Ludwig Feuerbach
For Feuerbach, people alienate their essential being by attributing their human qualities to a god who is then worshipped on account of these qualities. In worshipping god, therefore, people are unconsciously worshipping themselves. Thus Feuerbach argues that religion is a form of alienation which prevents people from attaining realisation of their own species-being. Feuerbach’s thinking has been described as humanist in that his theory of alienation is based on a theory of human nature as species-being, as innate to the human species. This position would later be examined by Karl Marx in his "Theses on Feuerbach".
Read more about this topic: Religious Alienation
Famous quotes by ludwig feuerbach:
“Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity.”
—Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872)