wchap24b

(8/6/00)

CHAPTER XXIV - B

CHRISTIANITY AND FEUERBACH

Ludwig Feuerbach lived from 1804 to 1872. He was the leading spirit in the rebellion against idealistic absolutism. Feuerbach influenced Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. It has been some 150 years since he devoted his life to understanding Christianity and explaining it in a way that anyone desiring to test its validity would be able to do so. However, Christianity remains a vibrant force all over the world and Feuerbach is known to only a hand full of unusual people. He has much to teach anyone who wants to understand, in depth, many of the fallacies and mistakes of theism in general and Christianity in particular. Perhaps, his failure in helping move society toward a new religion can inspire those who believe in what he was trying to do to work a little harder to avoid a similar fate.

His best book[1] in terms of a general overview of his work is analyzed here to pass on some of his insights and to help clarify the path a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom must take. This book consists of thirty-two lectures Feuerbach gave in the 1850s.

Central to the thought of Feuerbach is the concept that humanity not God is the creator, that divinities are representations of humanity's innermost feelings and ideas. He believed that philosophy should turn from theology and speculative rationalism to sound factual anthropology.

p. 1: "...an individual can accomplish nothing unless they have the strength to devote themself exclusively for a time to the branch of endeavor in which they wish to succeed...."

RESPONSE: I will take this personally and now include it among my resolutions to single-mindedly promote A NEW FOUNDATION FOR CIVILIZATION.

p. 5: "My works can be divided into two groups, those dealing with philosophy as such, and those concerned more specifically with religion or the philosophy of religion. To the first group belong my HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY FROM BACON TO SPINOZA, my LIEBNIZ, my PIERRE BAYLE: A Contribution to the History of Philosophy and of Mankind, my THOUGHTS ON DEATH AND IMMORTALITY, THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, and finally, the EXPLANATIONS AND ADDITIONS TO THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. But regardless of this classification of my writings, all have strictly speaking only one purpose, one intention and idea, one theme. This theme, of course, is religion or theology and everything connected with it."

p. 6: To understand "...Francis Bacon of Verulam, the father of modern philosophy and natural science...it is ...quite mistaken to regard Bacon as a religious Christian scientist."

p. 10: ""[Pierre] Bayle was one of the first and most outstanding champions of enlightenment, humanity, and tolerance unfettered by either Catholic or Protestant faith."

p. 11: "[Christian] theology is grounded on a particular principle, a particular book, which, it believes, contains all truths, or at least those that are necessary and salutary to humanity; consequently it is of necessity narrow-minded, exclusive, intolerant, bigoted. Philosophy and science, on the other hand, are not based on any particular book, but find the truth only in nature and history as a whole; they are grounded on reason, which is in essence universal -- not on faith, which is in essence particular."

RESPONSE: However, as pointed out in Volume I, Chapter Two, SECOND WAY, faith must be a part of every human thought. We must distinguish between faith that cannot be questioned and faith that is held with no more conviction than the evidence supporting it. The latter faith is always open to testing and cannot fly in the face of conflicting facts. Because of this faith component in both science and philosophy they are not universal in their application at any give time. But the faith is usually no stronger than the evidence supporting it, therefore, it moves toward universal application. However, from time to time a scientist or philosopher's faith is stronger than the evidence so their beliefs may be promoted because of their authority or standing.

p. 11-12: "...the earlier philosophers separated philosophy and religion and even set them in opposition, arguing that religion is grounded on divine wisdom and authority, while philosophy is grounded solely on human wisdom -- or, as Spinoza put it, that religion aims solely at the advantage and welfare of humanity, while philosophy aims at the truth; while the most recent philosophers stand for the identity of philosophy and religion, at least as far as content and substance are concerned. It is this identity that I set out to attack."

RESPONSE: I am with you on this one, Feuerbach. Religion is concerned with the meaning of human life. A Science of Religion is concerned with a SFLIHM (A Sustainable Feeling that one's LIfe Has Meaning, See Vol. I, Chapter Two). Philosophy is the search for knowledge, but it is inherently speculative in nature. Religion is concerned also about the application of knowledge. Although religion is historically speculative in nature, it need not be. That is why a Science of Religion is possible.

p. 12: "...I found myself involved in an argument with a dogmatist of the Hegelian school, who maintained that there is only a formal difference between religion and philosophy, that philosophy merely raised to the level of the concept what religion possessed in the form of images....I criticized the Hegelian philosophy for regarding the essential as nonessential and the nonessential as essential in religion. The essence of religion, I declared, is precisely what philosophy regards as mere form."

"...philosophy is a matter of thought, of reason, while religion is a matter of emotion and imagination."

RESPONSE: Traditionally folk religion and philosophy have been as different as Feuerbach points out. However, since Feuerbach misunderstood what religion is really about he wasn't able to see what was needed -- the proper focusing of religion so it could fulfill the aspect of emotion and imagination while achieving a true standing as a science.

Philosophy, it turns out must be the field that remains speculative and unfettered by clear restraints.

p. 13: "...religion is sensuous and aesthetic, while philosophy is nonsensuous and abstract."

"I was unable to accept this religious sensuousness...because it is merely imaginary and affective, in conflict with reality."

RESPONSE: But from today's perspective it is possible to point out historically where folk religion went wrong and to reorient it in the proper direction so that it not only no longer is "merely imaginary and affective, in conflict with reality," but actually rescues science from some of these same faults. Further, it at last provides a clear perspective on "meaning of human life" and the path to take to achieve this state in a testable way.

p. 13-14: "...it was only in my later work on philosophy and the philosophy of religion that I resolutely attacked both the abstract inhumanity of philosophy and the fictitious, illusory humanity of religion. It was only then that, fully aware of what I was doing, I replaced the abstract, merely cogitated cosmic being known as God by the reality of the world, or nature; that I replaced the rational beings deprived of their senses, which philosophy has extracted out of humanity, by the real, sensuous human being endowed with reason."

RESPONSE: And both of these were important steps in the right direction. However, more is needed. Society, even a Wise Community, must have an integrative institution that stands above culture. That institution is religion whether we call it that or something else. Only with a Science of Religion do we achieve an understanding so complete that these matters can be placed in the proper perspective.

p. 15: "...the essence of human personality, of personality in general, implies spatial or temporal determinateness. Indeed, human beings are not only spacial beings, they are also essentially earthly beings, inseparable from the earth. How absurd it is, then, to impute eternal, supraterestrial existence to such a being!"

RESPONSE: I am in basic agreement with Feuerbach on this point. However, I do not confine humanity to this lovely seed on which we evolved. I believe it is our destiny to go into the Universe. To explore, to discover, to synthesize, and to become what no knowledge of the past could have predicted.

p. 16: "...immortality is really needed only by dreamy, idle people, whose imagination carries them away from their real lives, and not by energetic people concerned with the things of real life."

RESPONSE: To the degree that thoughts about and belief in immortality take one away from working to achieve a SFLIHM, to that degree are they on the wrong path.

p. 17: "I now come to those of my writings which embody my doctrine....the object of religion...expresses nothing other than the essence of humanity; humanity's God is nothing other than the deified essence of a person, so that the history of religion or, what amounts to the same thing, of God..is nothing other than the history of humanity."

RESPONSE: But God and folk religions are speculation protected by censorship. Traditionally, these ideas could not just be considered as points of departure for further thinking. Rather, they became ossified and misfocused. The God concept does grow and mature with time, but not in keeping with the advance of human knowledge and understanding. It serves areas of human weakness. And these areas are maintained rather than eliminated. The God concept is continually being used to manipulate and exploit the believer. This concept could never have a useful role to play in a Science of Religion or a Religion of Wisdom because ideas of God focus thinking and research in the wrong direction.

p. 19: "Just like the pagan gods, the Christian God originated in humanity. If He differs from the pagan gods, it is only because Christians differ from pagans."

RESPONSE: Of course because of HBAURS (Human Beings Are the Ultimate Reference System -- see Vol. I, Chapter Two) perception originates in humanity and human perspectives and needs guide whatever is said.

p. 19: "...the essence of religion reveals and expresses nothing other than the essence of humanity...."

RESPONSE: Right! Hold onto that thought. Folk religion reflects different culture's efforts to come to grip with humanity's dilemma imposed by the language instinct. After at least 10 millenniums searching in the wrong places humanity now has the tools to do a better job in assembling the parts.

p. 21: "The being which in my thinking humanity presupposes, the being which is the cause or ground of humanity, to which it owes its origin and existence, is not God -- a mystical, indeterminate, ambiguous work -- but nature, a clear sensuous, unambiguous work and thing."

RESPONSE: Nature in this context is anything but clear and unambiguous. Humanity is truly in the process of inventing itself. Everything done and that can be done is "natural" and part of nature. But this is true in the same sense that a computer is a natural object and part of nature, or chloroflurocarbons, or eyeglasses, or anything else that exists in the universe, or can exist. The cause or ground of humanity is our language instinct. This was certainly a natural event. But is surrounded by consequences that are hardly clear and unambiguous.

p. 22: "The principal reason for my interest in religion has always been that, if only in my imagination, it is the foundation of human life, the foundation of ethics and politics."

RESPONSE: And on this I would agree. The only problem has been that up to the development of a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion that foundation has been misfocused and misused.

p. 23: "...at some future date, religion properly understood, religion seen in terms of humanity, will determine the destinies of humankind."

"It was this aim, an insight into religion that would promote human freedom, independence, love, and happiness, that determined the scope of my historical treatment of religion....The purpose of my lectures as of my books is to transform theologians into anthropologists, lovers of God into lovers of humanity, candidates for the next world into students of this world, religious and political flunkeys of heavenly and earthly monarchs and lords into free, self-reliant citizens of the earth...I negate only to affirm....True, it follows from my doctrine that there is no God, no abstract, disembodied being distinct from nature and humanity who decides the fate of the world and of humankind as He pleases; but this negation is merely a consequence of an insight into the essence of God, of the knowledge that it denotes nothing other than on the one hand the essence of nature and, on the other, the essence of humanity."

RESPONSE: And this aim and this insight lies at the core of a Science of Religion.

p. 24: "It is equally meaningless to say, 'There is a God' or 'I believe in a God,' and 'There is no God' or 'I do not believe in a God.' Whether we speak of theism or of atheism, what matters is the content, ground, and spirit."

RESPONSE: The meaning is in the consequences. Those who believe in God cannot find a SFLIHM. Those who do not believe in God may or may not find a SFLIHM depending on what they do believe in and what they do with their life.

p. 25: "...the foundation of religion is a feeling of dependency...."

RESPONSE: Dependency by itself is neither bad nor good. We depend on food and oxygen to live. We depend on our mother and father to raise us and provide a nurturing home. We depend on other people to provide what is necessary to achieve a SFLIHM.

Our dependency is very real. There is nothing wrong in feeling this dependency. The place where dependency is inappropriate is when we are encouraged to feel dependent in situations or ways that we are not, or need not be dependent. The essence of a SFLIHM is maximum development of one's personal power. At the same time one would be healthy and mature enough to recognize those areas where they are dependent on others.

p. 33: "If human beings did not die, if they lived forever, if there were no such thing as death, there would be no religion."

RESPONSE: This would be true of folk religions that promise immortality. However, it would not be true of a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion. In fact there would be even more need for a Religion of Wisdom since it is a world view teaching how to live. And the longer one lives the greater is one's need to know how to do it.

When persons lived 20-30 years they could do pretty well with a folk religion. But when they live 60-80 years it is much harder to exist on fantasy and imagination. Eternal life would cause almost anyone to recognize the conflict between erroneous beliefs and the real world and push them to find better answers.

p. 34: "...for me the feeling of dependency is not the whole of religion, but only the source, the base, the foundation of religion. For in religion persons look for defenses against what they feel dependent on. Thus their defense against death is the belief in immortality."

RESPONSE: For a Religion of Wisdom the defense against death is the recognition that death is part of the living process and the goal is not to achieve immortality but to live well all the days of one's life.

p. 34: "...religion is...essential to or innate in human beings, but that is not the religion of theology or theism, not an actual belief in God, but solely the religion that expresses nothing other than a person's feeling of finiteness and dependency on nature."

RESPONSE: I would say that Feuerbach and I are in close agreement on this. However, since I use meaning of human life as the defining concept for religion that defines more narrowly what "dependency on nature" means.

p. 35-36: "Originally religion expressed nothing other than humanity's feeling that it is an inseparable part of nature or the world."

"Originally religion was not a thing apart, distinct from the life of human beings. Only by and by, in the course of a later development, does it take on a separate existence and put forward special claims. And it is only against this arrogant, presumptuous ecclesiastical religion, which, being ecclesiastical, is now represented by a special official class, that I take up cudgels."

"Though I myself am an atheist, I openly profess religion in the sense just mentioned, that is nature religion. I hate the idealism that wrenches humanity out of nature; I am not ashamed of my dependency on nature; I openly confess that the workings of nature affect not only my surface, my skin, my body, but also my core, my innermost being, that the air I breathe in bright weather has a salutary effect not only on my lungs but also on my mind, that the light of the sun illumines not only my eyes but also my spirit and my heart. And I do not, like a Christian, believe that such dependency is contrary to my true being or hope to be delivered from it. I know further that I am a finite mortal being, that I shall one day cease to be. But I find this very natural and am therefore perfectly reconciled to the thought."

"I have further maintained in my books and will prove in these lectures that in religion humanity projects its essence....The original elements of the ancient religions are merely projections of the sensations, the impressions which physical and astronomical phenomena arouse in human beings...."

RESPONSE: I strongly believe that Feuerbach would not only have accepted the idea of a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion, but that he would have improved the current formulation in countless ways. I further think he would have accepted that nature religions are no closer to what human beings need than is Christianity. And that in many critical ways they are further away. Part of that distance lies in their development for a hunter-gatherer level of living. And the difficulty of getting out of that rut.

p. 37: "In nature religion I recognize neither more nor less than what I recognize in all religion, including the Christian, namely, its simple fundamental truth. And this truth is only that humanity is dependent on nature, that it should live in harmony with nature, that even in its highest intellectual development it should not forget that it is a part and child of nature, but at all times honor nature and hold it sacred not only as the ground and source of its existence, but also as the ground and source of its mental and physical well being, for it is only through nature that humanity can become free of all morbidly excessive demands and desires, such as the desire for immortality."

RESPONSE: A Religion of Wisdom recognizes the need for harmony with nature, but realizes that this harmony comes out of HBAURS (Human Beings Are the Ultimate Reference System). If we build a dam, or mine coal it must be done in such a way that the stresses or effects do not have unacceptable costs. But there are always costs. There are always negative effects, just as doing nothing has negative effects and costs.

p. 39: "...as long as there are many nations, there will also be many gods; for a nations's God, at least its true God, who must indeed be distinguished from the God of its dogmatists and philosophers of religion, is nothing other than its national feeling...."

RESPONSE: And this is part of the reason that the modern world needs a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion more than humanity has in the past. Our folk religions and national Gods are more regularly in conflict with each other and have the potential to halt the human experiment.

p. 49: "I have contended that humanity worships itself in animals and have shown that this contention is not invalidated by those animal cults which cannot be accounted for by any rational or historical considerations, which owe their existence exclusively to fear or to special accidents or idiosyncrasies; for where humanity worships a being for no reason, it merely projects its own folly upon that being."

p. 49: "...I use the word egoism to designate the ground and essence of religion."

p. 50: "...I mean by egoism the instinct of self-preservation...."

p. 52: "A person who kills themself does not take their life, it has already been taken from them."

RESPONSE: Of course this lies at the core of my definition of meaning of human life. Under normal circumstances the test of whether or not one has achieved meaning of life is whether or not they take their life or situate themselves so that someone else will do it.

p. 53: "...life is the supreme good....philosophy in the last analysis is merely the art of thought, religion is merely the art of life and simply expresses the forces and drives which directly govern the life of a human being."

RESPONSE: For me life is not the supreme good. To achieve a SFLIHM is the supreme good. Obviously one has to be alive to do this. As long as life exists there is always the potential for such achievement. However, we all must die sometime. There are many situations in which death is preferable to living. In addition even in a Wise Community it may be necessary for one to sacrifice their life so that the potential for others to achieve a SFLIHM continues to exist.

p. 72: "The Christian religion is commonly praised for having done away with human sacrifice. But it merely replaced bloody human sacrifice with sacrifice of a different, namely, psychological, spiritual order, which remains human sacrifice in fact if not in appearance."

RESPONSE: And it is important for all who work to create and promote a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion to constantly remind themselves that all folk religions, mis-focused atheism, and any world-view that diverts the person from working to achieve a SFLIHM must be replaced and work cannot be relaxed until every human being has achieved this state. Until that time each person is in fact being sacrificed.

p. 74-75: "'...it does the Greeks and Romans no honor that they excelled all other known peoples in the numbers of animals sacrificed, and still less that, generally speaking, the periods of their greatest proficiency in art and science were marked by the most lavish sacrifices.'"

RESPONSE: True. True.

p. 76: "In religion individuals do not satisfy other beings; they satisfy their own nature."

RESPONSE: This would certainly be true of a Religion of Wisdom, but I doubt its true of folk religions.

p. 80: "Where there is no need, there is no feeling of dependency...."

p. 82: "Need teaches us to pray; hence the fact, so distressing to the pious, that people in general are religious only in times of affliction, need, and misfortune."

RESPONSE: And a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion must be so constructed that it is always filling individual needs and encouraging persons to rise to ever higher levels of achievement and fulfillment.

p. 86: "My purpose in THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION was none other than to defend and justify nature religion, or at least the truth underlying it, against the theistic explanations and derivations of nature."

p. 88: "Nature religion has no other foundation than sensory impressions, or rather, the impression which sensations make on persons' mind and imagination."

RESPONSE: I'm afraid Feuerbach went over the line on this one. Nature religion does not move its adherents toward the discovery of a Science of Religion. Rather it helps maintain the hunter-gatherer mode which keeps the group from moving toward the "light at the end of the tunnel," a SFLIHM. For one living in an era of Christian excesses, the calm and rationality of a nature religion may have seemed like a higher level of achievement. Perhaps, it's only possible from our different perspective to see the error in that position.

p. 93: "The first cause is the universal cause, the cause of all things without distinction; but in reality the cause that makes everything without distinction makes nothing at all, it is mere concept, a figment of thought; it has only logical and metaphysical, but no physical significance; I, this individual being, simply cannot be derived from it."

RESPONSE: Good point!

p. 94: First Cause "...is one of the most common proofs of the existence of God; it is called the cosmological proof and variously formulated. For example: everything that is, the world, is subject to change, temporal, originated, contingent; but the contingent presupposes the necessary, the finite the infinite, the temporal the eternal; this infinite eternal being is God."

RESPONSE: And as Feuerbach points out this doesn't hang together when honestly examined.

p. 96: "...the word God is...a collective or generic term as, for example, the words fruit, grain, or people."

"Thus the differences between polytheism and monotheism is not so great as it appears. In consequence of the multiplicity and diversity of His attributes, there are many Gods in the One God."

RESPONSE: Interesting observation.

p. 101: "...if I am unable to stop with nature and content my intellectual need for causes with the universal action and interaction of nature what is to prevent me from going beyond God? What is to prevent me from looking for a ground and cause of God as well?"

"Is it not then more reasonable to assume that the world...has the ground of its existence within itself."

RESPONSE: True.

p. 111: "What I said in yesterday's lecture about God's power, His eternity, superhumanity, infinity, and universality -- namely, that they are abstracted from nature and originally expressed nothing other than attributes of nature -- is also true of His moral attributes. God's goodness is merely abstracted from those beings and phenomena in nature which are useful, good, and helpful to human beings, which give them the feeling or consciousness that life, existence, is a good thing, a blessing."

RESPONSE: But the difficulty is of course that although all of God's characteristics are abstracted from nature in general and human values in particular there is no way to sort them out so as to remove their total reliance on subjective conclusions by the individual. The person has nothing but their own particular experience to draw from to sort out all the ideas about God and figure out how to apply them to their own life. As a result persons make choices based on their ignorance, and these choices prevent them from becoming their best self.

p. 114: "...God is only a concept abstracted from the world...."

RESPONSE: But it is a concept that always distorts the believer's ability to perceive that world no matter what benefits they derive from using it.

p. 119-20: "The question of whether a God created the world, the whole question of God's relation to the world, is the question of the relation between spirit and sense, between the universal or abstract and the real, between the class and the individual. It cannot be solved unless these other questions are solved; for God is nothing other than the sum of generic concepts. I have just discussed this question on the basis of the conceptions of space and time, but it requires further examination. It is among the most important and also the most difficult of all the questions bearing on human knowledge and philosophy. Indeed, the whole history of philosophy revolves around it; it has been the crux of all the controversies between Stoics and Epicureans, Platonists and Aristotelians, skeptics and dogmatists in ancient philosophy, between Nominalists and Realists in the Middle Ages, and in modern times between idealists and realists or empiricists. And it is one of the most difficult questions, not only because philosophers, the more recent philosophers in particular, have introduced endless confusion by the most arbitrary use of words, but also because we are hampered and misled by the nature of language and of thought itself, which is inseparable from language, in sort, because ever word is a universal, so that language in itself, with its inability to express the particular, is often taken as proof that the sensuous particular is nonexistent."

"Finally, in dealing with this question, individuals have been critically influenced by their diversity of mind, occupation, inclinations, and even temperament. People, for example, who are more concerned with life than with study, who spend more of their time out of doors than in libraries, whose occupations and temperaments lead them to observe real beings, will always answer this question in the spirit of the Nominalists, who attribute to universals only a subjective existence in humanity's language and thought, whereas people of contrary occupation and disposition will answer with the Realists, who endow universals with an existence of their own, independent of people's thought and speech."

RESPONSE: And of course this matter about how universals exist is not only the difference between sense and spirit, it is the difference between sense and non-sense. In a Religion of Wisdom universals must be recognized as human inventions that exist only in human thought. Since HBAURS is recognized as a fundamental concept, thereby allowing everything to be examined properly, errors can more easily be avoided.

p. 121: "At the end of the last lecture I said the relation between God and world reduces itself to the mere difference between generic concept and individual, that to ask whether there is a God is equivalent to asking whether the universal has existence of its own. This is not only one of the most difficult, but also one of the most important of questions, for it alone determines the existence or nonexistence of a God."

RESPONSE: As indicated above I hold that universals do not exist independent of the human brain. Only a chaotic objective reality exists.

p. 125: "The proof of the existence of God based on this view [the universe could only be as it is if there exists a superhuman purpose] of nature is known as the physico-theological or teleological proof, that is, the proof drawn from purpose; for it is based chiefly on the so-called purposes of nature....It is the most popular and from a certain standpoint [that of the uneducated mind, knowing nothing of nature] most plausible proof...."

RESPONSE: Of course such positions come out of the human weakness to believe in magic and miracles which may have sustained the species since the evolution of the language instinct, but must be overcome now.

p. 132: "What good is a divine being who comes to our help only after the harm is done?"

RESPONSE: In folk religions it was okay. But a Religion of Wisdom has no need for such concepts.

p. 136: "A God, as we shall see later on, is merely the hypostatized and objectified essence of the human imagination."

RESPONSE: And because this is true there are no constraints on the God concept. It can be improved, but only as rapidly as the collective human imagination changes. It usually changes very slowly, or can change erratically as the needs of the believers change. It may provide short term benefit to the person, but cannot lead to achieving a SFLIHM, the only worthy goal for any human being.

For example let's take something as fundamental to Christianity as Mary's role in Jesus' birth. Christian apologetics provides reasons why Mary was selected. But none of these reasons hold up when looked at by a skeptical outsider. How could such a fundamentally important event be done in such a way that no one at the time even realized it was going on? On one hand it would seem as unlikely as an omnipotent, omniscient, good God choosing the Jews.

p. 143: "It has often been said that the world is inexplicable without a God; but the exact opposite is true: if there is a God, the existence of a world becomes inexplicable; for then the world is utterly superfluous....But the question why is there anything at all, is absurd. Far from having its ground in God, as the theists say, world loses its ground if there is a God."

RESPONSE: Exactly so!

p. 144: "In God's...method of ruling the world, we may distinguish three different stages. The first may be termed patriarchal [emotional, childlike]; the second may be characterized as despotism or absolute monarchy [miracles, everything done through God's will; and the third stage as constitutional monarchy [God works through nature, natural law -- and therefore isn't necessary]."

RESPONSE: I think Feuerbach may be on to something here. Basically it would build on the idea that studying the individual's God in great detail would provide a deep clue into every aspect of their intellectual and psychological development. To create a test or expert program to gather this information might be a very worthwhile endeavor.

p. 151: The theist believes "...that the works of nature must have been produced by a personal being, an artificer, a creator after the manner of a human being."

"This...is the inference or proof that seems clearest to people, at least at a certain stage in their development."

RESPONSE: And this is why education, knowledge, and understanding lies at the core of a Religion of Wisdom. It is only as one gets beneath the superficial and intuitive that they have any chance to get onto the path leading them toward achieving a SFLIHM.

p. 153: Another reason theists believe in God "...is that they cannot account for their own spirit on the basis of the world or nature."

p. 154: However, "...if the brain and the skull are a product of nature, so is the mind."

RESPONSE: But as science clarifies consciousness this issue will become less tenable as a reason to bring in God to be the Great Explainer.

p. 156: "Schelling and Franz Baader have argued this doctrine [God is not only spirit it is corporeal]. But it originated with certain older mystics, notably Jakob Bohme, who was born in 1575 in Oberlausitz and died in 1624. A shoe-maker by trade, Bohme was undoubtedly a most extraordinary thinker."

p. 157: "Jakob Bohme's doctrine once again confirms our contention that God is nothing other than a concept abstracted from nature...."

RESPONSE: Every justification for belief in God disappears under probing exploration and efforts to build a Wise Community.

p. 161-62: "Two courses are open to you: The first is to profess God and deny nature; or if that exceeds your powers, because you cannot help recognizing the existence of nature, which your senses impress upon you in spite of your faith, you can at least deny nature all causality, all substantiality, and call it mere appearance, a mere mask. Or else: Profess nature and deny that there is a God concealed behind it and acting through it."

RESPONSE: I think discarding God is not this easy, else there would be a lot more atheists than there are. As I've written elsewhere I think persons "lose their faith" in many different ways. Unfortunately, many of them return to belief in God or a folk religion because they find no satisfactory substitute.

In order to build a Wise Community and help increasingly larger numbers of individuals become Wise Persons it is essential that Wisdom Groups set up all the organizations necessary to help individuals who are ready to initiate efforts to become their own best self, i.e. a Wise Person. Obviously, this is a gigantic undertaking. But individuals who have become their own best self have their goals and priorities clearly in mind at all times. Helping others to achieve this state is a primary aspect of their goals and priorities. As a result there should be an exponential growth of such organizations.

p. 162: "If real, natural beings are mere means, mere instruments in the hands of God, they remain so whether they do good or evil."

RESPONSE: And worse yet in a world with God it is never clear what the difference between good and evil actually is. Most persons' good sense and relative good mental health, and family experiences help them put most of their efforts into good behavior rather than evil behavior. However, when they lack this compass they can easily get diverted in the wrong direction. Therefore, even under the best of circumstances most people put most of their time and energy working for evil rather than good ends.

p. 162: "True, the good people do is not due to them alone, it is not exclusively the work of their own will, but also the result of the natural and social conditions, relations, and circumstances under which they are begotten and conceived, brought up and educated."

RESPONSE: Yes, but since everyone is brought up under circumstances that point them in the wrong direction, the good they do is only a small segment of what their innate potential would have allowed.

p. 165: "...incompatibility between the independent activity of creatures and God as the sole or principal being has always confronted theology with the most perplexing and heartbreaking contradictions. But they will vanish, or at least lend themselves to a solution, as soon as God is replaced by nature."

RESPONSE: Not really. Until a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion is developed and broadly promulgated there is little hope for significant improvement in human beings and human societies.

p. 167: "Those who rely on God's omnipotence, who believe that whatever happens and is, happens and is by the will of God, will never cast about for means to remedy the evils of the world, either those natural evils that can be remedied -- for there is no cure for death -- or the evils of human society."

RESPONSE: Exactly. But it is only with a Religion of Wisdom that the proper guidance becomes available to remedy the "evils of the world," and the "evils of society."

p. 174: I now "...conclude my remarks on nature. I have thereby completed the first half of my task, which was to prove that human beings must look for their source not in heaven but on earth, not in God, but in nature; that their life and thinking begin with nature; that nature is not the work of a being distinct from it, but, as the philosophers say, the cause of itself...."

RESPONSE: True. A Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom have nothing in them "beyond nature." But it looks to human beings (who are totally products of nature in every way) not that part of nature beyond their skin for answers and direction. HBAURS is the point they start from in looking for answers and judging them.

p. 174-75: "...it is the human faculty of abstraction and the related imagination (for it is only thanks to humanity's imagination that it hypostatizes abstract, universal concepts and comes to conceive of them as entities, as Ideas) that lead it to look outside the sensuous world and to derive it from a non-sensuous, abstract being."

"...this much is certain: what makes the world world, what makes body body and matter matter, is something that cannot be theologically or philosophically deduced from anything else; it cannot be derived, but simply is, and can be understood only in terms of itself."

RESPONSE: Not really. It can only be understood in terms of HBAURS. There is a world, there are bodies, there is matter but they are all devoid of understanding. Only human beings understand. And they impose their understanding on that definite, but unknown world, body, matter. But human understanding is not a static condition. It grows, provides new ways to see and explore and utilize world, body, matter.

p. 175-76: "Having completed the first part of my task, I now proceed to the second and last part, which is to prove that the God differentiated from nature is nothing other than humanity's own essence, just as in the first part I set out to demonstrate that the God differentiated from humanity was nothing other than nature, or the essence of nature....Early in the present series of lectures I stated my intention to disregard secondary distinctions between religions and to concentrate on the central distinction between nature religion and human or spiritual religion, between paganism and Christianity. Accordingly I now pass from the essence of nature religion or paganism to the essence of Christianity."

p. 177: "...an object is worshiped only if, and insofar as, it is seized upon by the imagination."

p. 178: "The theoretical cause or source of religion and of its object, God, is...the imagination."

p. 179: "Faith believes in miracles, faith and belief in miracles are one; faith is not bound by the laws of nature; it is free and unrestricted; it believes whatever it pleases....this power of faith or God, unhampered by the laws of nature, is precisely the power of the imagination, to which nothing is impossible."

RESPONSE: Feuerbach is here discussing only blind faith, unquestioned faith. As discussed in Volume I, Chapter Two, SECOND WAY, faith must be a part of every human thought. We must distinguish between faith that cannot be questioned and faith that is held with no more conviction than the evidence supporting it. The latter faith is always open to testing and cannot fly in the face of conflicting facts. This recognizes the faith components of the "laws of nature," or anything else currently accepted as true. But it does not cut off use of the imagination, but rather distinguishes between how this fantastic power of our imagination can be used to help us better see the way things really are.

p. 180: "...God does not exist in sense perception or in reason but only in faith, that is imagination."

RESPONSE: True and well said.

p. 180: "...God is an imaginary being, a product of fantasy; and because fantasy is the essential form or organ of poetry, it may be said that religion is poetry, that a God is a poetic being."

RESPONSE: Equally true.

p. 181: "I do not deny religion, I do not deny the subjective, human foundations of religion, namely, feeling and imagination and humanity's impulse to objectify and personify its inner life...I do not deny its need to contemplate nature in poetic, philosophical, and religious terms. I merely deny the object of religion...[when it comes] into conflict with humanity."

RESPONSE: I take this to mean that Feuerbach would have had no difficulty accepting the idea of a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion.

p. 188: "A person's imagination is molded by their nature; a gloomy, fearful person imagines terrifying beings, terrible gods; a serene, happy individual imagines serene, friendly gods. People's gods, the creatures of their imaginations, are as diverse as are people themselves; or, ex post facto, we can reverse the order and say that people are as diverse as their gods."

RESPONSE: And as indicated earlier this should provide a useful way to understand people and to help them mature and develop.

p. 194: "I have maintained that the imagination is the principal organ of religion, that a god is an imaginary being, an image, and specifically an image of a human being, and that natural objects as well, when viewed religiously become humanlike beings, hence images of human beings, and that the spiritual God of the Christians is also an image of a human being, created by the human imagination and projected outside of humanity as a real, independent being; that accordingly the objects of religion -- considered, it goes without saying as objects of religion -- have no existence outside the imagination."

RESPONSE: Of course Feuerbach is talking about folk religions above. A Religion of Wisdom, by focusing on the fact of HBAURS, is able to test all statements and thoughts and move them beyond intuition, imagination, and ignorance. Because a Religion of Wisdom does not project its hopes and desires outside of humanity it can focus on real things rather than imaginary things.

p. 195: "Some day it will be universally recognized that the objects of Christian religion, like the pagan gods, were mere imagination. It is only people's egoism that leads them to look upon their own God as the true God, and upon the gods of other people as products of the imagination. Where sense perception and reason provide no counterweight to the imagination, people invariably accept its products as realities."

RESPONSE: And this is the key strength of a Religion of Wisdom. Any speculation, imagination, or theory must be tested and assigned no more value than the evidence supporting them.

p. 198: Religion "...springs from the so-called striving for happiness."

p. 200: "Both from a practical and from a theoretical point of view, this is the most important factor; for once it is proved that God owes His existence exclusively to humanity's striving for happiness, but that religion satisfies this striving only in the imagination, it necessarily follows that human beings can seek to satisfy this striving by other than religious ways and means."

RESPONSE: The above ideas are roughly comparable to my ideas about what makes up a Religion of Wisdom. Feuerbach and I take a slightly different approaches which causes a big difference in where we end up. Yet I interpret his approach above to be similar to mine in important ways. Where he wants to discard religion because he associates it with God, I want to remove God and turn religion into a science. He takes happiness as the goal of life. I take meaning of human life which has many associations with happiness.

A Science of Religion and Religion of Wisdom hold that religion deals with meaning of human life rather than happiness. But the two concepts have a great deal in common. They differ in the matter of depth. Happiness is a superficial and unattainable goal. A SFLIHM provides an in-depth way to deal with everything related to human life and goals.

p. 204-5:

think away the obvious contradictions between reality and the religious fantasy of a divine Providence; but it is far more compatible with a truth-loving heart, and even with the honor of God to deny His existence than to give Him a precarious lease on life by means of the shameful and silly sophisms and tricks which pious theologians and philosophers have hatched and spawned to justify divine Providence. It is better to fall with honor than to stand without honor. The atheist allows God to fall with honor, the rationalist believer makes Him live on without honor...."

RESPONSE: But the reality is that giving up God sets one free. When one actually understands the chains that have been fashioned in the name of God -- the agreement to live as a child rather than a mature adult; the agreement to accept magic and give up the opportunity to understand and influence this wondrous, exciting Universe in which we have been born; the agreement to focus our eyes to the ground in humility and to the sky in hope rather than to examine each part of nature on which our eyes fall and see wondrous mysteries (more glorious than any "holy man" weaves in order to deceive us) and knowledge to enhance the quality of our life -- then to throw off these chains of slavery and to rise as a free human being is to truly live. This is the life that a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion promises and works to achieve for every human being.

p. 202: "People want to live; life is their most precious possession."

RESPONSE: Ah! This is a tough one. Life is one's only possession. But unless one achieves a FLIHM (Feeling that one's LIfe Has Meaning) life is a burden rather than a prize. How tragic that an individual's priceless possession, the thing of infinite value can be turned into garbage by a Not-Yet-Wise society.

Finding the "light at the end of the tunnel" is the most important goal for Homo sapiens sapiens and for each individual. When a Science of Religion exists and is available to every person it will be a great day for humanity.

p. 209: "Religion is the childhood of humanity. Or better still, in religion a human being is a child."

RESPONSE: Again, Feuerbach speaks of folk religion. A Religion of Wisdom is just the opposite. It moves one to achieve the potential of the language ability and to become something new and wondrous on the planet, Earth.

p. 209-10: "Religion arises solely in the night of ignorance, in times of misery, helplessness, and rudimentary culture, when for this very reason the imagination overshadows all humanity's other powers, where people entertain the wildest and most extravagant ideas. Yet it also springs from humanity's need of light, of culture, or at least of the products of culture; it is indeed the first, still crude and vulgar form of human culture; and that is why every epoch, every important stage in the history of human civilization, begins with religion. Everything which later became a field of independent human activity, of culture was originally an aspect of religion: all the arts, all the sciences, or rather, the first beginnings, the first elements -- for as soon as an art or science achieves a high state of development, it ceases to be religion -- were originally the concern of religion and its representatives, the priests. Philosophy, poetry, astronomy, politics, jurisprudence -- or at least the power to judge difficult cases and to determine innocence and guilt -- and medicine as well, were formerly the affair and concern of religion."

RESPONSE: And now all that is behind us. A Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion is concerned with everything. With it we emerge from the transition period humanity has been in for the past 10,000 years or so. Religion now joins the rest of science. More than that it becomes the brains of science. It shows science what its true goal is, not Truth, but knowledge. Not the total understanding of nature but rather the use of all understanding to improve the quality of human life. And understanding what it means to improve the quality of human life.

p. 210: "...medicine...[was] formerly the affair and concern of religion." As explored in Volume I, and Chapter Twenty of Volume II, medicine would be one of the primary concerns of a Science of Religion.

p. 212: "Christianity introduced another element of civilization: morality....[But] humanity will some day master the art of leading moral and happy lives without a God. Indeed, they will be truly moral and happy only when they no longer have a God, when they no longer need religion...."

p. 213: "...religion and culture are incompatible, although culture, insofar as religion is the first and oldest form of it, can be termed the true and perfect religion, so that only a truly cultivated person is truly religious. This statement, however, is an abuse of words, for superstitious and inhuman emotions are always bound up with the word 'religious'; by its very nature religion comprises anticultural elements; for it strives to perpetuate ideas, customs, inventions that humanity made in its childhood, and to impose them as the laws of their adult age....Where people behave properly of their own accord, because their own nature, their own reason and inclination tell them to, the need for religion ceases and culture takes its place."

RESPONSE: Again Feuerbach is discussing folk religions rather than a Religion of Wisdom. A Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion is essential if a truly civilized society -- a Wise Community -- is to be created. Feuerbach like most modern thinkers was blinded to the true meaning of religion because all the religions up his time had such terrible components. But these components were not an essential part of what religion means. They merely represented the lack of understanding of humanity up to that point.

Now we can see beyond these barriers and understand that without a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom humanity will not be able to achieve its destiny made possible by the evolution of the language ability. A Religion of Wisdom would produce a culture truly worthy of humanity. It would not embody superstition and inhuman notions, or anticultural elements. Just the opposite. It would provide the ways to avoid these pitfalls. We cannot have Wise Persons without a Wise Community. A Wise Community cannot exist without a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion.

p. 214: "Religion is supposed to take the place of culture, but cannot; culture, on the other hand, really takes the place of religion, rendering it superfluous. A person who has science, said Goethe, has no need of religion. Instead of science, I prefer to say culture, or education, because education embraces the whole person...though in view of what passes for education today, this word too can provide objections. But what word is without taint?"

RESPONSE: True! True! And this is the point. In creating a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom I have attempted to focus on something that is deep and true. That is the core of what religion truly is and has been through human history. And what is needed to properly focus that need. In doing so I have raised red flags that the careless reader and the careless thinker will be diverted by. Many readers will miss the forest because they become fixated on a tree.

I think that creating a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom are justified. That these structures put human history and human needs in proper perspective and provides a way to avoid all the mistakes of the past. But obviously this won't happen until a broad spectrum of thoughtful persons understand what is being attempted and lend their life's energy to do what is necessary to make such an effort successful by helping to correct its errors and build the necessary structures to help more and more people move in such a way as to become their own best self. If this is not done folk religions will continue to dominate thought and society. If this happens they will very likely put an end to the human experiment.

p. 216-17: "In all other fields humanity progresses; in religious matters it remains stone-blind, stone-deaf, and rooted to the spot. Religious institutions, customs and articles of faith continue to be held sacred even when they stand in the most glaring contradiction to human being's more advanced reason and ennobled feelings; even when the original justification and meaning of these same institutions and conceptions are long forgotten. We ourselves are living amid this same repugnant contradiction between religion and culture; our religious doctrines and usages also stand in the most glaring contradiction to our present cultural and material situation; our task today is to do away with this loathsome and disastrous contradiction. Its elimination is the indispensable condition for the rebirth of humankind, the one and only condition for the appearance of a new humanity, as it were, and for the coming of a new era. Without it, all political and social reforms are meaningless and futile. A new era also requires a new view of the first elements and foundations of human existence; it requires -- if we wish to retain the word -- a new religion!"

RESPONSE: Feuerbach says it perfectly here. And that is the goal of a Religion of Wisdom. Unfortunately, he wavered back and forth in his thinking about religion. Because he thought about folk religions when he discussed religion he only dimly realized that there is more to religion than current thinkers of his age or ours realized.

With a new religion, a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion, a new era would truly be realized. This would be an era which no currently living person can fully comprehend. It would involve entry into a new dimension where human life would exist at a level never even considered by past writers, let alone thought of as attainable!

p. 218-19:

"...dependency, and finally the power of the imagination. For out of every evil whose cause is unknown to humanity, out of every phenomenon, even some passing atmospheric effect, the appearance of some gas which frightens people because they do not know what it is, the imagination makes an evil spirit or god; while out of every stroke of good fortune, every discovery, every good thing that chances their way, it makes a good spirit or god, or at least the work of a spirit or god."

RESPONSE: I don't believe there is an "organ of superstition." However, I think it is clear that there are brain structures that pre-dispose human beings to accept magical answers, a "faith in miracles" as discussed below. I think these structures evolved because those persons who had them found a reason to live and therefore left offspring while those lacking these structures frequently lost the will to live and reproduce and to pass their genes on to posterity.

Therefore, one of the great challenges of a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom must be to find ways to help persons avoid being consumed by their propensity to believe in magic and employ a faith in miracles, and yet not lose the positive aspects of this structure.

p. 229: "A humanist or naturalist, to cite still another example, still honors the dead, but not in a religious way, not as gods, because they do not, like the religious imagination, transform beings who are present only in their thoughts into real, living persons...."

RESPONSE: And a Religion of Wisdom would seek to find ways to deal with death and the dying of family members and friends without turning the occasion into an experience that diverted them from the path toward achieving and maintaining a SFLIHM.

p. 240: "In order to go beyond nature, to arrive at a God, I must make a leap. This leap is the belief in miracles."

RESPONSE: I think possibly what Feuerbach has stated here is the core of what has sustained Homo sapiens sapiens during its past 35-40,000 year period of going "through the dark tunnel." Up until the creation of a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom based on provides a "light at the end of the tunnel," most human beings had little rational reason to maintain their own life and to perpetuate the species. This "faith in miracles" may in some way be soft-wired into the circuitry of the human brain due to natural selection of those individuals who had this trait and therefore the will to live where those who lacked it saw that life was not "worth the effort" and failed to reproduce.

p. 276: "The demonstration that the meaning and purpose of God are immortality, that God and immortality are one, that God, starting out as an independent being, as immortality, ends up as an attribute of humanity, completes my task and with it the series of lectures....I have been guided by the conviction that henceforth human beings should seek and find the determining ground of their action, the goal of their thinking, the cure for their ills and suffering in themself, rather than outside themself like the pagan or above themself like the Christian.

RESPONSE: And of course this is the specific goal of a Religion of Wisdom.

p. 277: "God, I have said, is the fulfiller, or the reality, of the human desire for happiness, perfection, and immortality."

RESPONSE: Of course God cannot give these things because there is no God. But a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom can give these things to the degree that they are necessary to achieve a SFLIHM.

p. 278: "The German philosopher Kant could hardly wait to die, and not in order to resuscitate, but because he longed for the end."

RESPONSE: There is an overwhelming amount of information available to make clear that immortality of one's personality is not essential for the happiness of the thoughtful person. Once the reality of death become clear the person can accept it and focus on other matters with little difficulty. The fact that there is any difficulty at all comes out of the teachings of folk religions about immortality. However, some folk religions such as Roman Catholicism are able to stimulate the brain circuitry for belief in miracles in such a way that many persons exposed to their indoctrination are never able to escape this dread of ceasing to exist. They are never able to realize that life is its own reward.

p. 281: "In their imagination, people yearn for heavenly, immoderate happiness; in reality, they desire earthly, moderate happiness. Earthly happiness, it is true, does not require wealth, luxury, splendor, glory, and empty display, but only the necessities, only the things without which they cannot carry on a human existence."

RESPONSE: But laying out the specifics of earthly happiness -- a SFLIHM -- is the goal of a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom. And it is a goal that must be pursued through use of scientific studies, experiment, and wisdom. It is also a goal that up to this point has been examined in fragmented and misdirected ways.

p. 282: "True atheism, the atheism that does not shun the light, is also an affirmation; it negates the being abstracted from human beings, who is and bears the name of God, but only in order to replace him by humanity's true being."

"What is truly negative is theism, the belief in God; it negates nature, the world and humankind...."

RESPONSE: Unfortunately, most atheists never get to the positive aspects of atheism. Atheism merely frees one to look for better answers. Most atheists continue to be consumed with ever better evidence to prove God does not exist. Until they refocus their interests and energies to a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion their life will be little better than the lives of theists.

p. 283: "...the negation of the next world [afterlife] has as its consequences the affirmation of this world; the denial of a better life in heaven implies the demand for a better life on earth; it transforms the hope of a better future from a concern of idle, inactive faith into a duty, a matter of independent human activity....The necessary conclusion to be drawn from the existing injustices and evils of human life is the determination, the active striving to remedy them -- not a belief in the hereafter, which only makes people fold their hands and leaves the evils intact."

RESPONSE: Just so! And this is the striving that a Religion of Wisdom demands of its advocates.

p. 284: "...it is outrageously unjust that some people should have everything while others have nothing, that some wallow in the good things of life, in the benefits of art and science, while others lack the barest necessities. But it is just as preposterous to argue the necessity of a hereafter in which reparation will be made to people for their sufferings on earth as to argue the necessity of a public justice in heaven which will correct the defects of the secret justice that prevail on earth. The necessary conclusion to be drawn from the existing injustices and evils of human life is the determination, the active striving to remedy them -- not a belief in the hereafter, which only makes individuals fold their hands and leaves the evils intact."

"But, it might be argued, granted that the evils of our social and political world can be corrected, what good does that do those who have already suffered and died as a result of these evils? How does a better future benefit the people of the past? True, it does them no good at all, but neither does the hereafter. The hereafter with its balms always comes too late; it cures an ill after it has passed, after death, when people no longer feel the evil and consequently have no need to be cured; for though death, at least as long as we are alive and thinking about it, has the disadvantage of taking away our feeling and consciousness of the good, the beautiful, and the pleasant, it also has the advantage of releasing us from all evils, sufferings, and sorrows. The love that has created the hereafter, that comforts the suffering with the thought of the hereafter, is the love that heals the sick after they are dead, that slakes the thirsty and feeds the hungry after they have died of hunger and thirst."

RESPONSE: And it is this world occupied by the "living dead" that a Religion of Wisdom must address. By focusing energy to make life a worthwhile thing, not just in the imagination, but in reality is the challenge of all who understand what it means to be a human being. This is the vision of the "light at the end of the tunnel."

p. 284-85: "Let us...leave the dead in peace and concern ourselves with the living. If we no longer believe in a better life but decide to achieve one, not each person by themself but with our united powers, we will create a better life, we will at least do away with the most glaring, outrageous, heartbreaking injustices and evils from which humanity has hitherto suffered. But in order to make such a decision and carry it through, we must replace the love of God by the love of humanity as the only true religion, the belief in God by the belief in human beings and their powers -- by the belief that the fate of humankind depends not on a being outside it and above it, but on humanity itself, that people's only Devil is humanity itself, the barbarous, superstitious, self-seeking, evil person, but that humanity's only God is also humanity itself."

"With these words, ladies and gentlemen, I conclude my lectures. My only wish is that I have not failed in the task I set myself and formulated in the opening lectures: to transform friends of God into friends of humanity, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of this world, Christians who, by their own profession and admission, are 'half animal, half angel,' into human beings, into whole human beings."

RESPONSE: Hopefully the crowd stood and cheered for Feuerbach has presented an important intellectual labor that should be helpful in creating a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom. But that will not come about except by the efforts of all who hope to support a Religin of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion and the things they imply.

After delivering the lectures as presented in his book Feuerbach included notes on the various lectures in order to further develop, or clarify ideas presented in the lecture series.

p. 297: "'The intention of killing;' says Luther, 'is not so great a sin as not to believe, for murder is a sin against the fifth commandment, but unbelief is a sin against the first and greatest commandment.'"

RESPONSE: This is the kind of thinking that has up to now prevented the development of a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom based on it. Although there are even today places in the world where thinking like Luther's is accepted, most of the world has progressed to the place where the necessary efforts can be made to start the process of transforming existing societies to become Wise Communities.

p. 304-5: "...certain people have the gall to tell us that religion is the cement of states -- states which in fact are held together solely by prison chains, by crimes against human nature."

RESPONSE: Yes. I have such gall! And this issue is too important to avoid. Many persons who have rejected God share the point of view Feuerbach states here. A fast look may make it seem as though tyranny can bind a society together. However, beneath any tyranny there is more going on. At some level each person who cooperates in supporting and maintaining this tyranny is reacting to more than fear. They have beliefs. If they believed that death is better than living in chains the state could not long endure. It is these underlying beliefs that come from one's religion. When a society's religion supports tyranny (and at some level they always have) then the chains are merely an outer manifestation of those inner beliefs taught by the society's religion. These beliefs are what hold the society together and allow it to survive even though it exists at the expense of its citizens.

But it is this cement that each society needs. Without it they will indeed fall apart. This is why any concerned, reasonable person with a hope for the future of humanity will work tirelessy to help create a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion. Until such is created and working well folk religions will continue to hold their place of power and prestige in every society.

p. 305: "Morality, it is said, must be built on religion, on God and not on humanity, for otherwise it loses all firmness and authority. What is more relative, more changeable, more unreliable than human nature?...For all its infinite variety, is there not something unchanging and reliable, is there not even a concrete certainty in the basic human impulses?"

"And is there anything more uncertain, more dubious, more contradictory, vacillating, indefinite, and relative than the divine nature?"

RESPONSE: Right on Feuerbach! However, a Religion of Wisdom's morality is not built on God, but on humanity. It has a foundation that no folk religion could possibly have. But this foundation is exactly what Feuerbach was talking about.

p. 307: "...the egoism [instinct of self-preservation] of the now oppressive majority of humankind must and will come into its own, ushering in a new historical epoch."

RESPONSE: And a Religion of Wisdom would work single-mindedly to achieve this.

p. 320: "Human ignorance is bottomless, and the human imagination knows no bounds...."

RESPONSE: And both of these things we must hold within our consciousness at all times if we would hope to develop a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom.

p. 336: "Concerning the political views stated in these lectures, only this brief observation. Aristotle has already said in his POLITICS -- which treats of almost all our present-day problems, though of course in the spirit of antiquity -- that it is necessary not only to know the best form of government, but also to know what form is suited to what people, for even the best form of government is not suited to all people."

RESPONSE: And this is the challenge of a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom. They must initiate action that will help more and more people become Wise Persons in order to build a Wise Community so that all citizens are suited for the best form of government.

However, as a Religion of Wisdom based on a Science of Religion works to replace existing institutions in any country it must be concerned to avoid anarchy and chaos. Perhaps, some ideas on how to do this might be gained by studying the history of Rome when Christianity replaced the Roman gods.

p. 311: "Human beings with their ego or consciousness stand at the brink of a bottomless abyss; that abyss is their own unconscious being, which seems alien to them and inspires them with a feeling which expresses itself in words of wonderment such as: What am I? Where have I come from? To what end? And this feeling that I am nothing without a not-I which is distinct from me yet intimately related to me, something other, which is at the same time my own being, is the religious feeling. But what part of me is I and what part is not-I? Hunger as such, or its cause, is not-I; but the painful sensation of awareness of hunger which drives me to direct all my motor faculties toward an object that will appease this pain, is I. the elements, then, of the I or person, of the real person, are consciousness, feeling, voluntary movement -- voluntary movement, I say, because involuntary movement is outside the sphere of the I, in the realm of the divine not-I -- and that is why certain disorders, such as epilepsy, why states of ecstasy or madness have been looked upon as divine revelations or manifestation."

"What we have just said about hunger applies also to the higher, spiritual impulses. I feel a desire to write poetry, I can satisfy it only by voluntary activity, but the underlying impulse is not-I; although

p. 312-13:

RESPONSE: Feuerbach's understanding of the "I" is significantly different from mine. As discussed in Volume I, Chapter Two, I take the "I" to include all parts of one's being: one's hunger, involuntary movement, epilepsy, madness, desire to write poetry, etc. -- not just consciousness, feeling, and voluntary movement. Feuerbach's discussion of "I and not-I" borders on the mystical just because he makes an artificial distinction between the two and then gets stuck trying to make sense of his position.

p. 341: "The gods [Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury] granted his entire wish...it means exactly the same as the words of the OLD TESTAMENT, uttered in a similar situation: 'Is anything too hard for the Lord?' that is, is anything impossible for the imaginative power of the human heart, of human desire?"

RESPONSE: And Feuerbach says it well. Every religion has its miraculous quality and those miracles spring completely from the minds of the believers.

p. 341: "In his scale of duties, Cicero...assigns first place to duties toward the gods, second place to duties toward one's country, and third place to duties toward one's parents."

RESPONSE: But in a Religion of Wisdom the first duty is to oneself, to achieve a SFLIHM. When one fulfills that duty all others fall into place. Any duty not focused on becoming one's own best self will inevitably initiate destructive forces that will not only destroy the individual but wreak destruction on one's family, their community, their nation, the environment, or elsewhere.

p. 345: "Christians call God the highest good, but they also say that...a life of everlasting bliss is the highest good."

RESPONSE: For a Religion of Wisdom neither of these are goods let alone being "highest goods." In a Science of Religion the highest good is to achieve a SFLIHM.

p. 351: "We only need to listen to the Jesuits themselves to be convinced that the Jesuit order is the unconscious model and ideal of our speculative philosophers, just as it is the deliberate model and ideal of our desperate conservative statespersons. A Jesuit, we read in the Rule of the Society of Jesus, resists the natural inclination, innate in all people, to have and follow their own judgement (Letter of St. Ignatius Loyola on the virtue of obedience); they must with blind obedience renounce all opinion and conviction of their own; they must be as a cudgel, which is a will-less instrument in our hand, or as a corpse with which one can do what one pleases (Summarium Constit, Nos 35, 36)."

RESPONSE: Abused children often have a need to find someone to obey mindlessly. But this does not fulfill them as a human being, but only allows them to pretend to be alive. A Religion of Wisdom would not permit the abuse of children nor encourage the exploitation of those who have been abused.

p. 353: "No law, Livy quotes Cato as saying in his oration in behalf of the LEX OPPIA, is entirely to the liking of all...."

RESPONSE: In a Religion of Wisdom and a Science of Religion law would not be something society imposes on its citizens and punishes for disobedience. Since there is no conflict between a Wise Person and a Wise Community violations of a law would initiate an investigation to determine where the problem lies and then to correct it.

p. 295: "'Some sort of natural necessity,' says Augustine in this connection, [regarding why people struggle to live] 'causes mere being to pass for a desirable thing, and for its sake alone the wretched do not wish to die; for why otherwise would they fear death and prefer even a miserable life to death, except that nature shuns nonbeing? That is why the unintelligent animals themselves desire to be and avoid death in every possible way, and why the unfeeling plants and even utterly inanimate bodies strive to maintain and to assert their being.'"

RESPONSE: To say nature "shuns nonbeing" is a conjecture that would be difficult to formulate in falsifiable form. But for living things it seems pretty clear that they are programmed to expend great energy to reproduce, if not to "shun nonbeing." Life strives to maintain life, at least the life of the species. Up to Homo sapiens sapiens this was an automatic aspect of the organism like all its other instincts and drives. However, with the evolution of the language ability a new era dawned. I propose that the language ability gave individual Homo sapiens sapiens the mental capacity to decide for themselves whether or not it was worth the struggle to live. I further propose that the species evolved a strategy to reduce the likelihood that the individual would opt out, and give up the struggle. I believe that strategy was to evolve a structure that supports faith in miracles and magic. And it has been this structure that has played a major role in sustaining us for these past thousands of years. And which lies at the core of folk religions.

Now science and the scientific method has allowed us to move to another dawn. Science has given us the knowledge, experience, and tools to create a Science of Religion and thereby nurture the desire to live by supporting this desire with real rather than imagined reasons.