Religion As Metaphysics: A Category Mistake

The claim that God is real, or even that God's existence is reality, is problematic chiefly because it incurs the category mistake of treating religion as through it were metaphysics. Rather than being an atheistic argument, obviating the mistake privileges God's radical transcendence. To be sure, viewing religion through metaphysical lenses is problematic for some other, relatively minor reasons as well. 

For one thing, pondering the metaphysical in religious garb may actually be the human mind looking at itself as though through a mirror. “God, as a metaphysical being, is the intelligence satisfied in itself, or rather, conversely, the intelligence, satisfied in itself, thinking itself as the absolute being, is God as a metaphysical being. Hence all metaphysical predicates of God are real predicates only when they are recognised as belonging to thought, to intelligence, to the understanding.”[1] Accordingly, theology “is pre-occupied with the metaphysical attributes of eternity, unconditionedness, unchangeableness, and the like abstractions, which express the nature of the understanding.”[2] But Kant claims that God’s “existence is not susceptible of proof from reason.”[3] Feuerbach explains that the “proof of the existence of God transcends the limits of the reason.”[4] In other words, if God transcends the limits of our intellects, then God as a metaphysical being must go beyond our understanding and its attributes. Hence Feuerbach insists that, “to religion God is not a matter of abstract thought,--he is a present truth and reality.”[5] God as a reality is distinct from attributes of the human mind.

Does this mean, then, that God’s reality is of feeling?  Feuerbach thought that God was a mere projection of human feelings. The philosopher claims that God “in the sense of a nomen proprium, not of a vague, metaphysical entity, is essentially an object only of religion, not of philosophy,—of feeling, not of the intellect.”[6] But whereas reason seeks to ponder reality—even being the real in Kant’s self-serving idealism—feeling is oriented to human experience, which is hardly reality itself. In other words, if God extends (or is based) beyond the limits of human perception too, then feeling also falls short from getting us to the reality of God.

Such an evasive thing that reality is, for besides being mistakenly likened to the human intellect and its abstract ideas, and even feeling, belief itself has been allowed to take center stage. The belief affirming God’s sui generis existence in particular has been allowed to become the definitive litmus test in theistic religions; “belief in the existence of God becomes . . . the spiritual import of the idea of God, a chief point in religion.”[7] For example, a person is “a Christian only through this, that he believes in Christ.”[8] Whether the person values the teachings or the example of Jesus is only indirectly related—the key being the belief in the metaphysics of Christ’s unique existence, or reality. Accordingly, Feuerbach makes the following remark: “If the existence of God, taken by itself, had not rooted itself as a religious truth in minds, there would never have been those infamous, senseless, horrible ideas of God which stigmatise the history of religion and theology.”[9] It is fully in line with the nature of faith, Feuerbach argues, to slap a nonbeliever on the face rather than turn the other cheek, which could alternatively be the Christian’s focus.

In short, the belief that God exists is all that counts to the theist, who is prepared to fight on behalf of the belief, for it is easier for the human mind to grasp such a belief than the nature of God’s reality itself. “The existence in the existence of God is the belief in a special existence,” Feuerbach explains, “separate from the existence of man and Nature.”[10] In other words, “Existence, empirical existence, is proved to me by the senses alone; and in the question as to the being of God, the existence implied has not the significance of inward reality, of truth, but the significance of a formal, external existence.”[11] The special nature of the existence thus goes beyond the belief in whether God exists. As Feuerbach points out, God “is not only a being for us, a being in our faith, our feeling, our nature, he is a being in himself, a being external to us,--in a word, not merely a belief, a feeling, a thought, but also a real existence apart from belief, feeling, and thought.”[12]  

The transcendence of such a real existence is unfortunately undercut by the heavily anthropomorphic nature of the god-man type. Hence Feuerbach makes the following distinction: “But it is equally perverse to attempt to deduce the Incarnation from purely speculative, i.e., metaphysical abstract grounds; for metaphysics apply only to the first person of the Godhead, who does not become incarnate, who is not a dramatic person.”[13] The Trinity thus incorporates the idea that “God is universal, abstract Being, simply the idea of Being; and yet he must be conceived as a personal, individual being.”[14] God as a historical person is difficult to reconcile with the universal quality of reality itself. Likewise, it is much easier to relate Brahman than Vishnu or Shiva to the real in Hinduism. To say that the atman (soul) is the same as Brahman, which pervades everything and everywhere, is of a different relation than that which exists between the atman and one of the deities.

Yet even to say that the Christian Godhead or the Hindu Brahman is real—and in a sense that does not dovetail with the nature of reason or feeling—is misleading, for the association involves the category mistake of taking religion as metaphysics. Is eternity really a metaphysical concept? Is reality a religious concept? If God is the Creator of what exists, then to reduce God to that which is real mistakes the Creator for the creation. Stopping at reality thus falls short of God’s radical transcendence. To yearn experientially for the very condition behind or aside from reality extends the experience of transcendence. To think of God as not depending on reality, but, rather, as giving rise to it pushes the deity that much further away from the entrapments of human understanding, which so likes to capture the divine rather than fall away. To ponder God’s kind of existence as sui generis is thus to unhinge it from even being the real. That sort of existence is distinctly religious, and given the religious notion of transcendence the nature of God’s existence necessarily transcends our intellect. So how could we expect to stay long with the comparatively easy metaphysical notion of reality? It’s time for religionists to leave the foreign garden of metaphysics in order to return home to finally ponder, just what is the native fauna among the untended weeks in the proverbial Garden of Eden?  

Related: Spiritual Leadership in Business: Transcending the Ethical, a short book that is available at Amazon in print and as an ebook.

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1. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, George Eliot, trans. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 37.

2. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 54.

3. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 201.

4. Ibid.

5. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 199.

6. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 186.

7. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 201.

8. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 329.

9. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 202.

10. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 203.

11. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 201.

12. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 199.

13. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 52.

14. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 213.

Experience of Transcendence: The Core of Religion and Spirituality

Transcendence beyond the limits of human cognition, and thus reason and even religious beliefs is notoriously difficult for the human mind to grasp; even if as I suspect the human mind has an instinctual urge to yearn to go beyond cognitive and perceptual boundaries (i.e., beyond our ordinary experience), that same mind also has a dogged proclivity to cloth wholly-other religious objects (e.g., a deity) in familiar garb. Transcendent experience itself is immune, hence focusing on the experience itself is superior to getting caught up with the presumably certain divine attributes of a religious object, yet even such experience can be held back, or unduly circumscribed, when the transcendent reference-point is rendered conveniently familiar. Hence the dictum against graven images.  

As “an emotional and sensuous being,” a human being, Feuerbach suggests, “is governed and made happy only by images, by sensible representations,” including those that are fabricated by the imagination.[1] In other words, we have “an instinct, an internal necessity, which impels [us] to think, to perceive, to imagine.”[2] This instinct sees nothing wrong with applying itself to religious objects, essentially robbing them of their rightful transcendence.

The Son, is, therefore, expressly called the Image of God; his essence is that he is an image—the representation of God, the visible glory of the invisible God. The Son is the satisfaction of the need for mental images, the nature of the imaginative activity in man made objective as an absolute, divine activity.[3]

Feuerbach must have read Hume, for he too laments how inherently difficult it is for the human mind to hold onto the divine as a pure, incorporeal spirit for long;  the mind automatically sets about clothing it in anthropomorphic attributes because they are familiar, which is in itself is “so agreeable to the mind.”[4] In other words, “an invisible spiritual intelligence is an object too refined for vulgar apprehension,” so we “naturally affix it to some sensible representation.”[5] By means of the instinct described by Feuerbach, the human mind tends to render the transcendent perceptual by our senses, and thus firmly within the limits of perception. In fact, Hume goes so far as to define idolatry as the portrayal of the invisible divine, which the human mind has trouble holding onto, in terms of “some sensible representation.”[6]

Is worship of a god-man, as in God made flesh, therefore an instance of self-idolatry? The very structure of man worshipping a god-man would suggest so. Furthermore, God made flesh in the Incarnation as Jesus Christ renders worship of the eternal Word, the Logos, surreptitiously susceptible to actually being worship of the human form idealized.[7] Augustine points to the significance of the human form of the second person of the Trinity:

[Jesus] was a baby, he grew as a man, he walked as a man, he hungered, thirsted as a man, he slept as a man, then at last he suffered as a man. . . . In the same form he arose, in the same form he ascended into heaven. . . . When, therefore, you think about the form of the servant in Christ, think of his human shape, if there is faith in you.[8]

Faith is tied here to Jesus Christ having a human shape (i.e., a human body).  It is not as if Augustine were unaware of the risks involved, for he warns against associating the form of the human body with the divine, which inherently transcends finite forms or embodiments:

(L)et every human configuration vanish from your heart; let there be driven from your thought whatever is limited by a bodily boundary, whatever is confined by the extent of a place or is extended with any bulk whatsoever; let such a fictitious image disappear from your heart. . . . Now, O man, if you cannot see your wisdom with the eyes of the flesh, nor think of it with such imaginings as bodily things are thought of, do you dare to impose the form of the human body on the wisdom of God?[9]

Hume stresses that the human brain cannot help but create such perceptual imaginings of bodily things to render the transcendent familiar at the expense of being wholly other and thus transcendent. Feuerbach points out that “the relations of humanity are not excluded from God” in that “God has a Son; God is a father”[10] Sensing that such relations render the deity too humanlike at the expense of being wholly other (as transcendent), Augustine strictly warns his readers that “no carnal thought creep up” in interpreting Jesus’s expression, “As the Father has taught me” in terms of a human father teaching his son. To liken the Trinitarian relationship to a (merely) human one would be, Augustine writes, to “fashion idols” in one’s heart.[11] Unfortunately, such idolatry is a danger even in spite of this warning, for “it is only natural that our own experiences or observations of father-son relations would mold how we view Jesus’ relation to his Father.”[12] In other words, our minds are susceptible to rendering the transcendent in familiar terms even to the point that the religious object is, as Feuerbach contends, actually human potential without our limitations as individuals.

Augustine exempts the case of Jesus Christ, however, on account of divine revelation attesting, albeit by faith alone, to the truth of the Incarnation; Jesus Christ is not just human potential, as divinity is something more even if it manifests as a Son in human form. Yet does this mean that the godhead tempts us mere mortals into self-idolatry by clothing the divinity in such brazenly anthropomorphic garb? At the very least, Feuerbach suggests, understanding repudiates the application of anthropomorphisms to God.[13]

Not so, Kierkegaard would undoubtedly reply, for the eternal coming into history through the Incarnation transcends human understanding, and thus cognition itself. Larger principles, in other words, are involved than the anthropomorphism. As Kierkegaard points out, “faith is not a knowledge, for all knowledge is either knowledge of the eternal, which excludes the temporal and the historical as inconsequential, or it is purely historical knowledge, and no knowledge can have as its object this absurdity that the eternal is the historical.”[14] Absurdity and paradox, which stress transcendence beyond human cognition, are two terms that Kierkegaard uses to describe distinctly religious phenomena.

In Fear and Trembling, for instance, Kierkegaard places the absurd above even human morality. The divine command given to Abraham that he sacrifice Isaac is not in a religious sense murder.  In other words, the religious sacrifice is above the moral verdict of murder—yet another indication that religion does not reduce to morality, and thus spiritual leadership is not really just ethical leadership. The absurd, unlike a moral system, lies beyond the clutches of reasoning. In Fear and Trembling, the absurd is Abraham’s faith that God would not break the promise that Abraham’s offspring would go on to fill nations even though that same God has commanded the old man to sacrifice his only child. This makes no sense, and yet for God all things are possible. Similarly, the eternal in a historical person, albeit historical in a faith narrative, is a paradox that can only be taken on faith.

The paradox is “the god’s planting himself in human life.”[15] This is no trivial point in historical Christianity, for, as Kierkegaard states, “(t)he heart of the matter is the historical fact that the god has been in human form.”[16] Christianity, he explains, “by means of the historical . . . has wanted to be the single individual’s point of departure for his eternal consciousness.”[17] Unlike Socrates, a teacher is needed who can occasion a re-birth of sorts in a person. The condition must be so significant that the person would never forget it.  “(I)n order for the teacher to be able to give the condition, he must be the god, and in order to put the learner in possession of it, he must be man. This contradiction is in turn the object of faith.”[18]

Feuerbach admits that “out of the need for salvation is postulated something transcending human nature, a being different from” human beings, yet “no sooner is this being postulated than there arises the yearning of man after himself, after his own nature, and man is immediately re-established.”[19] Therefore, “the contemplation of God as human,” with love as the unifier of the two, is “the mystery of the Incarnation.”[20] “In the Incarnation religion only confesses” what theology will not admit, “that God is an altogether human being.”[21] That which is supposedly “mysterious and incomprehensible” (i.e., suggesting of transcendence) about the notion that “God is or becomes a man” is actually “nothing more than the human form of a God, who already in his nature . . . is a merciful and therefore a human God.”[22] Neither the human form nor the idealized human qualities of mercy, goodness (benevolentia), power (omnipotentia), and knowledge (omniscientia) are particularly transcendent, as they pertain or come out of our realm and are very much within the limits of our perception and cognition, respectively.  Even in terms of human sentiments, a religious person “unhesitatingly assigns his own feelings to God; God is to him a heart susceptible to all that is human; . . . feeling can appeal only to feeling.”[23] Hence, petitions through prayer appealing to God’s goodness and mercy. Even in such a momentous condition in salvation history, therefore, the human mind leans toward seeing the transcendent through heavily-tinted anthropomorphic sunglasses such that the god is essentially rendered as human at the expense of transcendence.

Even though Kierkegaard considered the mystery of the Incarnation—the absolute paradox, in other words, as an object of faith rather than knowledge—to be beyond the limits of cognition, even his paradox may not reach transcendence in a religious sense. Generally speaking, the ultimate paradox of thought is “to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.”[24] The mind, in other words, paradoxically seeks to go beyond itself. So far, the understanding evinces the notion of transcendence. In “its paradoxical passion,” Kierkegaard writes, “the understanding does indeed will its own downfall.”[25] Likewise, cognition and reasoning fall before the Lord.

Yet if the eternal in history—in a human form no less!—is merely a species of the human imagination borne out of instinct rather than begotten by a godhead whose existence is not just idealized human qualities as Feuerbach suggests, then the absolute paradox is not beyond thought. For that matter, I could imagine a unicorn standing on the moon even though the actual science defines reason. Just as my imagination is not bound by the strictures of science, religion is not bound by science, or even metaphysics (i.e., what is real?) Even Feuerbach’s own notion of God holds back from transcending cognition, for “God is thy highest idea, the supreme effort of they understanding, thy highest power of thought.”[26] In other words, “God is what the understanding thinks as the highest.”[27] Religious yearning, on the other hand, goes beyond the point where understanding ends.

 Kierkegaard too holds back, as he is content to remain on the cusp of the unknown, where it collides with the understanding, rather than pushing further. “The paradoxical passion of the understanding,” he writes, “is continually colliding with this unknown. . . . The understanding does not go beyond this; yet in its paradoxicality the understanding cannot stop reaching it and being engaged with it, because wanting to express its relation to it by saying that this unknown does not exist will not do, since just saying that involves a relation.”[28]  The understanding does not go beyond the edge of the unknown that can be made known, and Kierkegaard is satisfied to remain there rather than to venture into the unknown, and thus to God beyond cognition. “But what, then, is this unknown, for does not its being the god merely signify to us that it is the unknown?”[29]  In other words, the unknown is the god. Yet the unknown to understanding is none other than ignorance, and the god, as omniscient, is hardly that. God extending beyond human understanding does not necessarily mean that the god is just the absence of understanding. Furthermore, that the god is mysterious, and thus not fully known, is not to say that it is simply the unknown.

In short, the understanding stops at the beginning of the unknown—arriving at it—whereas religious faith, and thus experience, extends into the wholly other, or absolutely different.  “To declare that God is the unknown because we cannot know it, and that even if we could know it we could not express it, does not satisfy the passion,” Kierkegaard states, “although it has correctly perceived the unknown as frontier. But a frontier is expressly the passion’s torment, even though it is also its incentive. And yet it can go no further. . . . What, then, is the unknown? It is the frontier that is continually arrived at . . . it is the different, the absolutely different.”[30] To arrive at something is not to go past its border into it. To be sure, it is not the understanding that can venture so. “Defined as the absolutely different, it seems to be at the point of being disclosed, but not so, because the understanding cannot even think the absolutely different; it cannot absolutely negate itself but uses itself for that purpose and consequently thinks the difference in itself, which it thinks by itself. It cannot absolutely transcend itself and therefore thinks as above itself only the sublimity that it thinks by itself.”[31] This is why it is so difficult for the human mind to conceive of God as wholly other; it is in the very nature of thought to conceive of objects in terms that bear some familiarity to the mind, which “cannot absolutely transcend itself and therefore thinks as above itself only the sublimity that it thinks by itself.”[32] To even try to think of something absolutely different involves an arbitrariness, and yet we affix such certainty to our knowledge of the divine attributes. Consequently, Kierkegaard points out that “at the very bottom of devoutness there madly lurks the capricious arbitrariness that knows it itself has produced the god.”[33] Hence the nature of the god—the religious object—may not be the basis of religion. Religious experience, on the other hand, is felt on our side of the line, within the known, and yet crucially its object or aim transcends even the border to the absolutely different that cannot be known, sensed, or perceived. The nature of the experience is thus unique. As such, it is part of the native fauna in the religious garden. In fact, being in itself immune from anthropomorphism from within our realm, the sui generis experience is, I submit, the defining characteristic of religion and spirituality. We can indeed transcend even the masks of eternity that we hold as ultimate. In achieving such transcendence, a person enters religion’s inner sanctum—that which religion really is.

The essay pertains to chapter 3, "Spiritual Leadership Revised," in Spiritual Leadership in Business: Transcending the Ethical, which is available at Amazon in print and as an ebook.

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1. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, George Eliot, trans. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 75.

2. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, 78.

3. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, 75.

4. David Hume, The Natural History of Religion, sec. 5, in Principal Writings on Religion including Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and the Natural History of Religion, ed. J. C. A. Gaskin (Oxford: Ox-ford University Press, 1993), 150.

5. Hume, Natural History, 152.

6. Hume, Natural History, 152.

7. Worden, God’s Gold, 338. See John 1:14.

8. Augustine, Tractates on John, 127.

9. Augustine, Tractates on John, 127.

10. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, 56.

11. Augustine, Tractates on John: Books 28-54, 40.4, trans. John W. Rettig, Fathers of the Church: 

A New Translation 88 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 126.

12. Skip Worden, God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth (Tucson, AZ: The Worden Report, 2015), 339.

13. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, 35.

14. Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments or A Fragment of Philosophy, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, eds. and trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 62.

15. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 107.

16. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 103.

17. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 109.

18. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 62.

19. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, 45.

20. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, 50. See also p. 48.

21. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, 56.

22. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, 51

23. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, 55.

24. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 37.

25. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 47.

26. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, 38.

27. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, 38.

28. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 44.

29. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 44.

30. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 44.

31. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 45.

32. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 45.

33. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 45.

Is Humanism a Religion?

Is Humanism a religion?  I contend that Humanism does not qualify, but it is compatible with religious experience. Beginning with how religion was defined in ancient times, I argue that the element or aspect of transcendence is vital. I then look at whether transcendence is and could be in Humanism.

Religio, religionis (f, Latin) is translated principally as "supernatural constraint or taboo" or "obligation," in line with the verb religare (to bind). Secondary meanings of religio include "sanctity" and "reverence, respect, awe." In short, the etymology of religion indicates that the phenomenon is based on the binding nature of a religious object that is transcendent (i.e., not based in our realm, including Nature), hence the supernatural attribute or manifestation associated with the nature of the binding, or obligation. So religion is not based on feeling obliged to respect Nature. Hence the ancient nature religions had as a core belief the notion that deities, which are not based in our realm, control various features of Nature. For example, Zeus controls lightning, and Poseidon causes storms on the seas. Somethings (i.e., deities) were premised to exist that transcend Nature. Therefore, Nature itself not get us far enough in referring to religion even in the nature religions. In theism, too, a religious object is believed to exist that is "other-worldly" and hence supernatural.

I submit that the most determinative aspect of religion—indeed, I would even say its essence—is transcendence, an orientation whose reference-point lies beyond the limits of human cognition, sentiment, and perception. Transcendence is something that a person does; it is experiential even as it is not experience as we know it. Technically, transcendence does not require a belief in religious object, such as a deity (i.e., an intelligent being with a personality based beyond our realm—that of Creation). On a bare basis, the focus can be to a focus-point that is beyond the limits of human cognition, sentiment, and perception; as a point, which by definition has no surface-area, the referent operates as a non-attribute-holding place-holder that engenders “deep” transcendental yearning or striving.  Such an undertaking, I contend, serves as the foundation of religion and spirituality. Accordingly, the binding is ultimately applied to the yearning or striving, rather than to normative strictures ensuing from a religious object (e.g., the Ten Commandments).

It follows that respecting human potential, such as exists within Nature, does not get us to religion. Nor does Nature itself get us there. Feuerbach errs, I submit, in attributing divine status to Nature, and, more specifically to the potential of our species (i.e., our better instincts). He points to the case of nature religions, which he claims involves the “worship of nature as a divine being” because “nature is primary and fundamental, and cannot be derived from anything else.”[1] Yet having such a placement within Creation, for example, does not render something divine for lack of a transcendent extension. Even as representations of “the world in a mode differing from sense perception” rather than “a being different from the world,” the original conceptions of gods fell short.

Feuerbach can ironically be drawn on to attest to the shortfall. “I do not look on nature as a god, as supernatural, supersensual, remote, recondite, and One; [Nature in contrast] is a manifold, public, actual being which can be perceived with all the senses.”[2] There being “nothing mystical, nothing nebulous, nothing theological” in his use of the term, Nature, it falls short of being divine because it is based and confined to our realm without a transcendent dimension.[3] So too does his conception of God as “abstracted from the world”—God being “only the world in thought.”[4] Such a god cannot, by definition, extend beyond the world. Feuerbach’s characterization of the word divine as “beneficent, magnificent, praiseworthy, and admirable” also falls short in accounting for the term’s distinctly religious connotations; a political ruler, for example, could be praised as being beneficent, magnificent, and admirable without any hint of anything religious or even spiritual.[5] Similarly, Feuerbach’s claim that spiritual means “intellectual and abstract” falls short, as these descriptors could apply to the orientation of a secular scholar whose trade is theory.[6] Feuerbach, being such a scholar, also characterizes "divine" as "supreme”—his reference here being to Nature itself. The religious connotations of the word, divine, are not satisfied, however, for something can be supreme and yet not transcendent.[7] Life, for example, “is the supreme good.”[8] In fact, Feuerbach maintains that God, as a supreme being, “is in its origin and basis nothing but the highest being in space, optically considered: the sky with its brilliant phenomena.”[9] Being the highest being in Creation may be impressive by our standards, but this does not get us to religious transcendence, which is qualitatively different than even infinite space and time.

In his ascension in his resurrected body into Heaven, for example, Jesus goes up skyward, but not simply up and up into the sky. Rather, he becomes engulfed in a cloud, which signifies the inherent mysterium of a transcendent divine object (i.e., God) that inherently goes beyond the limits of our ability to think and see yet not in the sense that the infinite space in the sky lies beyond our conceptual and visual abilities. Feuerbach rejects this sui generis transcendental dimension of religion, claiming that all “religions of some imagination transfer their Gods into the region of the clouds . . . all Gods are lost at last in the blue vapor of heaven.”[10] The transcendent to him is merely the fiction of human imagination; God’s goodness is “merely the utility of nature, ennobled by the imagination.”[11]

So Feuerbach tries to secularize religion, claiming it “is merely the art of life and simply expresses the forces and drives which directly govern the life of man.”[12] Accordingly, he misapplies religious terms to “earthly” objects—which in religious terms is idolatry.  In fact, in claiming that “man has in himself the measure, the criterion of divinity,” Feuerbach can be said to be engaging in self-idolatry.[13] Hence, he posits, “if a being’s worthiness to be worshipped, hence his divine dignity, depends solely on his relation to human welfare, if only a being beneficial and useful to man is divine, then the ground of divinity is to be sought solely in human egoism.”[14]

Feuerbach thus hails Nature as sacred, for example, because we are so dependent on it.[15] “All the strange and conspicuous phenomena in nature, everything that strikes and captivates man’s eye, surprises and enchants his ear, fires his imagination, induces wonderment, affects him in a special, unusual, to him inexplicable way, may contribute to the formation of religion and even provide an object of worship.”[16] Just because something is captivating or enchanting, even special or unusual, does not render it sacred—which is to say, with significance that transcends our realm. Yet Feuerbach attacks the attribution of the sacred to transcendent religious objects. Such “an object first takes on its true intrinsic dignity when the sacred nimbus is stripped off; for as long as a thing or being is an object of religious worship, it is clad in borrowed plumes, namely, the peacock feathers of the human imagination.”[17]

Humanism, moreover, also falls short of religion and even spirituality in eschewing the sheer existence of any transcendent religious object(s). Put another way, Humanism limits itself to recognition only within the limits of human cognition, sentiment and perception. Yet Humanism can be religious or spiritual, I contend, on account of the human (instinctual) urge to undertake transcendent yearning. Given the salience of religious experience both cross-culturally and through human history, the human brain may have an instinctual urge—admittedly stronger in some people than others—to engage in transcendent experience whose orientation or focus is curiously beyond the capacities of the human brain.  If transcendence is simply one of many human qualities or abilities, pursuing its potential is consistent with the aims of Humanism: to develop human potential.

The key for Humanists whose transcendentalist urge is ardently felt lies in distinguishing the experience—the yearning itself—from whether religious objects exist beyond the limits of human cognition and perception. No such objects need be presumed to exist in order to engage in the human yearning whose focus lies inherently beyond the capacity of the brain; it is enough—and indeed, crucial—for the focus to be beyond. This is what enables Humanism to be religious without having to believe in God. Put another way, God for the Humanist may be the transcendence itself, rather than a transcendent entity. Both Augustine and Calvin stress that the Christian god is love; God is the love between people that issues out in universal benevolence. Yet such love, having a divine basis, cannot merely be moral in nature; transcendence cannot be of own kind, or sui generis, and yet reduce to morality. So a religious Humanism cannot simply be human morality; a unique way of being human hitherto assumed to be conditioned on belief in particular conceptions of religious objects (e.g., God) must be uncoupled for the Humanist to admit to his or her own human religious nature.

In summary, Humanism in the limited sense that it is commonly "understood" does not qualify as a religion for lack of transcendence. To niggardly hold to the ideologically constrained common view and presumptuously erase and replace the default meaning of religion does not do justice either to Humanism or religion. Like the "other shore" in Buddhism, the very existence of the abyss that Humanists and Theists alike insist separates Humanism and religion is, I submit, an illusion foisted by narrow-minded, partisan thinking. Humanism is not, but could be, religious.

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1.  Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 89.

2.  Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 91.

3. Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 91.

4. Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 114.

5. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Religion, trans. Alexander Loos (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004), p. 7.

6. Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 116.

7. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Religion, trans. Alexander Loos (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004), 4.

8. Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 53.

9. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Religion, trans. Alexander Loos (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004), 11.

10. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Religion, trans. Alexander Loos (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004), 11.

11. Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 111.

12. Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 53.

13. Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 53-54.

14. Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 62.

15. Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 37.

16. Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 45.

17. Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 38.

Realive: Lazarus Reanimated!

In 2016, Robert McIntyre, a graduate of MIT, became the first person to freeze and then revive a mammalian brain—that of a white rabbit. “When thawed, the rabbit’s brain was found to have all of its synapse, cell membranes, and intracellular structures intact.”[1] The film, Realive, made that same year, is a fictional story about a man with terminal cancer who commits suicide to be frozen and revived when his illness could be cured. In the context of McIntyre’s scientific work, the film’s sci-fi demeanor belies the very real possibility that cryogenics could realistically alter fundamental assumptions about life and death even just later in the same century. What the film says about the life and death is timeless, however, in terms of philosophical value.

The full essay is at "Realive."

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1. Candace Sutton, “Human Bodies Frozen in Desert Facility Waiting for Science to Wake them Up,” News.com.au.

Politically Partisan Clergy: A Cleft in the Bright Side of Faith

Citing religious liberty, President Trump signed an executive order on May 4, 2017, the National Day of Prayer, “directing the Internal Revenue Service to avoid cracking down on political activity by religious organizations.”[1] In particular, clergy could then endorse political candidates without fear that their respective churches would lose their tax-exempt status. It is a bit extreme that such status would be lost simply because a pastor mentions a preference for a political candidate or a particular public policy, for such references are not integral or central to a clergy’s message, which is religious in nature. Nevertheless, the risk of religious faith being usurped by the political merits an attentive watchfulness, at the very least.

Outwardly, religious content can unwittingly, and without notice even to the religionist oneself, give way to political agendas, especially during an election season. In fact, such agendas—in particular, the ideologies—can “rebrand” themselves into religious garb such that even the endorsement of a political candidate can be presumed to be religious in nature. When the U.S. president signed the order, for example, he said, “For too long, the federal government has used the power of the state as a weapon against people for faith, bullying and even punishing Americans for following their religious beliefs.”[2] The implication is that endorsing a candidate is such a belief. With the distended notion of religious belief comes less room for, or a proportionate decrease in the genuine article.

 A more subtle downside—one that is actually even more likely—has to do with the impact of even occasional politically-partisan statements on the still-dominant religious ethos and message. The overlay of a cross-cutting partisanship compromises the coherence in the primary partisan axis. Don’t despair; this statement needs some unpacking.

Feuerbach (1804-1872), a European philosopher, uncovered a seldom-recognized side of faith by analyzing Christianity. Within the faithful, the partisan nature of faith is obscured by the unity of the faithful. The prejudiced nature of faith—its “(d)ogmatic, exclusive, scrupulous particularly”—does not play out among the faithful, except as it cuts off part of itself as heretics.[3] Far from being universally applicable, love gives way only within the confines of the faithful. “He is not for Christ is against him; that which is not chiristian is antichristian.”[4] It would be to dishonor God to love those who dishonor God. “Hence faith has fellowship with believers only; unbelievers it rejects. It is well-disposed towards believers, but ill-disposed towards unbelievers.”[5] Even as believers actually harbor hatred toward the disbelievers—belief being presumed to be decisive to faith—they overlook their ill-will and thus that in faith itself “lies a malignant principle.”[6] Within the faithful, it does not come into play, so faith is perceived as wholly salubrious—without a back side. Keeping disbelievers at bay ensures the apparent congruence of love and faith. Yet if another sort of partisanship is introduced within a congregation—such as political partisanship—a cleft arises such that can break up the serenity of the love of faith. Put another way, introducing political disagreement disrupts the agreement that exists within the faithful. The cost in endorsing partisan causes or candidates is in terms of the original domain—that of religion. The malignant principle of faith and political anger at the opposition are one and the same; introducing a political cleft into a congregation resonates with the partisan nature of faith, yet even as the latter can remain invisible from within the confines of the faithful.

So clergy in the pulpit should think twice before lapsing into the political arena, even as mere partisan mouthpieces. In addition to the opportunity cost of foregone attention to religious matters, the offense engendered among the faithful creates a rift on the bright side of faith that detracts from it unnecessarily.

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[1] Michael D. Shear, “Trump Eases Political Activity by Religious Organizations,” The New York Times, May 4, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 251.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid, 252.

[6] Ibid.

Why Do Atrocities Occur in the Name of God?

Why have atrocities been associated with religion—even having been committed under religious auspices? Four Crusades were fought, for example, by popes whose God is love—whose god-man extolls love of enemies and turning the other cheek rather than hitting back. In the modern era, Christianity has been tame, but terrorist acts have been committed in the name of God by people who presume that they cannot possibly be wrong in their beliefs. If Feuerbach is correct, the underlying problem inheres in the belief in God's very existence—that belief pointing us to a still deeper problem in the very nature of faith itself, to a vulnerability or susceptibility that has been overlooked or conveniently glossed over for as long as religion has existed on the face of the Earth.

Feuerbach lays out the problem in the following terms: “If the existence of God, taken by itself, had not rooted itself as a religious truth in minds, there would never have been those infamous, senseless, horrible ideas of God which stigmatise the history of religion and theology.”[1] Senseless ideas of God stigmatize the history of religion. Senseless people carried those ideas into practice, stigmatizing human history. Feuerbach’s surprise is that the belief in the existence of God—this belief in itself—may have a sordid byproduct or be inherently problematic.

“The belief in the existence of God is the belief in a special existence, separate from the existence of man and Nature.”[2] Feuerbach rejects the special existence precisely because it is external. This belief is sheer artifice, he argues, because God represents the best of our human nature—without its limitations: perfect love, all powerful, the highest good, infinite knowledge, and present everywhere. This is the origin of religious consciousness, which has been replaced by the conceptualization of the divine as an external object whose existence is portrayed as separate. To Feuerbach, that object is simply a product of the human imagination. 

The content of revelation is human. Revelation “must not be regarded as outside the nature of man.”[3] By nature, Feuerbach is referring to an instinctual urge. “There is within [man] an inward necessity which impels him to present moral and philosophical doctrines in the form of narratives and fables, and an equal necessity to represent that impulse as a revelation.”[4] This is not to say that religion reduces to morality; rather, what we take to be objective religious truth comes from within. The human imagination plays a vital role. “Man, by means of the imagination, involuntarily contemplates his inner nature; he represents it as out of himself,” as God.[5] As such, God “is an inward, spiritual being.”[6] Denied here is the transcendence of God, which I submit is vital, and, which interestingly does not require the conceptualization of God as an intelligent being or object; the important thing is that the reference point of the religious consciousness lies beyond the limits of human conception and perception.

To Feuerbach, God is rightly understood experience of mankind’s inner nature. At least it is not the actual inner nature that furnishes the divine content. Revelation comes “from the ideal nature of man to the phenomenal man, from the species to the individual.”[7] Even so, “between the divine revelation and the so-called human reason or nature, there is no other than an illusory distinction;--the contents of the divine revelation are of human origin, for they have proceeded not from God as God, but from God as determined by human reason, human wants, that is, directly from human reason and human wants.”[8] Rather than an external object willowing its revelation of itself to fit within human understanding, the source of divine revelation is the human imagination acting on the instinctual wish that our limitations be dissolved. “The imagination is, in general, the true place of an existence which is absent, not present to the senses, though nevertheless sensational in its essence.”[9] God loves and gets angry—vengeance is mine, saith the Lord—but these emotions are cut off from their source as manifesting in a quantitatively less way in human beings as soon as the divine is rendered as an external object whose existence transcends Creation.

As artificial as the cleavage or division is, the certainty of the severed, limitless sensibilities in an external object—not to mention that such an object exists—is perhaps even worse. “The religious mind . . . has the immediate certainty that all its involuntary, spontaneous affections are impressions from without, manifestations of another being.”[10] Such certainty is tantamount to factual knowledge, even though the being transcends the limits of human cognition (and perception). In fact, “a God who gives me a knowledge of himself through his own act is alone of a God who truly exists, who proves himself to exist,--an objective God.”[11] So the knowledge of an objective, externalized God is known to reveal itself as though a fact. Put another way, the belief in the existence of God as an external object carries with it the presumptuousness of belief rendering itself as factual knowledge.

Of course, the presumptuousness is limited to extant beliefs qua facts. “Were not the gods of Olympus also facts, self-attesting existences? Were not the ludicrous miracles of paganism regarded as facts?”[12] Yet in a later age the divine narratives are labeled as myths devised by the human mind. The “religious consciousness itself admits, in relation to past times, the essentially human quality of revelation. The religious consciousness of a later age is no longer satisfied with a Jehovah who is from head to foot a man, and does not shrink from becoming visible as such. It recognizes that those were merely images in which God accommodated himself to the comprehension of men in that age, that is, merely human images. But it does not apply this mode of interpretation to ideas accepted as revelation in the present age, because it is yet itself steeped in those ideas.”[13] Every religionist takes their own religious beliefs as facts of reason yet while insisting on faith, which implies belief rather than knowledge.

Clearly, religious “facts” are problematic. To Feuerbach, a religious “fact is every wish that projects itself on reality: in short, it is everything that is not doubted simply because it is not—must not be—doubted.”[14] To block doubt is not to establish a fact. Hence the wish for unlimited sensibilities impressed on reality in the form of a separate entity is not a fact; such an instinctual urge ought not glorify itself as a fact of reason.

It is important to isolate as problematic the human presumption to immediate certainty that revelation is indeed revelation. “The belief in revelation exhibits in the clearest manner the characteristic illusion of the religious consciousness. The general premiss of this belief is: man can of himself know nothing of God; all his knowledge is merely vain, earthly, human.”[15] We cannot know beyond the limits of our cognition and perception. In fact, what knowledge we do have is tainted. Feuerbach does not go with the obvious conclusion that even if an external intelligent being reveals itself to us we can’t know this. Rather, he claims that God reveals itself to us in terms that we can understand. “God is a superhuman being; God is known only by himself. Thus we know nothing of God beyond what he reveals to us. The knowledge imparted by God is alone divine, superhuman, supernatural knowledge. . . . But nevertheless the divine revelation is determined by the human nature. God speaks not to brutes or angels, but to men; hence he uses human speech and human conceptions.”[16] God’s revelation makes it into our realm through the dark window because the all-powerful knowledge can fit within human terms. “In the scheme of his revelation God must have reference not to himself, but to man’s power of comprehension.”[17] To reach us, God’s revelation of the divine nature must fit within our cognitive limits. Even so, given those limits, we cannot be certain that what we take to be revelation really is from an external intelligent being. Hence we cannot be certain even that such a being exists and yet we assume to have such certainty anyway.

From our presumptuous entitlement to infallibility concerning the belief in the existence of God as an external object follows immediate certainty regarding the religiously sourced morality of our actions, which we deem as righteous because the very existence of the external law-giver cannot even be doubted. “Moral rules are indeed observed, but they are severed from the inward disposition, the heart, by being represented as the commandments of an external lawgiver. . . . What is done is done not because it is good and right, but because it is commanded by God. The inherent quality of the deed is indifferent; whatever God commands is right.”[18] The severing is dependent on the belief in God’s existence as an external object or being. To be sure, Feuerbach seems to have missed Paul’s dictum, “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”[19] Yet a willing heart may embolden the moral certainty that is all too permissive of the sort of blind-spot that can seek in an atrocity or two. Even if God is taken as idealized, unlimited human feeling as Feuerbach urges, such a conception of God can be subject to the sort of religious rationalizations that can twist moral systems into accommodating atrocities under religious auspices.

What if such rationalizations pertain, moreover, to the nature of faith itself? What if atrocities are fallout stemming from faith itself, as a phenomenon in its own right? In his visit to Cairo, Egypt at the end of April, 2017, the Roman Catholic Pope Francis said, “Peace alone is holy and no act of violence can be perpetrated in the name of religion or in the name of God. Together, let us affirm the incompatibility of violence and faith, belief and hatred.”[20] Beyond treating belief and faith as synonymous, Pope Francis assumes that hatred and violence are extrinsic to the nature of faith. This is the common view.

Yet Feuerbach sees a more intricate structure in the nature of faith itself. Within it “lies a malignant principle.”[21] Within the faithful, say a congregation, the partisan nature of faith is obscured by the unity of the faithful. The prejudiced nature of faith—its “(d)ogmatic, exclusive, scrupulous particularly”—does not play out among the faithful, except as it cuts off part of itself as heretics.[22]

Hence in Christianity, it is Christian faith that “is the ultimate ground” of the persecution of heretics.[23] Fear, Feuerbach claims, “is why Christians wish ‘godless’ unbelievers every known calamity, and why, purely out of Christian love and solicitude . . . they experience the utmost pleasure when a misfortune befalls the godless, for they are convinced that trouble will bring them back to God and turn them into good believers.”[24] But even absent the fear, faith can trigger such malevolent hypocrisy because faith, even the Christian faith of universal benevolence, actually “recognizes man only on condition that he recognizes God.”[25] To the person who does not believe in the divine personality, religious hatred, it should be admitted, comes naturally, eclipsing even “universalistic” Christian neighbor-love. Far from being universally applicable, love gives way only within the confines of the faithful. “He is not for Christ is against him; that which is not christian is antichristian.”[26] It would be to dishonor God to love those who dishonor God. “Hence faith has fellowship with believers only; unbelievers it rejects. It is well-disposed towards believers, but ill-disposed towards unbelievers.”[27] Hence Luther declares, “What I cannot love with God, I must hate; if they only preach something which is against God, all love and friendship is destroyed;—thereupon I hate thee, and do thee no good. For faith must be uppermost, and where the word of God is attacked, hate takes the place of love.”[28] Yet does not hate actually attack a deity which Augustine points out is love itself? Even so, Luther insists, “Rather than God’s word should fall and heresy stand, faith would wish all creatures to be destroyed; for through heresy men lose God himself.”[29] Is it not rather through hatred though? That even a faith of love admits so readily of partiality and thus of hatred suggests that malevolence enjoys a place at the table of faith, eclipsing morality at times altogether. Therefore, a religious faith not only allows for atrocities; faith itself may provoke religionists to partake, even with a clean conscience.

 

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1. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 202.

2. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 203.

3. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 208.

4. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 208.

5. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 208.

6. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 226.

7. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 207.

8. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 207.

9. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 202.

10. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 206.

11. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 204.

12. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 205.

13. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 207.

14. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 206.

15. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 206.

16. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 206.

17. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 207.

18. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 209.

19. 2 Cor. 9:7.

20. Francis X. Rocca, “In Egypt, Pope Decries Religious Violence,” The Wall Street Journal, April 29-30, 2017.

21. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 252

22. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 251.

23. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 321.

24.  Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 28.
25. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 321.

26. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 251.

27. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 252.

28. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 325.

29. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 325.