God as projection - a look at Feuerbach

Thoughts on re-reading Ludwig Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity (1841)

Along with Marx and Freud, Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72) is generally held to be a detractor of religion, seeing it as a dangerous illusion and merely a projection of aspects of humankind, reducing it to the human and thereby depriving it of its power, mystery and supernatural beliefs. For Feuerbach, God is no more than a projection of the highest aspirations of Man.

But re-reading his The Essence of Christianity (in the translation made by George Eliot in 1853, from which all the quotes here are taken), I have been struck by just how positive and useful his analysis is, and how he can be something of a bridge between the older tradition of natural religion (deism) – which has its focus primarily on concepts to be believed – and what actually happens in the practice of religion.

First of all, as the basis of all that he has to say, is the conviction that religion is distinctive and positive human quality. His opening sentence:

‘Religion has its basis in the essential difference between man and the brutes – the brutes have no religion.’

And that difference is consciousness, the ‘feeling of self as an individual’ so that ‘man has both an inner and outer life.’ He therefore sees ‘feeling’ as the key to religion. ‘Whatever is God to a man, that is his heart and soul’ so that ‘Consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge.’

The problem is that we generally see the self as something separate from the world and separate from the ‘feelings’ that it experiences (blame Descartes for that). Once feeling is separated from self, Feuerbach suggests that, in bondage to what he calls ‘vulgar empiricism’ and incapable of appreciating the grandeur of feeling, we slip back and ask if God exists or not. [And, I would suggest, we equally start to ask whether we exist or not, with vulgar empiricism leading to the nonsense of identifying the self with the physical brain.] I sense that Feuerbach’s religious feeling is to be captured in the present moment – rather like the Buddhist exercise of mindfulness – and is lost when subjected to subsequent analysis.

Feuerbach is wonderful at one-liners; born a century later, he would have been a natural for the advertising industry!  On p40 he says:

‘Existence out of self is the world; existence in self is God. To think is to be God.’

But in case you assume that this suggests a universal, non-anthropomorphic concept of deity, he adds that such a God can have no more significance for religion than a fundamental general principle has for special sciences. It is ‘merely the ultimate point of support.’ What he is after is much more immediate and religiously significant.

He suggests that religion is essentially a matter cultivating a sense of self within the world in a way that is distinctively human; that finding peace with God is a matter of becoming at one with one’s true nature.

I was surprised at just how much of the book Feuerbach devotes to specific Christian beliefs and teachings, and of the human and felt dimension of the sacraments. But towards the end, he delivers what really is a crushing argument against those who attempt to prove the existence of God:

‘The contradiction to the religious spirit in the proof of the existence of God lies only in this, that the existence is thought of separately, and thence arises the appearance that God is a mere conception, a being existing in idea only…

but he wants to emphasise that, for religion, God cannot just be a concept, a thought…

‘for to religion God is not a matter of abstract thought, - he is a present truth and reality.’

In other words, he is affirming God as a living experience – but doing so NOT in the sense that there is an ‘external’ God of whose existence one is convinced, but that God is essentially a feature of one’s own feeling life. So he is able to say:

‘The proofs of the existence of God have for their aim to make the internal external, to separate it from man.’

 ‘God is not seen, not heard, not perceived by the senses. He does not exist for me, if I do not exist for him; if I do not believe in a God, there is no God for me.’

He recognises that a consequence of there being no ‘sensational existence’ for God is atheism. Everything else that exists does so because we can sense it (or – I would add – consider it something capable of being sensed), and the ‘vulgar empiricism’ that dominates our lives takes this as the only genuine meaning of existence. So Feuerbach is able to say that, if I do not raise myself above the life of the senses, God has no place in my consciousness. He exists only in so far as he is felt, thought and believed in – shades of a 19^th century version of Don Cupitt here, I sense!.  At one and the same time, God therefore exists and does not exist. He is real, but not empirical.

The problem is that, once religious people try to articulate God, they start to project him as having a separate existence.

‘But when this projected image of human nature is made an object of reflection, of theology, it becomes an inexhaustible mire of falsehoods, illusions, contradictions and sophisms.’ (p123)

You can’t get much more critical than that, but in the end Feuerbach wants to reclaim something of value from all the sophistry. He sees the essence of religion as the identity of the human and the divine, but the forms that religion takes have exactly the opposite effect, namely to separate man and God.  Rather, he wants to point (in a most conventional religious way) to the role of love: ‘Love identifies man with God…’ (p247) and then contrasts love with faith:

‘Love has God in itself: faith has God out of itself; it estranges God from man, it makes him an external object.’

And another of those wonderful one-liners:

‘The secret of theology is anthropology.’

It seems to me that the implication of all this – which is surely good theology – is that God is encountered in and through loving relationships, not because he endorses them, but because he is them.

Far from offering a negative critique of religion, Feuerbach makes a positive contribution to ‘natural religion’ here, and one that makes explicit what is implicit in much religious language, namely that the term ‘God’ should be used for an experienced reality, not for a possible external entity.  The very idea of asking whether God exists implies a failure to understand what ‘God’ means.

A deist might say that belief in God is a matter of seeing structure, meaning and purpose in the universe. But surely that does not add anything to the statement that there appears to be structure, meaning and purpose in the universe – there is no added extra corresponding to God.  What a glib atheist assumption misses, however, is the further point that reality is essentially something in which we live and with which we engage, not just something about which we speculate.

Clearly, if all Feuerbach meant was that theology could be replaced by anthropology – an attempt to speak of an objectively existing God replaced by objective statements about humankind, then his analysis does not do justice to what religion seeks to achieve – namely a deeper engagement with life, rather than an additional layer of speculation about life.

Marx and Freud both saw religious belief as a matter of projection, whether it is of a future compensation for present troubles, or a replacement for a lost father figure. Superficially, Feuerbach offers – and indeed lies behind – the same line of thinking, with God as a projection of the highest human ideals.  But that would be to miss some of the key ideas in The Essence of Christianity, which is – as the title implies – an attempt to get to what religion is fundamentally about.

The key problem is that he sees religion as subverting moral sentiments. In other words, ascribing to God what should be ascribed to man.  So, for example, a person who is helped to recover from an illness may ascribe that recovery to God rather than to the medical team who helped to bring it about. In other words, it has an essentially alienating effect of human awareness. This, of course, is why Feuerbach is seen as an important influence on Marx.

The other danger, which he outlines on p270, is that, if morality is made to depend upon divine authority, then ‘infamous things can be justified and established’. The problem is that human nature mixes the best with that which is sometimes the very worst, and both can be projected onto God, once that supposed object of projection is established and believed in.

Of course, like many of the most severe critics of religion, Feuerbach started off not as a philosopher but as a theologian. He experienced the discussion of religion from the inside, and was therefore able to get a broader perspective on his work, seeing his idea of God as existing only as a object of faith as something implicit in Protestantism.

So where do we place Feuerbach in the development of religious ideas? His rejection of both transcendence and immortality established him as a critic as well as an interpreter of Hegel, to whom he had turned after his study of Theology, and as a key ‘left’ or ‘young’ Hegelian. For him, Hegel is too abstract; too concerned with pure thought rather than reality itself. He wants to root both religion and philosophy in human life and experience. And this, of course, is why he can be seen as a stepping stone between Hegel and Marx. Reality is human reality, and any projection, whether into religion or philosophical speculation, is a wilful avoidance of the concrete reality with which we have to deal.

Feuerbach sees religion as essentially unhealthy as it deflects human interest away from the reality of life and to an abstract and ‘objective’ concept of God or immortality, and this, of course, is part of his legacy via Marx. Historically, religion may have had an important role in pointing to those qualities that are fundamental to human wellbeing, but it now impedes human progress, by continually projecting those qualities outwards on to the deity, rather than working with them in the human sphere. Rather than expecting supernatural forces to sort out our problems, we need to engage directly to the issues of human life and welfare.

As I read Feuerbach, I get continual hints at strands of philosophy and theology that he anticipated.  Death of God theology is in there, as is politically engaged religious thinking; I get hints of Bonheoffer, Van Buren and Tillich, but also Heidegger and the existentialist movement.

Yes, religion can be unhealthy and projection can be an avoidance mechanism, but Feuerbach also pointed out that the religious impulse works at a level deeper than the subject-object split, an engaged level of reality which is killed off by subsequent rational analysis. Yes we do project – but we do it all the time; you don’t have to be in analysis to recognise just how often we project aspects of ourselves onto the external environment, or onto other people, or how often we use abstract concepts – like fairness or democracy - to avoid focusing on our inner uncertainties.

My personal view is that Feuerbach’s work has a great deal to contribute to the humanist and atheist appreciation of religion. It is suitably critical to appeal to those who are inherently suspicious of all religious ideas, but it also unpacks the mechanism by which religious awareness has resulted in the unfortunate projection of reality into a supernatural realm that it does not need, and which now impedes its intellectual acceptance.

Practical atheists or hypocrites?

Here’s a dilemma for religious atheism. If you are an atheist (or even an agnostic – if that is taken in the sense of being open to the possibility of God but not convinced) but hanker after a bit of religion, ritual or the support of a religious community, do you lose your integrity if you take part in religious worship?

Let’s start unpacking this by looking at it from the other side. It is clear that there are a good number of people within the Christian religion who – without necessarily proclaiming themselves to be atheist or agnostic – take the whole thing with a pinch of intellectual salt. They massage the factual claims of religion to accommodate commonsense and thereby remain within the religious fold and enjoy its aesthetic, moral and social benefits. Many will argue, convincingly in my opinion, that the heart of religion remains a mystery and that creedal definitions – the cause of so many divisions and conflicts – are no more than a sad necessity in a world where people like to be defined and certain about their tribal loyalties. In practical terms, for example when it comes to understanding the causes of illness, their views will not differ from their atheist or agnostic neighbours. They accept the findings of science, believe in evolution and regard mental disturbance as a natural phenomenon needing therapy rather than signs of demonic possession. So far, so secular. But to their understanding of all this, they add the narratives about life and its meaning that religion provides, and use them as a tool for exploring meaning and value in their own lives. In other words, they use the framework of religion to give depth to their engagement in the secular world.

But is that hypocrisy? If you stand up and recite a creed, do you lose your integrity if you do not believe the words in their way they were originally intended, namely to provide a literal test for true belief?

For years I recited the creeds with fingers metaphorically crossed. Then I found that I could no longer continue to do so, fearing a total loss of integrity.  But my regret now, looking back from a distance of three decades of secular-Buddhist-flavoured-atheism, is that I did not affirm the integrity of my position. After all, if you believe that the attempt to express the heart of life through literal statements is a dangerous and divisive impossibility, your refusal to be intimidated by them is a sign of strength.

But assuming that you play intellectually safe and avoid formal religion in order to retain your integrity, where do you go to find secular forms of those things that religion offers?  The library? The museum? The gym? The community centre? The political party?  There’s plenty of secular therapy around, or meditation classes. Philosophy groups might support the intellectual quest and community action the sense of committed engagement.  But does it all hang together?

Another possibility (already suggested to me) is joining the Universal Unitarian Church, which accepts atheists; but Unitarian communities are few and far between. Buddhist groups equally offer the possibility of spirituality without belief in God, but however valid spiritually and intellectually, it is not easy for everyone to go through the shift in culture required – and even Buddhist groups are not free from the tendency to define and categorise people in terms of belief, practice and ethics. If I align myself to any religious tradition, it is to Buddhism, but – unless you live in a traditionally Buddhist country – that does not necessarily answer the longing for a sense of local community that a religion with centres in every locality can offer.

I am convinced that there are aspects of religion, the loss of which greatly impoverish society. But is the apparent loss of intellectual integrity a price worth paying? How do you deal with that one? 

Please feel free to respond; I’d genuinely like to know what you think.

[PS. As I was typing out this blog entry, my wife handed me an envelope saying ‘I really can’t believe I’m married to ‘The Reverend’. It was a letter from the Church of England Pensions Board, from whom I receive a modest pension from my seven years as a clergyman back in the 1970s. Am I a hypocrite taking my pension? Am I the only atheist in receipt of money from the C of E? I doubt it. When I originally received notification that I was due a pension (and – in case you think this is at a former-banker level – my wife’s comment was that the annual figure might take us on a holiday) I asked a friend, who was a senior churchman, whether I was right to accept it. His reply was succinct and suitably secular ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid; you earned it!’ We live in a strange world.]

Secular religion through 'thick' and 'thin'.

An interesting recent article on the Secular Buddhism website introduces two contrasting policies by means of which secular Buddhism might present itself.
The first option takes a 'thin' approach, offering meditation and Buddhist practice as something that can benefit anyone, whatever their existing religious beliefs or affiliations. It does not seek to impose particular Buddhist teachings, but simply offers secular Buddhist practice to as many people as possible, excluding none by avoiding doctrinal confrontation.
The 'thick' approach seeks to explore secular Buddhism in a way that is most compatible with science and with an exploration of the basic Buddhist teachings, even if that then conflicts with the beliefs of other people who might have benefitted from Buddhist practice.
There's far more to both approaches that I have sketched here, and both have their advantages and difficulties. For anyone interested in Buddhism, it's worth reading and pondering on the issues raised in that article.
But there seems to be a parallel here with any attempt to explore natural or secular religion against a background of Western religions and particularly Christianity.   This would not be a matter of doctrine or philosophy, but more of practice and strategy.  A 'thin' approach might suggest that one could continue to attend Christian (or other) forms of worship, taking a demythologised and secularised interpretation of the beliefs that are proclaimed. In this way, one might be able to get some benefit from the social, aesthetic and moral aspects of religion, while sitting lightly on its metaphysical teachings.  That's all well and good, and many of the most articulate of religious people are good at presenting the secular implications of faith - having just put down the Guardian, Giles Fraser springs to mind; his comments are always relevant in a secular context, even if linked to a fundamental theological point. And, of course, it is possible to argue that a fully 'incarnational' theology requires just such a teasing out of the values that apply in a secular context.
But I've tried being 'thin' and I find that it's difficult not to bend over backwards to accommodate the most crazy of supernatural beliefs only to feel that your own integrity is threatened - and once that happens, what's the point?
The other option is to take a 'thick' approach, argue with all who hold supernatural beliefs, and end up in a kind of limbo where one's integrity remains intact, but one becomes isolated.  To take any 'thick' approach to religion is likely to provoke those of different views and a secular approach to religion is always going to offend those for whom traditional doctrines are personally important.
I sense that the atheist and humanist community face a similar 'thick' and 'thin' dilemma.  There are plenty of people who attend religion, or at least give a nod in its direction, and yet acknowledge a 'thin' veneer of atheism - if only through the agnostic approach of acknowledging the limitations of human knowledge and therefore of the impossibility of affirming doctrines literally.  A 'thin' form of secular religion pervades many a funeral service that appears to be Christian, easing off on the teachings about death and resurrection and emphasising the celebration of a life.  By own experience of being within the Church suggests to me that a substantial number of 'believer' are functionally atheist, but emotionally and socially attracted to religion, as a means of exploring profound aspects of life.
The 'thick' approach is typified by the new atheist thinkers. They will not - in contrast to the 'thins' -engage seriously in debate about religion and metaphysics, nor are they likely to be found engaging in a little bit of soft religious practice, but prefer to stake out their position by way of rejecting a caricature of religious beliefs.
Sometimes, of course, you have the worst of all possible worlds - a 'thick' position attempting to look a bit 'thin' by offering a secular alternative to a cherished religious icon, as we have seen in the publication by Anthony Grayling of his 'good book', a sad imitation of the style of the King James Bible that mashes together some wonderful secular writing from the past couple of millennia, while denying (through lack of references) the possibility of following up on any of the very sound advice it includes.
To return to Buddhism... 'Skilful means' is the Buddhist policy by which teachings are always to be adapted to the needs of their hearers, seeing the task of helping people to overcome suffering as taking precedence over any form of doctrinal purity, or clinging to fixed doctrinal formulae.  Perhaps we need a similar approach in looking at the possibility of secular forms of religion. The crucial thing is not to find some philosophical formula that we can impose on others, or to which all would willingly subscribe (a formula that would certainly be 'thin' in the extreme), but to start from the other end and ask what it is that people actually seek from religion. Whether we respond in a 'thick' or 'thin' way is then a matter of pragmatic judgement.

To see the article on the Secular Buddhism website, click here.

What do people need?

'What does religion provide?' is the title of a recent article by Greta Christina.  She suggests that religion provides many things that attract people to it - social support, opportunities to celebrate, a sense of community, charitable work and so on - but that the only distinctive thing offered by religion is supernatural belief.
For now, let's set aside the issue of whether religious belief need be supernatural - those of you who've been reading my blog will know well enough where I stand on that one - and look at what she suggests for the atheist community.  Rather than asking what religion provides and then trying to produce an alternative, secular version of it, she switches the question and asks 'What do people need?'  That provides her with an opportunity to explore what is needed for a particular community, with very positive results.
And I think her switch of question is of the utmost importance.
Some secular attempts to offer alternatives to religion tend themselves to be religious in format - meetings, with speakers, readings and so on, even hymns of a secular sort. My guess is that most people will never to attracted to that format, if they are not already attracted to its religious version.
The question 'What do people need?' - and particularly 'What do people here, in this place at this time need?' - is wholly positive. I invites a serious examination of life, its values and its goals, and then asks how we can band together to assist one another to take a positive and creative look at how we can overcome suffering and frustration and achieve our human potential.
But that is exactly the question that religions should also be asking.  Not 'What have I got to hand out to people here?' but 'What do they need?' - that question is, I believe, at the very heart of what is best in religion, as well as secular society.  Within Buddhism it is expressed through the teaching of 'skilful means' - namely that religious teachings should be used and adapted to meet the needs of people and not the other way round.
It is also good 'incarnational' theology.  The sort that - to use traditional language - does not ask 'How do we bring God here?' (which is, after all, a bit of a nonsense for those who believe in a God who is present everywhere - but it's a nonsense that distorts much religious thinking), but 'What is God doing here? How may I get alongside him?'
I think the atheist critique of religion is extremely healthy - particularly because, in my view it challenges the religious to focus on what is real for them in their experience of religion. My own experience - from many years ago when I was working as an ordained clergyman - is that the reality of 'God' (or Being Itself, or whatever else you want to call the heart of things) is found exactly in the social activities, the helping, the support, the charity work etc etc.  The supernatural beliefs, which Greta Christina thinks are the distinctive thing about religion, are actually a less-than-helpful (for me at least) re-symbolisation of the reality of life which is explored within one's community.  Getting real is all about asking 'What do people need?'; I hope that plenty of religious people will examine the function of their spiritual communities by asking exactly that question.

So do take a look at what she has to say - whether you approach things from a secular or a religious point of view.  Click here to link to her article.

Frustration at Grayling's approach!

Saturday, 9^th of March and my day is fast being spoiled by the frustration of reading a review in the Guardian of yet another book by Anthony Grayling setting out the case against religion and for humanism.  The superficiality of his approach is enough to make any serious atheist despair!

His argument – and here I have to admit to following the review only, I’ve yet to read the book itself – focuses on the ‘literal sense’ of religious beliefs, seeing any form of religious claim to be the equivalent of believing in fairies or ‘green cheese beneath the surface of the moon’.  In its place he offers a banal version of Enlightenment values.

For how much longer are we going to put up with reading this sort of superficial argument against religion from thinkers who should know better? Of course there is narrow-mindedness, prejudice, moral ineptitude and some totally out-of-touch views among those who are religious. That goes without saying. Of course belief in the supernatural and superstition are out-of-date modes of thinking and incompatible with reason and science – that’s been clear since the likes of Hume challenged religion in the 18^th century.

But what drives me mad is the tendency to jump straight from 18^th century into the 20^th and 21^st, neglecting so much that was explored in the 19^th.  Schleiermacher, Feuerbach and Marx, to name but three, are thinkers who explored the significance of religion as a phenomenon. They saw it as linked to human aspirations, hopes, fears and the struggle to find meaning or hold on to power.  If Feuerbach is even a touch right about religion being a projection of the highest of human aspirations  (to which I would add, ‘as well as depicting the lowest of human failings on occasions’) – then the with which serious philosophers should be concerned today is not whether one can believe in nonsensical ideas, but what it is in human experience that finds expression in religion.

Simply recommending that everyone should be reasonable and benign does not start to do justice to what history and literature teach us about the human condition. The elements in human experience, including aspirations and sense of purpose, which feed religion, need to be faced seriously. Telling people that, in effect, they needn’t worry because there’s no god, is rather like telling a depressive to pull himself or herself together.  It’s just too serious a matter to be addressed in that superficial way.

The questions should be:

What is it in human experience that has led to religion? (And we probably need to go back to the Neolithic, or possible the late Paleolithic period to start that quest.)

What are the emotional and personal elements that maintain religion today, in spite of the obvious irrationality of many of its beliefs, if taken literally?

How do philosophers of the new-atheist school of thought deal with those who are both intellectual and religious?  They can’t all be idiots, so there must be a more subtle way of understanding religious beliefs that Grayling and others suppose.

And, finally, I am frustrated by the constant claim that all religion entails superstition.  Some of us are impressed by the insights of the Buddha into the human condition and how to overcome the existential angst and dissatisfaction that so often come with it.  It is certainly possible to explore the meaning and significance of religious ideas without shedding all of one’s intellectual integrity!  

(And, in case any should assume that I am making a case for traditional religious ideas, I should make it clear that I am atheist, albeit one who thinks that religion is too serious a phenomenon to be dismissed lightly.)

Tettle or Koaster?

So what's this? A Tettle or a Koaster?

It's sad what happens to a mind gone to seed! Sitting in a motel room the other day, I was contemplating whether this wonderful do-it-all-for-breakfash should be called a Tettle or a Koaster, since it is equally good for boiling water and making toast.
The assumption, of course, is that you need both if you are to succeed in making breakfast. But what if you're a toast and orange juice person? What if a cup of coffee is all you can face?  You're stuck with something that mis-judges your needs and gives you far more than you want.
So what has this to do with 'God', natural religion, atheism or anything else for that matter?
Western religion, as popularly conceived, offers two very different things which are generally assumed to complement one another for mutual benefit: a set of metaphysical (or, more commonly, supernatural) beliefs, and a focus of social interaction, mutual support, ethical guidance etc.  The assumption is that the one will underpin the other, whereas my view is that the linking of supernatural beliefs to the practical and 'spiritual' (OK I know that's a dirty word in some quarters, but you know what I mean) benefits of belonging to a religious community of some sort is a hindrance rather than a help.
In practice, there are those who really crave the kettle (let's say, the set of beliefs about God's providence, miracles, the efficacy of prayer and so on) and who find that - as a bonus - belonging to a religion gives social, emotional and aesthetic benefits, as well as a set of ethical guidelines that cut down (hopefully) on the degree of existential angst it takes to get through life.  Others recognise the benefits of the latter, and keep their metaphysical fingers crossed when required to recite a creed.
Can they be separated?  Of course: philosophy deals with the beliefs about life and ethics helps to sort out the practical issues (with help from politics and psychology, of course).  'Philosophy and Ethics' are the intellectual disciplines that get to grips with the two sides of life - both available in a secular flavour. My residual problem (as one who recognises the benefits of a toaster, but has major reservations about the kettle (or vice versa, depending on how you view the machine) is that, as presently conceived, religion tends to mean that - like 'love and marriage' in the old song - you're not meant to have the one without the other.
For some the combination works well; but for some of us, the supernatural beliefs are an intellectual embarrassment that we simply cannot take, and we therefore lose the benefit of toast for the sake of avoiding the supernatural kettle.  Any answers to that one?

Are new atheists voluntary Neanderthals?

I've been reading a most fascinating book about the origins of cave art in the upper palaeolithic period: The Mind in the Cave by David Lewis-Williams. He explored the way that human consciousness changed during the period 45,000 to 35,000 years ago, as illustrated by the cave paintings found in southern Europe.  It's a wonderful and serious academic book. It also provides a theory for the start of religion.
By examining what Neanderthals, who were gradually being displaced by homo sapiens during that period, were able to borrow from their new rivals and what they were not, the author demonstrates that they lacked certain basic mental functions.
Homo sapiens was developing an awareness of time, language, and was able to think conceptually and plan  ahead. He did not just see a bison, he was able to think about one, visualise it and talk about it.  In the darkness of the cave, lit with surprisingly sophisticated little lamps, he was able to conjure up an image and copy it onto the rock face. He was thus able to develop a 'spirit world' as opposed to the visible, physical world he inhabited.  In this spirit world - essentially an externalisation of his developing mental abilities - he started to express his hopes, fears and social distinctions.  And from that point there developed shamanism, and the ability - whether naturally or with the help of hallucinogenic substances - to see 'another' world.
But the brains of the Neanderthals were unable to process this. They were locked into a simple relationship with their present experience. The only world they could understand was that which they encountered with the senses.  They lacked culture of any sort.
With dreams, language and images, homo sapiens realised that it had something that the Neanderthals lacked. To use Lewis-Williams wonderfully succinct way of putting it 'Neanderthals were congenital atheists.' (op cit p192).
And this shift reminded me of another, this time highlighted by Julian James in his equally wonderful The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Moving into relatively modern times, his point is there was another fundamental change in the century of so between the writing of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the Iliad, the characters have no free will, everything is determined by the will of the gods, they are puppets, subject to forces beyond their control. By the time you get to the Odyssey, a century or so later, human individuals take charge of their own destiny, choose, ponder what is right and take responsibility for what they do.
To engage in a bit of gross oversimplification - but (I hope!) outlining an area that deserves further exploration - one might divide human history into four distinct periods, corresponding to four different attitudes:
1) The Neanderthal and earlier - all there is to life is what we see before our noses. We are incapable of appreciating the mythological or symbolic use of images that have their origins in our unconscious mind, or generated culturally.
2) From early homo sapiens to the 8th century BCE - dreams, hopes, fears, longings and all our cultural expression and appreciation of the world is projected outwards into an invisible 'spirit world', potent but separate from the physical world of the senses. Gods are 'out there' controlling us.
3) From the time of Homer's Odyssey - moral principles, personal quests, and a direct engagement with those things that were previously projected out into the 'spirit world' now start to be internalised.  If there are gods, they are projections of aspects of ourselves in the engagement with the world.
4) From the 17th/18th centuries - The inadequacy of the residual belief of 'phase 2' are highlighted by the obvious benefits of a rational examination of the world, exemplified by the rise of science.
I think all four of these attitudes are still with us. So what should we make of them?
Clearly, there are fundamentalist believers today who are well and truly stuck in 'phase 2'; their gods are external projections.  They are (rightly) criticised by the new atheists who claim to be from what I call 'phase 4'. But some new atheists, I fear, show distinct Neanderthal qualities. Whilst arguing that everything should be based on reason and evidence, they actually take a narrowly materialist view and thereby fail to appreciate the depth and value of much cultural creativity and the reality revealed by imaginative engagement with the world (rather than analysis of the world).
It is perfectly possible to be atheist (I'm one) and yet appreciate what it is that the word 'God' tries to express, not as a being from some 'spirit world' but as an expression of the deepest intuitions about life's value.
The reason I constantly return to the question about the validity of religion for atheists is that it was the relative sophistication of early homo sapiens, with its social and cultural abilities, that enabled it to displace the Neanderthals. Society needs to appreciate those qualities that religion is capable of delivering (social cohesion, and sense of community, shared celebration of values etc etc) - which were exactly what gave homo sapiens the edge - without falling back into the projections that characterise 'phase 2'.  Atheists who are sensitive to this need to promote 'phase 3' - recognising the internal dilemmas and responsibilities that give rise to religion - rather than simply trying to deny that religion is based on any reality at all.  To do that, is to become a voluntary Neanderthal!