Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Feuerbach is best known for his book The Essence of Christianity which burst like a bombshell on the German intellectual scene in the early Forties and was soon translated into English by the English novelist, George Eliot. It quickly became like a Bible to an entire generation of intellectuals who thought of themselves as reformers and revolutionaries, including Arnold Ruge, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Richard Wagner, and David F. Strauss, who wrote that the book was the “truth for our times.”

Superficially, the central thesis is deceptively simple: the self comes to consciousness over against another self and in the process of self-differentiation realizes that it is a member of a species. The imagination under the pressure of wish and feeling seizes on the idea of the species and converts it into an individual being.

Man — this is the mystery of religion — objectifies his being and then again makes himself an object to the objectivized image of himself thus converted into a subject … . (GW 5:71; EC 29f).

But this simplicity vanishes as soon as the reader turns to the first chapter. There one is confronted with argumentation and terminology that are obscure and speculative by contemporary standards. It is argued that (a) religion is identical with self-consciousness, (b) that consciousness is in the strict sense identical with the “infinite nature of consciousness,” and (c) that a limited consciousness is no consciousness. These sweeping assertions are then interwoven with such claims as “man is nothing without an object” or that “the object to which a subject necessarily relates is nothing else than the subjects own objective nature” (GW V:28–32; EC. 1–4). The reader, hoping to understand the ramifications of the simpler thesis, is suddenly wrestling with obscure arguments that seem to be the tip of a greater conceptual iceberg.

Media Matters - Will MSNBC devote as much coverage to McCain’s embrace of Hagees support as it did to Obamas rejection of Farrakhan?, Feb. 28, 2008

Also on February 27, John Hagee, founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas –who has made numerous controversial statements about, among other things, homosexuality, Islam, Catholicism, and women — endorsed Sen. John McCain for president.

On the September 18, 2006, edition of National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, host Terry Gross said to Hagee, “You said after Hurricane Katrina that it was an act of God, and you said when you violate God’s will long enough, the judgment of God comes to you. Katrina is an act of God for a society that is becoming Sodom and Gomorrah reborn. ” She then asked, “Do you still think that Katrina is punishment from God for a society thats becoming like Sodom and Gomorrah?” Hagee responded:

HAGEE: All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.