[204F-LER: p. 62]
“For if a being’s worthiness to be worshiped, hence his divine dignity, depends solely on his relation to human welfare, if only a being beneficial and useful to man is divine, then the ground of divinity is to be sought solely in human egoism, which relates everything to itself and evaluates it solely in accordance with this relationship. (…) I find fault with religion only where the egoism it reflects is utterly base, as in teleology, where religion turns the relation that an object, and nature in particular, has to man, into the very essence of that object, and of nature, and where for that very reason religion takes an unboundedly egoistic, contemptuous attitude toward nature; or where, as in the Christian belief in miracles and immortality, it is an unnatural, supernatural, and chimerical egoism, exceeding the limits of necessary, natural egoism.” [204F-LER: p. 62]
[205F-LER: p. 62-63]
[P. 62] “There are … plenty of religious phenomena which seem at least to confute my conception and to justify the opposite view. These are the refusal to satisfy the most natural and powerful instincts, the mortification of the flesh and its evil lusts, as the Christians call them, the spiritual and bodily castration, the self-torture [P. 63] and flagellation, the penance and self-chastisement which play a part in nearly all religions.” [205F-LER: p. 62-63]
[206F-LER: p. 67]
“Why does man deny himself in religion? In order to gain the favor of his gods who grant him everything he desires. (…) Thus man does not practice self-abnegation for its own sake … . Self-abnegation is only a form, a means, of self-affirmation, of self-love.” [206F-LER: p. 67]
[207F-LER: p. 73]
“A Christian sacrifices himself, negates himself only in order to acquire beatitude. ‘He sacrifices himself to God’ means that because earthly, transient joys are not adequate to his supernaturalist tastes, he sacrifices them for the sake of heavenly bliss.” [207F-LER: p. 73]
[208F-LER: p. 78]
“… even if I carry my love beyond the confines of my country, even if I extend it to all men, self-love is not excluded from my universal love of mankind; for in men I love my own being, my race … . But if self-love is a necessary, universal principle, inseparable from all love, then religion too must confirm this principle. Wherever man combats human egoism (in the highly developed sense), whether in religion or in philosophy or in politics, he succumbs to sheer absurdity and madness; for the design underlying all human impulses, strivings, and actions, is to satisfy the needs of human nature, human egoism.” [208F-LER: p. 78]
[209F-LER: p. 82]
“Hence the saying: Need teaches us to pray; hence the fact, so distressing to the pious, that people in general are religious only in times of affliction, need, and misfortune.” [209F-LER: p. 82]
