Wishing Doesn't Make It True

Is our desire for God anything more than wishing Him into existence? It's an old argument that has been going the rounds since Ludwig Feuerbach. I recently came across the debate still festering on http://www.opposingviews.com/

In a way, I'm surprised that the debate is ongoing. Over a hundred years ago, Eduard von Hartmann pointed out the logical fallacy in Feuerbach's argument, but that doesn't stop the anti-God lobby from using it. Alister McGrath quotes von Hartmann in one of his books, "It is perfectly true that nothing exists merely because we wish it, but it is not true that something cannot exist if we wish it." Things do not exist simply because we desire them. But it does not follow that, because we desire something, it does not exist. Feuerbach's argument is a logical fallacy. What's the argument about?

Feuerbach wrote that religion is simply a projection of our wishes. We would like the world to be ordered, for the good to go to heaven and the evil to go to the other place, and so we wish it, and convince ourselves that it is true. In The Essence of Christianity (1841) Feuerbach argues that the idea of God arises from human experience. Human beings long for something beyond themselves, for immortality, for justice, for love. And so we translate our experience of longing onto an illusory plane and create the idea of God. In a sense, as Sigmund Freud was to argue, religion is a childish response to our dependence upon our parents. When we continue the culture of dependence into our adult lives, we substitute God for our earthly father. If only we would grow up we would realize that our search for spiritual reality is a study of our own experience. There is no external reality to be discovered.

Feuerbach has been very influential, though few remember his name today. Karl Marx adopted his critique of religion. Freud promoted it; in his The Future of Illusion (1927) Freud said that religious ideas are "illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind." It's an argument that is still rolled out with great regularity today.

You can't really argue with Feuerbach, or his disciples. He simply states his hypothesis as gospel, and that's the end of the argument. Religion is wish-fulfillment. Nothing more. With a condescending smile the popular psychologist encourages us to grow up and grow out of the delusion. Only then will we be free.

Feuerbach's arguments are predicated upon the assumption that all religious experience is actually human experience. Specifically, as Schliermacher wrote, religion is based upon the human experience of being dependent. This was a popular idea at the time but, as many have pointed out, Feuerbach ignores the doctrine of revelation. As Christians we don't have to rely upon our subjective interpretations; God confronts us through His Word. He is prior to and independent of our experience. We aren't just listening to ourselves. God speaks. More to the point He often says things that we probably we would not wish to hear, especially when He calls us to repentance, to turn from sin and to turn to Christ. How can it be wish-fulfillment when it would be easier all around if God did not exist, if there was no judgment to fear?

Most of the time, though, Feuerbach doesn't depend upon arguments. He just insists that he is right. Curiously, it's like arguing with a charismatic who claims a direct line to God. There can be no argument when all opposing viewpoints have been eliminated, a priori, as nonsense. Even the glib, self-satisfied smile is the same, "Of course you wouldn't understand."

What we understand is that just because an argument keeps being repeated, that doesn't make it right. When I was at Birmingham University a young girl, who used to attend the meetings of the Christian Union, suddenly stopped coming. Eventually we found out why. She was dating an undergraduate from the Department of Psychology. This genius had read a little Freud and decided that he had no further need of "the god hypothesis." And, because he wanted her to do away with her "bourgeois, oppressive, Victorian morality," he persuaded her that her religion had been a projection of her insecurity. She responded, not by slugging him, but by agreeing. Rejecting the moral code of her childhood she was free to debate philosophy between the sheets. I don't know what became of her. I pray that she woke up.

Of course, the irony is that she created a new reality on the basis of her wishes. She wanted to be found attractive to this young Lothario, (and for her brain not just for her looks), so she wished for a world in which her constraints evaporated. And they did. She mistook anthropology for theology. She thought that she had argued herself out of a need for God. But God is not dependent upon her needs, neither is He perturbed by her denials of His existence. She may wish for a world without God, but wishing does not make it true!

Why should we be expected to abandon the Christian faith just because Ludwig Feuerbach tells us that we are projecting our wishes instead of experiencing God? It's still a very unconvincing argument, no matter who tells you otherwise.