[317F-LER: p. 283]
“ … atheism is positive and affirmative; it gives back to nature and mankind the dignity of which theism has despoiled them; it restores life to nature and mankind, which theism had drained of their best powers.” [317F-LER: p. 283]
[318F-LER: p. 284]
“The hereafter with its balms always comes too late; it cures an ill after it has passed, after death, when man no longer feels the evil and consequently has no need to be cured … . (…)
(…) Let us then leave the dead in peace and concern ourselves with the living.” [318F-LER: p. 284]
The following material is from 'Additions and Notes' to Feuerbach's Lectures on the Essence of Religion
[319F-LER: p. 287]
“When we explain religion by fear, we must … take into account not only the lowest form of fear, fear of one natural phenomenon or another, the fear that begins and ends with a storm at sea, a tempest, or an earthquake, in other words the fear that is circumscribed in time and space, but also the fear that is limited to no particular object, the perpetual, ever present fear which embraces every conceivable misfortune, in a word, the infinite fear of the human soul.” [319F-LER: p. 287]
[320F-LER: p. 290]
“ … love goes back to the beginning of the world, but fear extends to the end of the world; love made the First Day, but fear made the Day of Judgment. In short, where the creative omnipotence of human fear ceases, the omnipotence of divine love also ceases.” [320F-LER: p. 290]
[321F-LER: p. 291]
“Fortunately, despite his servitude to theology, Luther found, outside of religion or theology, antidotes to the power of sin, hell, the devil or, what amounts to the same thing, the divine wrath. In a Latin letter to L. Senfel he writes that music, too, gives man what otherwise only theology can bestow, namely, a tranquil and serene mind, that the Devil, the author of all cares and emotional disturbances, takes flight at the sound of music as he does at the word of theology.” [321F-LER: p. 291]
[322F-LER: p. 294-295]
[P. 294] “ … the first definition of ‘god,’ derived from practice, from life, is simply that a god is what man requires for his existence, and specifically for his physical existence, which is the
