural of History of Religion. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2000.

(NYU year 2 Theories and Methods of Religious Studies)