Reality and the Existential Need for God

(Originally written March 1, 2007 in Book 13)

Philosophy of Religion
Norman Geisler & Winfried Corduan

The Meaning of Reality

"Reality is more than a subjective condition of human experience" (64).

In dealing with religious experience it seems there is no surefire way of separating the hallucinatory from the real.

There is always the possibility that one's supposed religious experience is actually explainable by purely psychological phenomena.

All experience is subjective, hence religious experience is subjective.

"Religious transcendence must be more than a subjective condition in religious experience before it should be called 'real'" (64).

Reality is more than merely a projection of human imagination.

Religious transcendence is not real if it is merely a projection of human nature.

Ludwig Feuerbach argued that God was really a projection of humanity's ideal man.

Karl Marx believed that religion was a projection of man's hope for the superman in heaven.

Reality is more than an object of wish-fulfillment.

Freud believed religion is an illusion, not in the sense that God is not real, but that it came about from man's wish that there be a God.

Reality is more than a subconscious force in human experience.

Carl Gustav Jung called the collective subconscious the real, but this is insufficient.

"Reality means to have an independent existence"

Transcendence, in order to be real, must exist outside of the mind of those who conceive it and must exist outside of the experiences of the people who experience it.

"Reality means to have an objective existence" (67).

Objective existence means to exist in and of itself, independently of other things.

The Need For Verification

Deception and illusion are possible so there must be some means of determinism whether there is a basis in reality for religious experience.

Kierkegaard held that the need to give evidence for God is evidence of one's choice to reject God.

Kierkegaard believed verifying God's existence was ridiculous,: "For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it, and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it". (68).

Kierkegaard held that in order to offer a proof for God's existence one must presuppose that God exists.

He believed that faith, not reason, brings one to God.

Alvin Plantinga echoes Kierkegaard in stating that a belief in God is "properly basic".

Properly basic beliefs are beliefs that one needn't require verification; i.e. "I exist" or "there is a past".

There is a difference between the basis for believing that there is a God and the basis for believing in God.

"One needs evidence to know that there is a God, but one needs faith to commit oneself to the God that the evidence indicates is really there" (68).

Verifying the Reality of Religious Experience

People sense a basic need for God and this is the beginning of religious experience.

Theists and atheists alike have a feeling of dependence and a sense of contingency. But, is there really a God to fulfill the need people sense?

The Need for the Transcendent

Freud analyzed the human need for religion as a purely psychological need.

Religion was an infantile neurosis of mankind for Freud.

The Sense of Absolute Dependence

Freud did not deny the validity of people having religious experience.

"Science can never overcome a human's finitude or sense of cosmic contingency" (70).

Friedrich Schleiermacher takes the sense of cosmic need as the essence of religion.

A feeling of absolute dependence is a religious experience.

There is a need for the Transcendent because of the feeling of absolute contingency.

People sense a need for some Transcendence, whether or not it is really there.

Humanity's Being Unto Death

Martin Heidegger characterized human life as "being-unto-death".

Fear of death or nothingness is the anxiety of all man.

"I am, but I need not be and will not be" (70).

Asking about why one is are evidence of human ontological dependency.

Paul Tillich held that finite beings are ungrounded and must search for grounding, an ultimate grounding.

Does the need for God as ontological grounding of one's being imply that there is really such a grounding?

The Existential Need for God

Jean-Paul Sartre said he needed religion, he needed God and "Had it been denied me, I would have invented it myself" (71).

Sartre maintained that humans have more than a psychological need for God. Sartre held that humans have an existential need for God.

Essay Idea: Needs for God
-Psychological
-Existential
-Ontological
-Religiou
-etc.

Sartre held that "To be man means to reach toward being God" (71).

Man is seeking to be self-determined and self-caused.

The existence of a person cries out to God to give it definition and essence.

Sartre held that while this is man's need and goal, the whole concept is absurd. How can man transcend himself to discover himself?

The need for God is a fundamental, existential need, even if there is no God to fulfill this need.