“Like many another Victorian, Spencer rejected, without really understanding, the Christianity on which he had been brought up. He spoke of the Christian God as ‘…a deity who is pleased with the singing of his praises, and angry with the infinitesimal beings he has made when they fail to tell him perpetually of his greatness’–an unworthy caricature. He had no time for such a deity.”
Eric Sharpe 1986, Comparative Religion: A History: pp. 32-33.
It is this attitude that I find quite annoying in those who want to brush off religion: the caricature and misrepresentation, “without really understanding.” It is annoying because there are such rich and full theologies and conceptions of God and his relationship to mankind, and such caricatures completely ignore them. One can find better grounds for criticism than such a poorly developed caricature.
On the other hand, what is religion, in this case Christianity? Is it the complex and rich theologies, or the common understandings on the street of the practitioners and the critics?
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