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subject of the third talk in Jesus Reconsidered and of a book-length study
published some years later, Resurrection: A Symbol of Hope(1971).[3] it
happens, I believe this book to be Geerings best. But once again, it is not
representative of his broader concerns. What I want to focus on is Geeringsunderstanding of the doctrine of the incarnation and its implications for
Christian faith. What shall I argue? As Geering himself notes, his view of the
incarnation is very similar to that found in the early work of the nineteenth-
century philosopher and critic of religion, Ludwig Feuerbach (180472). But
Feuerbachs later work, I shall suggest, is more straightforwardly atheistic. It
lacks the positive reinterpretation of religious belief which we find in
Geerings work. The question my discussion raises is this: If we share
Feuerbachs view of religion, then how should we live? Should we follow the
early Feuerbach and embrace the Christianity without God of which LloydGeering is an advocate? Or should we follow the later Feuerbach and cut loose
from our religious heritage altogether? What is the point in using the term
God when we no longer believe in the supernatural being to which that term
has traditionally referred? And perhaps there are dangers in the continuing
use of religious language, dangers which a more straightforward atheism
would avoid.
The Early FeuerbachTheology as Anthropology
In our own day, Ludwig Feuerbach is a neglected figure. If he is referred to at
all, it is generally by students of religion. Even then he is, perhaps, more often
mentioned than read. But for his contemporaries, he was a figure of
considerable standing, and not only for the study of religion. He was
considered to have played a vital role in the movement from the philosophical
idealism represented by the work of G.W.F. Hegel (17701831) to the
materialist philosophy of Karl Marx (181883). Marx himself pays tribute to
Feuerbachs significance in his Theses on Feuerbach, written in 1845 but
published by his collaborator Frederick Engels only in 1886, as an appendix to
Engelss own study of Feuerbachs philosophy.[4] Engels himself describes
Feuerbach as the post-Hegelian philosopher who had the most influence on
the development of Marxist thought. Given this fact, it is particularly
appropriate that the chapter on Feuerbach in Geerings Faiths New Ageis
followed by one on Marx, in which Marxism is described as one of the new
forms of religion in the post-Enlightenment world.[5] Historically, this is
surely the correct context in which to discuss Feuerbachs ideas.
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The Role of Feuerbach
What role, then, is played by Feuerbach in Geerings work? One similarity
between the two authors may be noted immediately. While Feuerbach wrote
his first major work on what he called The Essence of Christianity(1841), he
wrote even less than Geering about the historical figure of Jesus. Feuerbach is
familiar with the biblical criticism of his time, particularly the work of his
contemporary (and later admirer) David Friedrich Strauss (180874), but he
does not consider its results to be particularly significant. Indeed when
Feuerbach cites Strauss, he generally refers to Strausss Die christliche
Glaubenslehre (1840),[6]which is a work on the history of Christian thought,
rather than to Strausss more famous The Life of Jesus Critically
Examined(1835).[7] In other words, Feuerbach is more interested in the
Christ of faith than in the Jesus of historyit is Christian beliefaboutJesus,
rather than the figure of Jesus himself, that is the focus of his attention.[8]
Feuerbach has little sympathy for the traditional understanding of the
Christian doctrine of the incarnation. Indeed he is convinced that this
doctrine suffers from certain fatal contradictions. What Feuerbach is
interested in is how such an absurd doctrine could have arisen, and whether it
still has any significance. This is, of course, a familiar project. Since the
eighteenth century, there have been scholars of religion who have attempted
to explain the puzzling fact of religious belief, after having become convincedof its falsity. The tradition may be said to begin with David Hume (171176),
whose two works on religionthe Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion(1779) and The Natural History of Religion(1757)neatly embody
the philosophical-evaluative task on the one hand and the anthropological-
explanatory on the other.[9] tradition continues in our own day in the work of
thinkers such as Stewart Elliot Guthrie (who has the audacity to call his
reworking of Humes ideas a new theory of religion), Scott Atran, and,
perhaps most impressively, Pascal Boyer.[10]
So when Geering turns to Feuerbach, it is for two reasons: firstly, tounderstand how it is that human beings have come to believe in God, and
secondly, to reflect on Feuerbachs interpretation of the doctrine of the
incarnation. The two issues are closely connected, at least in Feuerbachs The
Essence of Christianity. But lets start with Feuerbachs theory of religion, in
particular the Christian religion. What does Feuerbach argue? His central
contention may be stated very briefly. What Feuerbach argues is that the true
sense of Theology is Anthropology,[11] anthropology here being understood
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as a doctrine of human nature, of what it means to be a human being. More
precisely, for Feuerbach, what people refer to as God is in fact a projection of
certain human qualities. As he writes,
God as an extramundane being is . . . nothing else than the natureof man withdrawn from the world and concentrated in itself, freed
from all worldly ties and entanglements, transporting itself above
the world, and positing itself in this condition as a real, objective
being.[12]
While this may appear a simple thesis, it emerges from a number of lines of
argument, which a more detailed study would try to disentangle. [13] But we
may readily grasp the central thrust of Feuerbachs claim. Religion, he
suggests, is an objectification of the idealised attributes of humanity. How did
this objectification occur? Religion arises when the individual, in his
encounter with other people, becomes aware of his own limitations.[14] But he
becomes aware of his own limitations only by becoming aware of the
perfection, the absence of limitation, that is characteristic of the human
species.[15] Discomforted by his own by his own sense of limitation, the
individual creates the idea of perfect being, one in whom the essential
attributes of the human speciesreason, feeling, and willare expressed.[16]
It follows that if I worship what I think of as God, I am actually worship
human nature,[17] what I take to be Gods love for me is nothing other than
my self-love deified.[18] least some of the contradictions in Christian
theology arise from the tensions that emerge when these human attributes are
idealised. Of particular significance is the tension between the idealised
attributes of intellect and feeling.[19] Indeed in Feuerbachs view, the
Christian God consists of nothing other than an impossible combination of
personal and metaphysical predicates.[20]
Religion as Alienation and Self-Knowledge
What are the implications of this, Feuerbachs early view of religion? On theone hand, it means that religious belief is a delusion and a source of
alienation.[21] By attributing these human powers to a divine being, religion
deprecates the human: insofar as these powers are attributed to God, human
beings are deprived of them.[22] Christianity in particular cuts individuals off
from the community of fellow human beings by exalting the individual over
the collective.[23] It also cuts human being off from the natural world by
creating a deity removed from nature and by offering individuals the
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religion, or rather of religion as it has been up to now.[29]
What he objects to, Feuerbach continues, is the way traditional religion turns
poetry into prose, mistaking the objects of human imagination for actual
beings.
The Doctrine of the Incarnation
Geering also endorses Feuerbachs reinterpretation of the doctrine of the
incarnation, the belief that God became a human being in the person of Jesus.
[30] For Feuerbach, the doctrine of the incarnation is first and foremost an
expression of belief in the love of God. It is out of love that God laid aside his
divinity, as it were, to become a human being, for God is love. But God is
love, Feuerbach argues, should not be understood as though love were a mere
predicate, a mere characteristic of a deity who exists independently of that
love. A deity who existed independently of love would be an omnipotent
being, but an omnipotent being is something quite other than a loving God; he
isin Feuerbachs wordsa severe power not bound by love.[31] reality
expressed by the statement God is love is to be found in its predicate, not its
subject. The key term is love, not God. By speaking of a God who renounces
his divinity out of love, the doctrine of the incarnation bears witness to this
fact. Taken seriously, it leads inevitably to atheism. As Feuerbach writes (in
one of his most famous passages),
who then is our Saviour and Redeemer? God or Love? Love; for
God as God has not saved us, but Love, which transcends the
difference between the divine and human personality. As God has
renounced himself out of love, so we, out of love, should renounce
God; for if we do not sacrifice God to love, we sacrifice love to God,
and, in spite of the predicate of love, we have the Godthe evil
beingof religious fanaticism.[32]
Furthermore, since what believers call the love of God is in reality simply
human love, the doctrine of the incarnation is clear evidence that in religionhuman beings are contemplating their own nature.[33] What follows from
this? The central doctrine of Christianity, interpreted in the light of
Feuerbachs theory of religion, points towards the abolition of traditional
theism.
It is no coincidence that the abolition of traditional theism is precisely
what Lloyd Geering advocates, particularly in his more recent works. In
Christianity Without God, Geering argues that Christianity is able to abandon
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theism, without losing its distinctive character or its religious power. In
abandoning belief in God, Geering suggests, Christianity is not unfaithful to
its founder. For Jesus himself stood within the wisdom tradition of Israel,
which was more concerned with the human condition than with God.[34]And,as Feuerbach showed, Christianitys central doctrinethat of the
incarnationtended towards this goal.[35] But Geering also argues that
Christianity mustbecome non-theistic. It must do so because belief in a
supernatural being to whom we must submit ourselves is a violation of human
autonomy, which demands that we no longer be enslaved to an external
authority.[36] And monotheism, the exclusive worship of a Sky-Father (as
opposed to an Earth-Mother) has had tragic consequences. In particular, it
has led us to overlook our dependence on nature, in a way which threatens
our very future.[37]
The Later FeuerbachTheology as a Delusion
I have highlighted the importance of Feuerbachs discussion of the
incarnation, as found in his early work, The Essence of Christianity. It is this
view of the incarnation upon which Geering draws in arguing for a non-
theistic Christianity. But what about Feuerbachs later work? What
implications would this have for the Christian theologian? It is true that a
similar interpretation of the incarnation is found in his later Lectures on theEssence of Religion.[38]Yet the relationship between the earlier and the later
Feuerbach is not as simple as it might appear. By the time Feuerbach comes to
present these lectures, there has been a shift in his thinking. Gone is the
suggestion that religion has value as a form of self-knowledge, as a way in
which human beings come to awareness of the essential attributes of their
species.[39] This earlier view, which still owes something to the influence of
Hegel, has all but disappeared. What is now dominant is what Van Harvey
calls the naturalist-existentialist motif in Feuerbachs thought,[40] focuses on
the relationship between human beings and the natural world. Because of
this, Feuerbachs later work is more straightforwardly atheistic. It offers little
comfort to those theologians who, like Geering, wish to abandon theism, but
retain religion. For the early Feuerbach, religion has a certain revelatory
value, even if what it reveals is not God but human nature. For the later
Feuerbach, religion looks much more like a simple delusion, from which we
ought to liberate ourselves as quickly as possible.
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The Naturalist-Existentialist View
What, then, is Feuerbachs later view of religion, the one that Van Harvey
refers to as the naturalist-existentialist strand? At times, the Feuerbach of
theLecturesseems to be offering a relatively simple theory of religious origins.
Religion arises, he suggests, out of the insecurity human beings feel when
confronted with the threatening powers of nature and the fragility of their
own existence. Human beings recognize their dependence on the natural
world,[41] and render that dependence less threatening by creating from their
imaginations personal beings who are thought of as in control of that world.
Man does not have his life in his own hand, or at least not entirely;
some outward or inward circumstance, if only the bursting of a
tiny blood vessel in my brain, can suddenly end my life, andremove me against my will from my wife and children, friends and
relatives. But man wants to live; his life is his most precious
possession. Impelled by his instinct of self-preservation, his love of
life, he instinctively transforms this desire into a being capable of
granting it, a being with human eyes to see his tears, with human
ears to hear his complaints. For nature cannot grant this desire;
nature, in reality, is not a personal being; it has no heart, it is blind
and deaf to the desires and complaints of man.[42]
In order to create these deities, the human imagination personifies someaspect of the natural world, whether particular beings (in the veneration of
sacred objects), nature as a whole (in a religion such as that of the Qur an), or
(in more philosophical forms of theism) the general ideas that we abstract
from the concrete reality of things.[43] beings also personify and deify that
which is most characteristic of human beings, namely the power of mind,
expressed in speech, so that the monotheistic god resembles a human ruler,
who can govern millions by his mere word.[44]
To this point, Feuerbachs later theory of religion seems far from
original. The theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (17681834) had already
traced religion back to a feeling of dependency, as Feuerbach himself notes,
[45] although in support of a somewhat more traditional form of belief. And it
was David Hume who championed the idea that religions emerge from our
feelings of insecurity when confronted with the powers of nature. Humes
description of the precariousness of our human state and the way in which it
gives rise to religion is particularly close to Feuerbachs view:
We are placed in this world, as in a great theatre, where the true
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springs and causes of every event are entirely concealed from us;
nor have we either sufficient wisdom to foresee, or power to
prevent those ills, with which we are continually threatened. We
hang in perpetual suspense between life and death, health and
sickness, plenty and want; which are distributed amongst the
human species by secret and unknown causes, whose operation is
oft unexpected, and always unaccountable. These unknown
causes, then, become the constant object of our hope and fear; and
while the passions are kept in constant alarm by an anxious
expectation of the events, the imagination is equally employed in
forming ideas of those powers, on which we have so entire a
dependance.[46]
Hume goes on to note that since we have a universal tendency towardsanthropomorphismwe find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds;
and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection,
ascribe malice or goodwill to every thing, that hurts or pleases us[ 47]it is
not surprising that we think of those unknown powers that control our fate as
personal beings.
But at other times Feuerbach takes this line of argument further; in
doing so he does seem to be breaking new ground. He suggests that at the
heart of religion there lies something deeper than our sense of dependency on
the natural world. More precisely, perhaps, the natural world with which weare confronted is not merely something external to us. It includes much of our
own being. In Feuerbachs own words,
The object of religion is nature, which operates independently of
man and which he distinguishes from himself. But this nature is
more than the phenomenon of the outside world; it also includes
mans inner nature, which operates independently of his
knowledge and his will. . . . The ultimate secret of religion is the
relationship the conscious the unconscious, the voluntaryand the
involuntary in one and the same individual.[48]
On the one hand, we human beings are subjects, that is to say, conscious
beings, in partial control of our world. But at the same time we sense that vast
areas not only of the external world but also of our own nature are mysterious
to us and beyond our control. We are not masters over the forces that
produced us or the impulses that drive us. The conscious being, the I, is
confronted with the world of nature, the not-I, from which it emerges. In a
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passage, which (as Van Harvey notes) reads like the work of a much more
recent thinker,[49] Feuerbach writes:
Man with his ego or consciousness stands at the brink of a
bottomless abyss; that abyss is his own unconscious being, whichseems alien to him and inspires him 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-Iwhich is distinct from me yet intimately related to
me, something other, which is at the same time myownbeing, is
the religious feeling.[50]
The personification and deification of this world of the not-I is what gives
rise to religion. In Feuerbachs words, religion transforms everything that is
not a product of the human willinto a product of the divine will, everything
that is not a human achievement, the work of man, into the achievement, the
gift, the work of God.[51]
Do We Need Religion?
If all we knew of Feuerbach was his early work The Essence of Christianity, it
would be easy to argue for the ongoing significance of religion in general and
Christianity in particular. Stripped of its claims to speak of a divine being
distinct from the world, it could be said, the doctrines of Christianity could be
taken to be disguised expressions of human self-knowledge. They may not tell
us anything about God, but they do tell us something about human beings. In
this sense, the early Feuerbach could be a friend to the theologian who has
abandoned God, yet wishes to retain religion. And, as we have seen, Geering is
a leading exponent of a theology of this type. But if the interpretation I have
offered is correctan interpretation which owes much to the work of Van
Harveythe later Feuerbach adopts a less sanguine view. While Part One of
The Essence of Christianityis devoted to what Feuerbach calls the true oranthropological essence of religion, there is no corresponding section in the
Lectures, the whole of which is devoted to the criticism of religion and its
explanation as a form of delusion.
For the later Feuerbach, if there is a truth in religion, it is simply the
truth of our dependency on the natural world,[52] and what wisdom is
available to human beings comes from a recognition and acceptance of that
dependency. As Feuerbach writes of himself,
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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 man 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 me. But I find this very naturaland
am therefore perfectly reconciled to the thought.[53]
Only by an acceptance of the fact that we are indeed part of nature can we be
liberated from absurd desires, such as the longing for immortality,[54] and
become whole human beings, creatures of this world rather than beings who
long for another.[55]
Religion After Feuerbach
The question which I hope this discussion has raised is this: If we accept
Feuerbachs criticism of religion, what is left of our traditional faith? Do we
still need religion? If so, what kind of religion do we need? In a short work
published in 1998, entitled Does Society Need Religion?, Geering addresses
precisely this question. He notes that those who have attempted to stamp out
religion have merely created new forms of religion. Our own age has seen a
proliferation of new religious movements, and those movements which set
out to abolish religion, such as Marxism or secular rationalism, have often
functioned as secular religions. This is hardly surprising. As individuals, we
search for meaning and purpose and as a society we need common symbols
around which we can rally. So yes, Geering argues, society does need religion.
What it needs, he writes, is a common religion which nurtures and preserves
the personal bonds of trust and good will needed to hold a society together.
[56]
What would this religion look like? Well, not surprisingly, it has much
in common with Feuerbachs later views. In particular, it embraces the idea
that we are entirely dependent on the natural world out of which we have
sprung. As Geering writes in Tomorrows God, the meaning system (or
religion) which is appropriate for the global world must therefore clearly focus
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on the earth.[57]Why? It is because we have evolved out of the earth and we
remain dependent on it for our well-being and our future. . . We humans have
come forth from the earth as from a cosmic womb. We are utterly dependent
on the earth for our continued existence.[58] But because we are aware of ourdependence on the earth in a way in which other creatures are not, our
relationship with the earth constitutes a new kind of mystical union.[59]
God-Talk After Feuerbach
What distinguishes Geerings work from that of the later Feuerbach is that
Geering describes his new religious position as belief in God. But of course it
is not religious belief in any traditional sense of that term. Geering spells out
what this new form of belief entails in the words of the theologian Gordon
Kaufman:
To believe in God is to commit oneself to a particular way of
ordering ones life and action. it is to devote oneself to working
towards a fully humane world within the ecological constraints
here on planet Earth, while standing in awe before the profound
mysterious of existence.[60]
If this is what it means to believe in God, thenas Geering himself
writesfew would wish to call themselves atheists.[61] the question I want to
raise is: Is this helpfully described as belief in God? Why use the term God inthis context? What function does it have, if it no longer denotes a supernatural
being? Do we need this language, if we have indeed abandoned theism?
Let me illustrate what I mean by reference to a particular passage from
Geerings work. Almost any of his discussions of the term God would do, but
a useful instance is to be found in Does Society Need Religion?At one point
Geering writes that
to worship God in the 21st century is to marvel at the living
ecosphere of life on this planet, of which we are a product and on
which we depend for our existence and continuing sustenance. Life
on this planet is itself the manifestation of God and our own life
participates in the life of God.[62]
But just what could that last sentence mean, given that there is no God, as an
supernatural being distinct from the world? What could it mean to say that
life on this planet is itself the manifestation of God? Perhaps Geering would
suggest, following Kaufman, that living beings manifest a serendipitous
creativity, an astonishing ability to adapt to new circumstances and continue
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to flourish.[63] Perhaps it is this creativity to which Geering is referring when
he uses the term God.[64] Fair enough. But then why use the term God, if
what you really mean is creativity? In the context of a non-theistic
understanding of God, is religious language not redundant? What needs tobe said can be said without it.
At times Geering suggests that whether we continue to use the term
God is a relatively unimportant question. The important thing, he suggests, is
the way of life which we embrace. As he writes in Tomorrows God,
whether we continue to use the word God, or not, in order to speak
about this faith, is a matter of personal choice. The particular
words we use, being arbitrary, are relatively unimportant; what is
important are the supreme values we come to associate with such
time-honoured words as God, and the responsibilities to whichthose values call us.[65]
But this seems, at the very least, disingenuous. Geerings popularity as a
religious writer stems from the fact that he offers us a new way of
understanding the term God. And he himself argues that if we abandon this
word, we may have to invent another verbal symbol to take its place as a focus
of meaning.[66 ]So we apparently need God, or something closely
resembling it. We need such a term both as an ultimate point of reference
and as a way of avoiding the hubris of seeing ourselves as self-made beings.
[67] given the power of religious symbols, to which Geerings work testifies, it
can hardly be a matter of indifference whether God is used.
The Dangers of Non-Theistic Religion
If it is used, if we do continue to speak of God while no longer believing in a
supernatural being, then we must face up to the dangers inherent in such a
practice. The first danger is that we will invite misunderstanding. Our
continued use of religious language demands of our readers or hearers that
they continually reinterpret the word God, stripping it of its traditionalassociations. Not all readers or hearers are going to do this. And unless we can
offer a clear alternative meaning, we are making our hearers task almost
impossible. It is all very well to say that the term God is now being used
functionally, to establish a focus of meaning.[68] if we fail to spell out just
what that focus of meaning is, thenwhether we like it or notour language
may be interpreted as lending support to traditional theism. And if we do
spell out what the term God now means (as in the case of serendipitous
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creativity), we must face the charge that this reality is more accurately
described in non-religious terms.
And perhaps it would be better described in non-religious terms. For
there is a second danger associated with the continued use of religiouslanguage. It is a danger which Geering himself has highlighted, in other
contextsthe danger of creating new idols for old.[69] it traditional theism
objectionable? Because, Geering writes, it enables people unconsciously to
project their own beliefs on to a divine authority, and then attempt to impose
them on their fellows, in the belief that in doing so they are simply obeying the
divine imperative.[70] But while the term God continues to enjoy its
traditional associations, are we not in danger of perpetuating this practice? By
using the term God do we not risk making an idol out of our political
commitments? We may no longer go on crusades in the name of God, settingout to defeat the infidel. But if we join Greenpeace in the name of God, we
may be merely giving religious fanaticism a new goal.
To his credit, Geering himself once spoke of precisely this danger. In
God in the New World, he wrote that the continued use of the word God
with all its associations and images. . . always constitutes a temptation to turn
back in the direction of mythology, and that leads to idolatry.[71] But it is one
thing to be aware of the danger; it is quite another to avoid it. If you continue
to use religious language, while denying that it has an other-worldly object,
then you inevitably speak of some this-worldly reality as if it were divine. And
this looks suspiciously like idolatry.
Do I exaggerate this danger? I dont think so. In a paper delivered in
1996 to a Sea of Faith conference, Geering cites with approval the words of
Thomas Berry:
The ecological age fosters the deep awareness of the sacred
presence within each reality of the universe. There is an awe and
reverence due to the stars in the heavens, the sun and the heavenly
bodies; to the seas and the continents; to all living forms of trees
and flowers; to the myriad expressions of life in the sea; to the
animals of the forest and the birds of the air. To wantonly destroy
a living species is to silence forever a divine voice.[72]
To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a divine voice. If this
is not idolatry, giving divine status to a this-worldly reality and (by
implication) to our efforts to preserve it, then I dont know what idolatry
means. In saying this, I am not saying that we should not join Greenpeace. I
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am not saying that we should not oppose the destruction of living species. On
the contrary, I believe that we should. But I also believe that we contribute
nothing helpful to the ecological debate by describing the values we are trying
to preserve as divine.The early Feuerbach or the later Feuerbach, a Christianity without God
or an atheism which cuts loose from our religious heritage. . . those are the
choices which lie open to those who accept Feuerbachs analysis of religion.
Geering opts to remain within a religious tradition, albeit in a radically
reinterpreted form. And perhaps he is right to do so. Perhaps we human
beings are incorrigibly religious; perhaps we cannot live without religious
language and ritual practices. If so, let me make my own position clear. I
would prefer Lloyd Geerings religion to most of those that are currently on
offer. But it brings with it some of the same dangers which attendedtraditional theism. The most serious of these is that we risk falling into new
forms of idolatry, giving divine status to this-worldly realities and to our own
political ideals. So perhaps a thoroughly secular alternative is worth
examining. Can we live without God? We certainly can. On this, Geering and I
are agreed. Can we live without God? I dont know. But perhaps we should at
least try.
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