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Single Idea 23041
[filed under theme 28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 4. God Reflects Humanity
]
Full Idea
God is identical with the self of every man in the sense of being the realisation of its determinate possibilities.…In being conscious of himself man is conscious of God and thus knows that God is, but only in so far as he knows what he himself really is.
Gist of Idea
God is the realisation of the possibilities of each man's self
Source
T.H. Green (works [1875], iii:226-7), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II
Book Ref
Muirhead,John H.: 'The Service of the State: T.H. Green' [John Murray 2021], p.43
A Reaction
Does this, by the transitivity of identity, imply the identity of all individual men? Do we all contain identical possibilities, which converge on a unified concept of God? I always take the monotheistic God to far exceed mere human possibilities.
The
18 ideas
with the same theme
[God as a projection of humanity's own image]:
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150
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We cannot conceive of God, so we have to think of Him as an immortal version of ourselves
[Plato]
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2802
|
Men imagine gods to be of human shape, with a human lifestyle
[Aristotle]
|
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2635
|
The gods are happy, so virtuous, so rational, so must have human shape
[Cicero]
|
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22732
|
The perfections of God were extrapolations from mankind
[Sext.Empiricus]
|
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19085
|
Thinking of God as resembling humans results from a bad translation of Genesis 1:26
[Maimonides]
|
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9112
|
We could never form a concept of God's wisdom if we couldn't abstract it from creatures
[William of Ockham]
|
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7411
|
The attributes of God just show our inability to conceive his nature
[Hobbes]
|
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7830
|
A talking triangle would say God is triangular
[Spinoza]
|
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2185
|
The idea of an infinite, intelligent, wise and good God arises from augmenting the best qualities of our own minds
[Hume]
|
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6202
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In all naturalistic concepts of God, if you remove the human qualities there is nothing left
[Kant]
|
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6917
|
God is the essence of thought, abstracted from the thinker
[Hegel, by Feuerbach]
|
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19452
|
The nature of God is an expression of human nature
[Feuerbach]
|
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6903
|
If God is only an object for man, then only the essence of man is revealed in God
[Feuerbach]
|
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6911
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God is for us a mere empty idea, which we fill with our own ego and essence
[Feuerbach]
|
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6923
|
God is what man would like to be
[Feuerbach]
|
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23041
|
God is the realisation of the possibilities of each man's self
[Green,TH]
|
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19603
|
Why is God so boring, and why does God resemble humanity so little?
[Cioran]
|
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7470
|
During the rise of civilizations, the main gods changed from female to male
[Watson]
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