Büchner. I will accept your conclusion, if you can show that our conception of a God is not a childish delusion of our fancy. “An exact knowledge and unprejudiced observation of individuals and nations in an uncivilized state prove the contrary to be the fact. Only a prejudiced mind can, in the worship of animals practised by ancient and existing nations, find something analogous to a real belief in a God. It by no means corresponds to the idea of a God when we see man worshipping such animals as he from experience knows may injure or be useful to him.... A stone, a tree, a river, an alligator, a parcel of rags, a snake, form the idols of the negro of Guinea. Such a worship does not express the idea of an almighty being, governing the world and ruling nature and man, but merely a blind fear of natural forces, which frighten uncivilized man, or appear supernatural, as he is not able to trace the natural connection of things.... A god in the shape of an animal is no God, but a caricature” (pp. 184, 185).
Reader. True. But individuals and nations existing “in an uncivilized state” are scarcely to be appealed to for a decision of the question. The notion of worship implies the notion of a supreme being; but rude and brutal men, thinking of nothing but of the development of their animal nature and the pursuit of degrading pleasure, though they know that there [pg 191] is some superior being, are not the men we ought to consult about the nature and attributes of divinity. It seems, doctor, as if you had a great predilection for uncivilized and barbarous nations. You have already tried to countenance abortion and fœticide, on the ground that barbarians admitted the horrible practice; and now you would have us believe that our conception of a God is a childish delusion, on the ground that barbarians worship the snake, the alligator, or any other caricature of a god. This will not do.
Büchner. But civilized men are not much in advance of barbarians with regard to the notion of divinity. “No one has better expounded the purely human origin of the idea of God than Ludwig Feuerbach. He calls all conceptions of God and divinity anthropomorphisms—i.e., products of human fancies and perceptions, formed after the model of human individuality. Feuerbach finds this anthropomorphism in the feeling of dependence inherent in the human nature. ‘An extraneous and superhuman God,’ says Feuerbach, ‘is nothing but an extraneous and supernatural self, a subjective being placed, by transgressing its limits, above the objective nature of man.’ The history of all religions is indeed a continuous argument for this assertion; and how could it be otherwise? Without any knowledge or any notion of the absolute, without any immediate revelation, the existence of which is indeed asserted by all, but not proved by any religious sect, all ideas of God, no matter of what religion, can only be human; and as man knows in animated nature no being intellectually superior to himself, it follows that his conception of a supreme being can only be abstracted from his own self, and must represent a self-idealization” (p. 190). Hence it is plain that our idea of a God is a mere delusion.
Reader. It is by no means plain, doctor. Feuerbach's authority, you know, is worth very little. Your German philosophers, as you own, “have pretty much lost their authority, and are now but little attended to” (p. 158). On the other hand, “nothing,” says Herschel, “is so improbable but a German will find a theory for it” (p. 155). Therefore let Feuerbach alone.
As for the reasons which you adduce in support of the assumption, we need not go into deep reasonings to lay open their true value. Is “the history of all religions a continuous argument for Feuerbach's assertion”? No. For the history of the Mosaic and of the Christian religion is a continuous refutation of such a slander. Are men “without any knowledge or any notion of the absolute”? No. This I have already shown to be entirely false. Men, however, are “without any immediate revelation.” This is true, but it has nothing to do with the question; first, because philosophy and reason are competent without supernatural revelation to ascertain the existence of a primary cause infinitely superior to all the natural beings; secondly, because, although we have no immediate revelations, we have the old revelation transmitted to us by written and oral tradition, and by the teaching of the living church. That this revelation “is asserted by all, but not proved by any religious sect,” is one of those lies which it is quite unnecessary to refute, as there are whole libraries of Scriptural treatises, in which the truth of revelation is superabundantly [pg 192] vindicated. I would therefore conclude, without any further discussion, that it is to yourself, and not to your opponents, that you should apply that low criticism with which you close the twenty-sixth chapter of your work. For it is you that “delight in hashing up cold meat with new phrases, and dishing them up as the last invention of the materialistic kitchen” (p. 194).
To sum up: Do you admit that man is a finite being?
Büchner. Of course.
Reader. Do you admit that man had a beginning? That man is ignorant, weak, wicked, and subject to death?
Büchner. Who can doubt that?
Reader. Then man by self-idealization cannot form an anthropomorphic notion of a supreme being without involving limitation, ignorance, impotence, malice, an origin, and an end of existence. Such, and no other, would be the result of self-idealization. Now, our notion of God is that of a being eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, holy, immense. Is this anthropomorphism?