Although already at the turn of the 18th century the great German theologian, philosopher and Biblical scholar, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher , insisted upon the claim that religion is an independent and autonomous experience governed by its own laws and not receiving its existence from any other source but of itself, one can still encounter the opinion that the source of religion is human fear of reality. Religious people are perceived as fearful and weak who imagine a divine protector in the face of dangers and obstacles. This returns also surprisingly persistently in the so called new atheism, for example in Dawkins. A few days ago we found the book In the Pronaos of the Temple of Wisdom by Franz Hartmann , a German physician, theosophist, occultist and author. We took the below fragment from it. We think it is worthwhile pondering on.
Johannes Vermeer, Allegory of the Catholic Faith
In the popular books of today, dealing with the origin of religion, we find it stated that they originated from fear. It is described how our ancestors, while in a savage state, and being unacquainted with the revelations made by modern science, saw the lightning flash, and heard the noise of thunder and watched other natural phenomena, whose origin they could not explain, and how they came to the logical conclusion that such things must be produced by some extra cosmic supernatural and intellectual power, which might some day take a notion to destroy their possessions; and which must, therefore, be flattered and propitiated so that it might be kept in a good humour.
Such a scientific explanation of the origin of religion and the belief in God may satisfy the speculating brain of the rationalist and thinker, who, living entirely in the moonshine of his own imagination has no perception for the light of that knowledge which belongs to the spirit of man; but such a theory will not satisfy the heart in which there is still a spark of the divine life, and which, therefore, feels the presence of a universal and higher power that is not a product of nature, but superior to her. A religion having such a merely logical origin would be truly the religion of the devil, because it would be thoroughly false. It would be merely a system teaching how God may be cheated and eternal justice be made to come to naught. True religion has nothing to do with fear nor with logical speculation, and its true origin rests in the fundamental relation which the human soul bears to the divine origin of the spiritual power by which she is inhabited. It is the divine spirit in man itself, recognising and through the instrumentality of man the presence of the universal spirit in nature. This divine power is truly “occult,” because it cannot be perceived by any external means, neither can its existence be logically proved to those who are not capable to feel it; it will for ever remain a mystery to the “Adam” of earth; because it is divine and can therefore be intellectually known to man only when he has entered into a state of divinity .
