Because I've got work to do outside, because he said it better than I can, because I found someone had posted the passage online so I don't have to type it out, as I'm finding the more I read him (try reading, it works sometimes) Hans Kung said it all, refuting one of the real big-boys of atheism, not the jr. high CSICOP popularizer village tap room loudmouth bullshitters you cite.
Does this mean however that a psychological explanation of this kind is all
that is to be said about the very complex problem of the "hereafter" or
"eternal life"? Does recognition of the fact that psychological (or
other) factors play a significant part in belief in an eternal life ipso facto exclude
the possibility that these factors may be oriented to a real object, to
a reality independent of our consciousness? Certainly the fact cannot
be positively excluded (and this must be said for Feuerbach against all
too hastily "transcendentally" deducing theologians) that perhaps in
reality there is no object corresponding to man's different needs,
wishes, instincts, including his striving for happiness (in Scholastic
theology known as the desiderium naturale beatitudinis), and
that in death I am absorbed into the eternal repose of nothingness. Who
knows anything definite in this respect? But neither can the possibility
be a priori excluded (and this must be pointed out against a
self-confident atheism) that in fact there is something real (however it
is defined) corresponding to all these needs, wishes, instincts and
also to the striving for happiness, and that I shall be elevated into an
absolutely final reality. Who could a prior maintain the opposite?
To be more precise, could not the sense of dependence and the instinct of self-preservation have a very real ground, could could not our striving for happiness have a very real
goal? And if—in my belief in eternal life, as in all knowing—I put,
project into the object is purely the product of my imagination? A
projection and no more than that? Could not perhaps some kind of
transcendent object, some kind of hidden reality of God—however this may
be defined—correspond to all the wishing, thinking and imagining
involved in our belief?
"If the gods are products of wishful thinking, it does not follow that
they are merely such: we cannot conclude from this either to their
existence or to their nonexistence," explains the philosopher Eduard von
Hartmann: "It is quite true that nothing exists merely because we wish
it, but it is not true that something cannot exist if we wish it.
Feuerbach's whole critique of religion and the whole proof of his
atheism, however, rest on the single argument; that is, on a logical
fallacy." This is more than an argument in formal logic. For I can also
deduce psychologically my experience in the world, but this
implies nothing against the existence of a world independent of me, as
the reference point of my experiences; it provides no reasons for
solipsism. And I can deduce psychologically my experience of God, but this implies nothing against the existence of a divine reality independent of me,
as the reference point of all my needs and wishes; it is not a proof of
atheism. In a word, something real can certainly correspond in reality
to my psychological experience; a real God and a real eternal
life—appearance and being—can certainly correspond to the wish for God
and an eternal life. The conclusion is inescapable that, from this psychological viewpoint, Feuerbach's denial of eternal life remains a postulate. His atheism too is not above suspicion of being a projection.
Hans Kung: Eternal Life?: Life After Death As A Medical, Philosophical and Theological Problem.
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