Manufacturing “The Experience of God”

“Profound, indeed, is the suggestion of Voltaire that if God did not exist we should have to invent him! So whether he exists or not we have invented ideas of him, not deliberately to be sure, but by vital instinct and the slow, but sure method of trial and failure.”

These are the words of a highly cultured clergyman of an orthodox church, who tolerates all varieties of the formulation of the God-idea as these are made by others, and yet he has no need of any such definite formulation for himself. In one sense he is perhaps quite as atheistic as his more blatant atheistic neighbors, and yet he possesses and values highest of all that life offers, the psychologic quintessence of religiosity. He can accept all the hypotheses accredited by scientists, without violence to any of his religious concepts. He is as free as any agnostic can possibly be, to reject the traditional valuation of holy writ, or the literal interpretations of creedal declaration, whenever these conflict with the well accredited scientific hypotheses. He knows so much more than the average Freethinker about the psychology and essential nature of religion, that he actually can and does describe to us many of the very details by which religion and the gods are created by or for their devotees.

Furthermore, he justifies, pragmatically, the manufacture of the experience of God, by what he alleges to be the personal esthetic and social value of the results, of this religious artifice. Incidentally, if we have psychologic insight and understanding, he makes it quite plain how ignorant we must be to throw bricks at Jehovah of the Jews, as a means of destroying religiosity, or of discrediting the religious temperament. Indeed he does not care how much you discredit the Jehovah-concept. If you succeed thoroughly, he feels sure that you have rendered a valuable service to real, or pure religion, which is very distinct from any particular rationalization or theological formulation of it. Those who have not yet l