9"This, then, is how you should pray:
" 'Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Feuerbach said that God is a projection outside of us of what is best in us. It was not that God created us in his image but that we created him in ours.
I believe that our projection of our idealized selves is a thought; is a value judgment; it breathes our own reason. This is why we make God omnipotent, omni, omni, omni… it is a rationalization of what what seems fit in our intelligence.
One might go as far as saying that God is just an opinion or a point of view, a perspective etc. Once we gain a convinction in this or that opinion, or “God”, or “Father”, it becomes clear what we want to do next:
To hallow our opinion.
Our will be done, as in idea so it should be on earth.
I think this is a common interpretation of the Genesis creation myths, but it doesn’t resolve a number of more subtle issues. In our day we observe too many things superficially and fail to get into the profound reality behind metaphors and images. The duality of mankind, his carnal and spiritual sides, is continually in conflict. This led humankind to look out into the Cosmos and he discovered that something similar was out there. Of course early sages spoke a non-scientific language, but the assumption that the internal and external is based on the same kind of duality seemed logical.
However, this duality can’t be the end of it all. There must be a force which unites and binds things together, which creates order in disorder – even if it is in a limited manner. The seed of life is obviously something that is a part of the cosmic order and which, when given the fertile field, grows abundantly. Taking this as given and seeing that humankind is able look at this creation in awe, appreciating the genius, it is not unusual for humankind to assume that it too has this creative spirit, even if only in a limited way. The allegory of God blowing his Spirit into mankind and making him a “living spirit†is quite fitting.
The jump to the Prayer of Jesus takes up this idea in its consequence and is an attempt to contradict the banality of the pious in his day.
I was not so much into making a point for Feuerbach or disputing the breath of life but in establishing that God is a deification of human thought. Even if Creation breathed life into the very earth, it is man that breathes into the Creation his own ability to reason. Life and Death, so to speak, are of God, but reasoning is of men…
Exactly, and I am pointing out that the “deificationâ€, if you accept that the early sages were not dummies, was in fact a method of explaining an observation that even today is better expressed in religious language than in scientific prose. Something that not only creates life but is the principle, by which we live by, can’t (yet) be better expressed – even if some people are so insecure as to interpret it literally.
But again I am not making a distinction between scientific/religious language and apprehension. Or science versus religion. If you ask, I would say that the point makes both the same. “God” is meant as an idol, as something that we think of as absolute even if scientifically, analytically and logically cannot be so. A scientist too, when he posits a new Law, is idealizing what amounts to a subtle opinion-- not that he has not studied and experimented, but that any new experiments with result in the same result over and over again, giving a universality to his reason, his thoughts, that is not really evident. yet it makes the universe intelligible and lawful, creating new thoughts and reason.
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This is Jesus Christ’s prayer.
First, Jesus acknowledge that God the Father is present everywhere omni…
.
with all of God’s power, with all of His intelligence and control of the world, God is not ignorant of our needs and wants, or what we require or has given thoughts to the outcome or incapable of justly rewarding victory to the righteous.
So we should not urge God or suggest to God that we need this or we need that but only if it pleases God. His will.
This I would disagree with, at least going from the intentions recognisable in the Bible. The God of Genesis is the “Anti-Idolâ€, an Antithesis for those who have sensed their sentience in opposition to those who remain in their superstition and fear. The awe of faith is different. That is why Abram was told to leave his kin and change his name.
If we were to talk about religion in the modern day, you would have my support that God has been unwittingly idolised and given a form that is akin to a “graven imageâ€. However, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception amongst all sorts of people. Even atheists in their opposition always address the graven image and avoid consideration of the Antithesis.
I think that it is reasonable to create constructions to do that. Here too, you find the problem more in the setting as absolute, which pupils and admirers of scholars tend to do in all disciplines, rather than in the original idea. How many psychology students fall foul of the constructs of Freud and Maslow along the way, hopefully emerging from their mistakes as time goes on.
“Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.” — Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944), British astronomer and physicist".
This is similar to what I have in mind. Nietzsche wrote a book, The Twilight of the Idols, and he did not mean simply to smash with his hammer-based philosophy the idols of religious worship alone.
Again, my point is that ideas such as God, and any other particularity given universality and an absolute value that rest solely on faith, are tools of our reason for itself. We have faith so that we may continue to think along.