Paul Trejo wrote:

>>

For Karl Marx, God does not create man but rather man creates God. Hegel
has already stated that such a view is "foolish and perverted," (LECTURES ON
THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, 1827) and I quoted that [...]

«Human Reason, human spiritual consciousness or consciousness of its own
Essence, *is*
Reason generally, *is* the Divine within humanity. Spirit, insofar as it is
called Divine Spirit, is not a spirit beyond the stars or beyond the world,
for God is Present, is Omnipresent, and strictly *as* Spirit is God present
in Spirit. Religion is a begetting of the Divine Spirit, not an invention of
human beings." (Hegel, LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, 1827, trans.
Hodgson, 1989, U. of California Press, vol. 1, p. 130)»
<<

I believe that Hegel is here referring explicitly to the Enlightenment
treatment of religion, as a mere superstition and as a "devilish" invention
by corrupt priests. However, it would be incorrect, in my opinion, to
analyse Feuerbach's (and Marx') treatment of religion as a side-effect of
Enlightenment.

Feuerbach and Marx came (biographically, historically and philosophically
speaking) AFTER Hegel, therefore their analysis of religion could not do
without Hegel's insight. I believe that their treatment of religion may be
considered as a side-effect of Hegelianism. This might sound provocative to
Paul -- but here I am not discussing the rather sterile and abstract issue
whether Hegel would have approved of Marx: what I am trying to say is that
Hegel's very analysis of religion made Feuerbach's atheism possible.

Both Feuerbach and Marx do not consider religion as an "invention". They
would actually agree with Hegel's affirmation that «*Human* Reason, *human*
spiritual consciousness or consciousness of its own Essence, is Reason
generally, is the Divine within humanity» [emphasis added]. What Hegel is
actually stating here is the notion that there is a dialectical unity
between *human* reason and *divinity*, that divinity *is* (or becomes) the
*human* reason and vice-versa.

Apart from being the pivotal message from Christianity -- for this very
reason considered by Hegel the highest form of Religion -- this is also the
core of Hegel's philosophy:
humanity is God, the God that is «not a spirit beyond the stars or beyond
the world, for God is Present, is Omnipresent, and strictly *as* Spirit is
God present in Spirit».

When Hegel mention the "Spirit" he is not dealing with a ghost which would
be "beyond the stars" or in a haunted house. Recently Beat Greuter cited a
wonderful passage from the Phenomenology, where it is clear that this
"Spirit", this "we" which is an "I" is deeply human.

It is bearing in mind this discovery from Christianity, that it is possible
to abandon the viewpoint of Religion to reach the highness of Philosophy.
Philosophy -- which contains and develops this truth from Christianity (that
Man is God) -- is the truth of Religion.

** ** **

It is in this sense that I mean that Feuerbach's later philosophy develops
(probably without understanding it) an already present feature in Hegel's
philosophy of religion. Far from naively considering religion as a simple
invention by priests, Feuerbach too considers it as the «begetting of the
Divine Spirit». What he also thinks, consistently with Hegel, is that this
Divine Spirit is nothing else but Human Reason. Subsequently, he goes on
analysing the reason why humanity needs to project its major "divine"
attribute (Reason) in the varying and fallacious images of different
personal Gods.

But without Hegel, without the very content of the passage from the
philosophy of religion that Paul quoted, no Feuerbach (and no Marx) could
have approached the subject.

All the best,
Maurizio