Projection: is the concept an explanation of religion or a redescription of it that assumes what it needs to prove?

Ludwig Feuerbach, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

The objection mistakes the order of the argument. I do not begin from the premise that there is no God and infer that religion must be projection. I begin from what religion actually says about God and show that every predicate of it is a human predicate raised to infinity, and that this is visible in the texts of theology itself, which is why my method is exegesis and not speculation.123

Sources

  1. Be- cause the predicate is not multum, it is multa. In truth, the positive predicates are thought and extension. With these two, infinitely more is said than with nameless innumerable predicates; for they say something definite; they enable me to know something.
    Introduction to The Essence of Christianity, p. 136
  2. It consequently falls into two parts, one of which is mainly affirmative and the other, including the Appendix, mostly but not wholly, negative. In both parts, it is, however, the same thing that is demonstrated, albeit in different or even contradictory ways.
    Preface to the Second Edition of The Essence of Christianity, pp. 268–269
  3. But it is said in the same breath, a God who is not essentially distinguished from us is no God. The essence of religion is the immediate, involuntary, unconscious contemplation of the human nature as another, a distinct nature. But when this projected image of human nature is made an object of reflection, of theology, it becomes an inexhaustible mine of falsehoods, illusions, contradictions, and sophisms.
    The Essence of Christianity

Where the argument is made

  • The Essence of Christianity, Introduction §§1-2 and the Concluding Application
  • Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843) §§7-30

How the argument was received

Live and serious. It is the objection most often made and the one on which the value of the whole method turns.