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Single Idea 19603

[filed under theme 28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 4. God Reflects Humanity ]

Full Idea

Why is God so dull, so feeble, so inadequately picturesque? Why does He lack interest, vigor, actuality and resemble us so little? Is there any image less anthropomorphic and more gratuitously remote?

Clarification

'anthropomorphic' means human-like

Gist of Idea

Why is God so boring, and why does God resemble humanity so little?

Source

E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Devil')

Book Ref

Cioran,E.M.: 'A Short History of Decay', ed/tr. Howard,Richard [Penguin 2010], p.21


A Reaction

This seems to be directed at those like Feuerbach who said that we had merely created God as a glorified image of humanity.

Related Idea

Idea 6911 God is for us a mere empty idea, which we fill with our own ego and essence [Feuerbach]


The 18 ideas with the same theme [God as a projection of humanity's own image]:

We cannot conceive of God, so we have to think of Him as an immortal version of ourselves [Plato]
Men imagine gods to be of human shape, with a human lifestyle [Aristotle]
The gods are happy, so virtuous, so rational, so must have human shape [Cicero]
The perfections of God were extrapolations from mankind [Sext.Empiricus]
Thinking of God as resembling humans results from a bad translation of Genesis 1:26 [Maimonides]
We could never form a concept of God's wisdom if we couldn't abstract it from creatures [William of Ockham]
The attributes of God just show our inability to conceive his nature [Hobbes]
A talking triangle would say God is triangular [Spinoza]
The idea of an infinite, intelligent, wise and good God arises from augmenting the best qualities of our own minds [Hume]
In all naturalistic concepts of God, if you remove the human qualities there is nothing left [Kant]
God is the essence of thought, abstracted from the thinker [Hegel, by Feuerbach]
The nature of God is an expression of human nature [Feuerbach]
If God is only an object for man, then only the essence of man is revealed in God [Feuerbach]
God is for us a mere empty idea, which we fill with our own ego and essence [Feuerbach]
God is what man would like to be [Feuerbach]
God is the realisation of the possibilities of each man's self [Green,TH]
Why is God so boring, and why does God resemble humanity so little? [Cioran]
During the rise of civilizations, the main gods changed from female to male [Watson]