[297F-LER: p. 257-258]
[P. 257] “A law that I cannot observe, that is beyond my powers, is no law for me, no human law; and for that very reason a human law has a human origin. A God can do all possible, that is, imaginable, things, and can therefore expect all possible things of man. (…) Laws that a God gives to man, that is, laws that have as their foundation and goal an abstracted being who lives only in the imagination, are consequently unfit for man, they result in the greatest hypocrisy, for I cannot be a man without denying my God, or, as the history of Christianity and similar religions has demonstrated, they result in the most unnatural actions. The necessary consequence of a spiritual, that is, abstract God, whom man makes into the law of his life, is self-mutilation and mortification. (…) Man must therefore replace the religious ideal [P. 258] with another ideal. Let our ideal not be a castrated, disembodied, abstract being but the whole, real, many-sided, fully developed man.” [297F-LER: p. 257-258]
[298F-LER: p. 260]
“The Christian sets aside his sensuous nature; he wants to hear nothing of the common, ‘bestial’ urge to eat and drink, the common, ‘bestial’ instincts of sexuality and love of young; he regards the body as a congenital taint on his nobility, a blemish on his spiritual pride, a temporarily necessary degradation and denial of his true essence, a soiled traveling garment, a vulgar incognito concealing his heavenly status. He wishes to be and to become pure spirit.” [298F-LER: p. 260]
[299F-LER: p. 261-262]
[P. 261] “ … the psychological proof [of god’s existence], which is the proof most characteristic of Christianity, starts from man’s psyche, soul, or mind. (…) The reasoning is briefly as follows: The human mind is; we cannot doubt its existence; there is something invisible and incorporeal in us that thinks, wills, and feels; but the knowledge, will, and ability of the human mind are deficient, restricted by the senses, dependent on the body. But the limited, finite, imperfect, and dependent presupposes something that is unlimited, infinite, and perfect; thus the finite mind presupposes an infinite mind as its source; therefore there is such a mind and this mind is God. [P. 262] But are we justified in inferring the real independent existence of such a mind? Is the infinite mind not simply man’s mind, which desires to be infinite and perfect? Don’t man’s desires play a part in the genesis of this God? Doesn’t man wish to be free from the limitations of the body, does he not wish to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent?” [299F-LER: p. 261-262]
[300F-LER: p. 262-263]
[P. 262] “ … from man’s desire to know everything, from his infinite thirst for knowledge, which is not and cannot be satisfied here below, from man’s infinite striving for happiness, which no earthly possession or good fortune can satisfy, from his yearning for perfect morality, sullied by no sensuous drives, don’t Christians, and even the present-day Christian rationalists, infer the necessity and reality of an infinite life and existence for man, not limited to the time of a man’s life span or the space of this earth, unfettered by the body or by death? (…)
(…) But what does this infinity of the divine attributes reveal? Nothing but the infinity or unlimitedness of human desires, of the human imagination and faculty of abstraction, of man’s
