FEUERBACH AND DEMYSTIFICATION

In the course of the last chapter we saw the insuperable difficulties facing anyone who argues that since God's existence cannot be verified directly, it must be inferred from what we see around us. Hume, at his strongest, argues that that inference is logically problematic. I have argued that these logical difficulties are more severe than Hume realised, although this greater challenge is latent in his remarks. In his Natural History it can be said that Hume, turning from the philosophical character of his ‘true religion’, examined concept-formation in religious belief. He concluded that seeing what this amounts to reduces religion to an understandable natural phenomenon; a phenomenon which helps one understand why religion along with philosophical defences of it, leads one to postulate transcendental illusions. Once Hume's philosophical critique is accepted, the inevitable legacy he bequeaths is simply the task of giving increasingly detailed accounts of how these illusions come to be formed and believed.

It is easy to see Ludwig Feuerbach as an inheritor of Hume's legacy. Eugene Kamenka says of him: