[222F-LER: p. 111]
“God’s goodness is merely the utility of nature, ennobled by the imagination, by the poetry of man’s emotions, personified and transformed into an active force. But because nature is also the cause of effects that are hostile and harmful to man, he personifies and deifies this cause in an evil God.” [222F-LER: p. 111]
[223F-LER: p. 112]
“The polytheist believes in good and evil gods, the monotheist replaces the evil gods with God’s wrath and the good ones with His mercy; he believes in one God, but this one God is a good and evil, or angry, God, a God with conflicting attributes.” [223F-LER: p. 112]
[224F-LER: p. 112]
“Man is an egoist; he is infinitely fond of himself, he believes that all things exist for his sole benefit and that there neither should nor can be evils. But he runs into facts that conflict with this self-centered faith; he therefore supposes that evil befalls him only when he transgresses against the being or beings from whom he derives everything that is good and helpful, so arousing their anger. (…) This also accounts for the Christian belief that nature was once a paradise, in which there was nothing hostile or harmful to man, but that this paradise was lost through sin, which aroused God’s anger.” [224F-LER: p. 112]
[225F-LER: p. 114]
“Does the universe presuppose time, or should we not say that time presupposes the universe? The universe is the water, time is the motion of the water; but is the water not anterior to its own motion? Does not the motion of water presuppose water? (…) Is it not just as absurd to conceive of a point in time as the beginning of the world as to conceive of the flow of water as the origin of water?” [225F-LER: p. 114]
[226F-LER: p. 116]
“The existence attributed to God is existence as a universal, the generic concept of existence, existence abstracted from all particular properties or determinations. This existence, to be sure, is spiritual, that is, intellectual and abstract, as is every concept; yet it is nothing other than the idea of sensuous existence in general.” [226F-LER: p. 116]
[227F-LER: p. 117]
“ … from physical things man abstracts space and time as universal concepts or forms, common to them all … . But although man has abstracted space and time from spatial and temporal things, he posits them as the first grounds and conditions of these same things. (…) … man sets space and time before real things … .” [227F-LER: p. 117]
