In 1841 a German philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach, wrote a sentence that still unsettles people: “Religion is the dream of the human mind.” His idea was simple. We take the best things in ourselves, such as love, wisdom and justice, imagine them without limits, push them up into the sky and call the result God. Within a century, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud had added their own versions.
If they are right, blaming God is like blaming a character in a novel. The real question is not what God did, but why we keep inventing Him. This page sets out the three arguments at full strength. Then it gives the replies, including one simple point of logic that anyone can use, and the surprising fact that the scriptures were attacking invented gods long before Feuerbach was born.
“Their idols are silver and gold, The work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not; Eyes have they, but they see not; They have ears, but they hear not; Noses have they, but they smell not; They have hands, but they handle not; Feet have they, but they walk not.”
Psalm 115:4–7 · JPS 1917
The first people to say “humans make gods” were not modern philosophers. They were the psalmists and prophets of Israel, mocking gods carved by human hands. Their claim was the reverse of Feuerbach’s: the God they worshipped is the one nobody made. In Psalm numbering used by some Christian Bibles this is Psalm 113.
Heard in all three
“They are nothing but names you have named, you and your fathers, for which God has sent down no authority.”
Qur’an 53:23
Three arguments, and one point of logic
Feuerbach said God is humanity’s own nature seen in a mirror. Marx, writing in 1844, said religion is the sigh of people crushed by an unfair world: a comfort that numbs the pain, “the opium of the people”, instead of curing it. Freud, in The Future of an Illusion (1927), said belief in God grows from a child’s wish for a powerful, protective father, carried into adult life.
Modern research adds a gentler version. Scientists who study the mind find that belief in unseen agents comes very naturally to children, perhaps as a side effect of mental tools that evolved for other jobs. Our page on the instinct for God tells that story in full. Some researchers see it as evidence that God is a by-product of the brain. Others say a natural sense of God is exactly what you would expect if a Creator wanted to be known.
Here is the point of logic. Explaining how a belief arose does not tell you whether it is true. Philosophers call the mistake the genetic fallacy. Children believe in other minds and in a real past long before they can prove either, and both beliefs are true. The philosopher Alvin Plantinga pressed this against Freud and Marx in Warranted Christian Belief (2000). Their theories only work, he argued, if you already assume there is no God. If there is a God, a deep human longing for Him is just what you would predict.
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EXPLORATIONS - Do Children Naturally Believe in God? - Justin Barrett · Ian Ramsey CentrePlays on “Does belief come naturally?” →What each faith says
Judaism
Jewish tradition has always attacked man-made gods. Isaiah describes a carpenter who cuts down a tree, burns half of it to cook his dinner, and carves the other half into a god, then bows down and prays to it: “Deliver me, for thou art my god” (Isaiah 44:16–17). The joke is bitter and deliberate.
A famous midrash tells how the young Abraham minded his father’s idol shop. When a man of sixty came in to buy a god, Abraham asked how old he was, and then said: what a shame, a man of sixty bowing to something made yesterday (Bereshit Rabbah 38:13). For Judaism, the God of Abraham is the one thing in the story that no human hand produced.
Christianity
“Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.”
Augustine, Confessions, Book I · E. B. Pusey (1838), public domain
Christians have answered Freud by turning his argument round. If belief can be wishful thinking, so can unbelief: some people might wish there were no Father to answer to. The psychologist Paul Vitz made that case in Faith of the Fatherless (1999). Both kinds of wish leave the real question open.
C. S. Lewis offered a positive argument from longing. Hunger points to food and thirst to water. We also have a longing that nothing in this world fully satisfies. In Mere Christianity (1952) he concluded that the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world. Augustine said the same in his Confessions, about 1,600 years earlier.
Islam
“They are but names which ye have named, ye and your fathers, for which Allah hath revealed no warrant. They follow but a guess and that which (they) themselves desire. And now the guidance from their Lord hath come unto them.”
Qur’an 53:23 · Pickthall (1930)
The Qur’an describes the idols of ancient Arabia as “They are but names which ye have named, ye and your fathers, for which Allah hath revealed no warrant. They follow but a guess and that which (they) themselves desire. And now the guidance from their Lord hath come unto them.” (53:23, Pickthall). In other words, the Qur’an agrees that humans invent gods, and that this is exactly the problem. It tells how Abraham looked at a star, the moon and the sun, and turned from each as it set: “When the night grew dark upon him he beheld a star. He said: This is my Lord. But when it set, he said: I love not things that set.” (6:76, Pickthall). He was looking for a God who does not fade.
The Qur’an also speaks of fitra, a natural disposition towards God built into every person (30:30). On this view, the universal human longing for God is not a sign that we made Him up. It is a trace of the One who made us, and the right response to being made is thanks.
Without religion
Many humanists find the projection theories convincing, at least in part. Comfort, they say, is not evidence, and the history of religion is full of gods who look like their worshippers. Many prefer to meet the deep human needs that religion meets, such as belonging, meaning and awe, through art, science and community. Some admit that the genetic fallacy cuts both ways: showing why people believe does not prove they are wrong.
Sikhi
The Mul Mantar, the opening words of the Guru Granth Sahib, describes God as saibhang, self-existent, and ajuni, beyond birth. Nobody made God, including us. The Gurus also criticised the worship of idols and empty ritual, which they saw as human inventions that get in the way of the real God, found within and in all creation.
Hindu traditions
Hindu thought makes a careful distinction. The many images of gods and goddesses, murtis, are used to approach a reality beyond every image, Brahman. The Upanishads describe it only by saying neti neti, “not this, not this”. Ancient India also had its own sceptics, the Charvaka school, who argued that the gods were invented by priests. The argument at the top of this page is very old.
Beyond the Abrahamic faiths
In ancient Greece, about 2,500 years ago, the poet Xenophanes noticed that people picture gods like themselves: Ethiopians imagine dark gods, Thracians fair ones. If horses could draw, he joked, they would draw gods that look like horses. Interestingly, Xenophanes did not conclude there was no God. He concluded there is one God, unlike humans in body or mind.
Same and different
Here is the surprise of this page. Sceptics and scriptures agree on something: humans do invent gods. Psalm 115, Isaiah, the Qur’an, the Sikh Gurus and Xenophanes all say so. They disagree about whether there is anything left once the invented gods are cleared away. Feuerbach, Marx and Freud said no. The traditions say yes: the One no hand carved, the self-existent, the God who does not set like a star. A sceptic replies that the remaining God is just a more refined invention. A believer replies that a longing for water does not prove water exists, but we would be surprised to find a thirst in a world with nothing to drink. And if Someone did give us that longing, the fitting reply is thanks.
A moment to reflect
- Freud said belief in God is a wish. Could unbelief be a wish too? Does either answer the question?
- Abraham turned from the star, the moon and the sun because they set. What would a God who “doesn’t set” be like?
- Have you ever felt a longing that nothing seemed to satisfy? What do you make of it?
- Why do you think the prophets mocked man-made gods so fiercely?
Do it together
Write ten statements such as “You only believe that because your parents do” or “You only doubt it because you’re angry”. Groups sort them: does the statement show the belief is false, or only where it came from?
Act out the midrash of young Abraham and the idols (no one plays God or a prophet: tell it with a narrator and the customers). Ask: what was Abraham trying to make people notice?
Read short summaries of Feuerbach, Marx and Freud. For each, list one thing it gets right about how people use religion, and one reply a believer could give.
Go deeper
- The instinct for God (this site) · find out more
- Does belief come naturally? (this site) · find out more
- Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (Project Gutenberg) · book
- Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (CCEL) · book
- Genetic fallacy (Wikipedia) · article
- Xenophanes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) · article
Sources (12)
- Feuerbach: “Religion is the dream of the human mind”; theology is anthropology: The Essence of Christianity, tr. George Eliot (1854), Project Gutenberg 47025
- Marx 1844, religion as “the sigh of the oppressed creature… the opium of the people”: Marxists Internet Archive, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Introduction
- Freud, The Future of an Illusion (1927): wish-fulfilment and the father: Wikipedia, The Future of an Illusion
- Plantinga’s “F&M complaint” and reply: Warranted Christian Belief (2000), ch. 6, CCEL
- Psalm 115:4–7, Isaiah 44:16–17: Sefaria API, JPS 1917
- Abraham in the idol shop (Bereshit Rabbah 38:13): Sefaria, The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah 2022, CC BY
- Augustine, Confessions I.1: Pusey translation, Project Gutenberg 3296
- Qur’an 53:23, 6:76–78, 30:30 (Pickthall (1930) where quoted): Quran.com
- Paul Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless (1999): Wikipedia, Paul Vitz
- Xenophanes on human-shaped gods and one God: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Xenophanes
- Charvaka scepticism about priests and gods: Wikipedia, Charvaka
- Mul Mantar: saibhang, ajuni: Wikipedia, Mul Mantar
