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4 ideas
7666 | God is not a mathematician, but a poet [Hamann, by Berlin] |
Full Idea: Hamann's fundamental doctrine was that God was not a geometer, not a mathematician, but a poet. | |
From: report of J.G. Hamann (works [1770]) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism Ch.3 | |
A reaction: [This idea is wonderfully expressed by D.H.Lawrence in his poem 'Red Geranium and Godly Mignonette]. The idea becomes attractive when you ask whether God would need to do mathematics. |
19454 | A God needs justice, kindness and wisdom, but those concepts don't depend on the concept of God [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: The concept of God depends on the concepts of justice, kindness and wisdom - a God who is not kind, not just, and not wise is no God. But these concepts do not depend on the concept of God. That a quality is possessed by God does not make it divine. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
A reaction: This is part of Feuerbach's argument for atheism, but if you ask for the source of our human concepts of justice, kindness and wisdom, no one, I would have thought, could cite God for the role. |
19452 | The nature of God is an expression of human nature [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: God is the manifestation of man's inner nature, his expressed self. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
A reaction: Even if you are a deeply committed theist, you have to concede some of this point. The perfections attributed to God are usually of human qualities. Leibniz, though, says that God has an infinity of perfection, mostly unknown to us. |
19453 | If love, goodness and personality are human, the God who is their source is anthropomorphic [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: If love, goodness, and personality are human determinations, the being which constitutes their source and ...their presupposition is also an anthropomorphism; so is the existence of God. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
A reaction: It is certainly a struggle for the imagination to grasp a being which is characterised by idealised versions of human virtues, and yet has an intrinsic nature which is utterly different from humanity. |