History of God, chapter 10, The Death of God?

A History of God: chapter 10, The death of God?
19th ce, Atheism was on agenda
People tried to save God by evolving new theologies
Revolt against cult of reason,
Poet need to transcend reason
Keats, 1821, creative imagination, imagination a sacred faculty
Wordsworth, 1850, mystical poet, Keats critical of him, a mystic, meddling intellect could destroy intuition
Insight began with subjective experience, this had to be wise and not uninformed
William Blake, 1827, mystics poet, songs of Innocence and Experience, Blake was using idea of original fall like Gnostics and kabbalist
Attempt to bring Romanticism into official Christianity
Schleiermacher, 1834, faith cannot be confined to propositions in creed, feeling not opposed to human reason
Reason and feeling both pointed themselves beyond to an indescribable reality
In his later years, realized that concept of god useless without imaginatevely transformed by feeling
West, both Catholics and protestants regarded him as being, an other reality in the world
Atheist philosophers opposed this god
Hegel, 1831, evolved a philosophy similar to Kabbalah, regarded Judaism as ignoble religion
idea of a spirit; spirit and humanity two halves of single truth
like faylasufs regarded reason and philosophy superior to religion
Schopenhauer, 1860, no god, only human's will-to-live
Kierkegaard, 1855, insisted old creeds and doctrines became idols
Feuerbach, 1872, argued God simply human projection
Comte, 1857, wanted to get rid of this deity
Marx, 1885, religion was the opium of poor to bear suffering, God irrelevant.
Literal understanding of god and scripture in Christianity was vulnerable to new scientific discoveries of the period
in Koran doctrine of creation is a parable
Significant number of religious doesn't consider Darwin's thoery was fatal to the idea of God
Nietzsche, in 1882, proclaimed God is dead
Birth of Superman to replace god, war againt Christian values
idea of eternal and divine World and the concept of rebirth
Christian God pitiable and a crime against life
Freud, 1939, a personal god is a exalted father figure, religion belonged to infancy in human race, it was essential to promote ethical values, need to transition that to science
Adler, 1937, psychoanalyst, belief in god was helpful for humanity
C.G.Jung, 1961, his God was similar to mystics God, psychological truth
Freud insisted not to abolish religion, but people must Outgrow God in their own good time
atheist shown signs of strain, Schopenhauer could not cope with human beings and became recluse, Nietzsche lonely man plagued by ill-health went mad eventually.
Hegel's and Nietzsche's theory used by Nazis
In twentieth ce West, literature world started to unbelieve and doubt in God - Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Dostoevsky and Aloysha
Humanity waiting for Godot which never comes
Europe's colonisation of middle east and african countries, cultural and economic hegemony of West in 19th century in the name of modernisation
Islam was viewed as fatalistic which is against progress
Secularism was alien and foreign Islamic world
Attaturk tried to transform Turkey to western nation by disestablishing Islam
Enforced reppression of religion could be destructive, mullah's opposition of Iranian regime and extravagant forms  underground Sufis in Turkey.
Muslim reformers were not hostile to West but was admirer.
al-afghani, 1889, an adept of the Israqi mysticism of Suhrawardi at the same passionate advocate of modernisation
Mohamed Abduh, 1905, disciple of al-afghani
Few Muslims find problem with modern science
Abduh regularly visited Europe to refresh himself regularly.
of opinion that attack against faylasufs mounted by al-Gazzhali had been immoderate
Iqbal, 1938, bridge between east and west
Importance of individualism
Perfect man - total receptivity to the Absolute
In 1920 Britain and France marched into middle east
Koran taught that a society which lived according to God's will could not fail
Muslim scholorship was increasingly devoted to apologetics or to dreaming of past
Journal al-Azhar 1930-1933, editor Husain, traditionalist, unconcerned about western scientist had long exploded proof god that he proposed
Farid Wajdi, from 1933, assured readers Islam was all right, scarcely referred to god
People in touch with modernity lost sense of God and vice versa, this led to instability which would spring political activism characterises modern fundamentalism
Jew philosophers developed 'the Science of Judaism' rewrote Jewish history in Hegelian terms.
Solomon Formstecher, 1889, god as a world soul, spirit depended on the world
New explanation for Judaism countering Hegel and Kant
Science of Judaism, presented as rational faith, wanted to get rid of Kabbalah
Nachman Krochmal, 1840, did not recoil from mysticism
though he was rational
New confidence by emancipation in Judaism was dealt by vicious anti-Semitism in Russia and east-europe
Hermann Cohen, 1918, insisted God was a human idea, religion teaches us to love our neighbor
Franz Rosenzweig, 1929, evolved entirely different concept of Judaism, an existentialist
Sacraments and symbolic actions point beyond themselves
Israel fulfil its destiny if its severed ties with mundane world and not involved in politics
In 1882, after first pogrom in Russia, few Jews left from east Europe to Palestine.
David Ben Gurion, 1973, socialist, went Palestine
Herzl, 1904, saw new Jewish venture as a colonial enterprise
Despite avowed secularism, Zionism expressed itself in religious terminology and essential a religion without God
Asher Ginsberg, wanted a spiritual centre in Palatine and did not think Jewish state was possible in Palestine
Aron B.Gordon, 1922, kabbalist converted to Zionism
By working the land, Jews would conquer it for themself
Socialist Zionist their movement conquest of Labour
Their work is secular prayer
Avraham Schlonsky, 1973, road builder
Kook, 1935, kabbalist, chief rabbi for Palestine Jewry, not dismayed by Zionism.
Atheistic Zionism was only a phase, was fulfilling God's plan
Elie Weisel, lived only for God in his childhood, Nazi death camp converted him to atheist
Experience of hanging a young boy in front of thousands of spectators
Death of God in concentration camp