Religious Understanding and Cultured Practices

This chapter explores the insights and oversights of projection theories of religious belief (e.g., Feuerbach, Freud). It accepts the notion that religious beliefs are projections developed in religious practices applied to the “transcendent.” But these beliefs are not irrational simply because they originated as projections; this is the genetic fallacy. Rather, all beliefs about the transcendent, including denials of any reality to the transcendent, originate in projecting qualities found in the immanent onto the transcendent. The reasonableness of religious beliefs is argued on analogy with the travails of “A Square” in Edwin Abbott’s Flatland. To distinguish among religious projections, the final section develops standards of appraisal that can be used at least to weed out the less plausible religious projects.