Summary Of Changing Of The God By Frank Manuel

Religion is a deep, complicated, and confusing entity that many theorists and followers have tried to explain for thousands of years. More recently there have been two stances on the study and explanation of religion, the reductionist and non-reductionist approach. The reductionist approach reared it’s head especially during the Radical French Enlightenment as many thinkers turned away from the non-reductionist approach to religion and instead criticized religion as a means of escaping fear and oppression. In order to delve deeper into the meanings and motives we must look at the The Changing of the Gods by Frank Manuel and The Natural History by David Hume, a Scottish philosopher. Frank Manuel gives us an account of the thoughts and theories

Manuel looks to unpack many of the ideas and theories of the Radical French Enlightenment in his passage The Changing of the Gods. These ideas are a reductionist approach to religion as they boil religion down to something human through the criticism of people turning to religion mainly out of fear and superstition. This fear gave the church and priests of the time more power and money as they promised an escape from the pain of fear and superstition. This was mainly a reductionist approach to religion because many thinkers of the time offered a psychology of religion and boiled religion down to the human psyche rather than its own unique thing. This idea is prominent when Manuel writes “fear of god was transformed into a negative trait of the religious personality, the source of much that was stupid, cruel, and self destructive” (Manuel, The Changing of the Gods, P. 58). In this quote we can see that the idea of fearing god was seen as something destructive and hurtful to the human psyche as they only believed in religion because of the fear what might happen if they do not. Moreover, his allowed thinkers to further criticize religion and break it down to psychology by describing how the priests of the time used this fear and superstition to manipulate followers. This idea is prominent when Manuel writes “Fear-stricken believers turned over money and goods and choice objects to fakir priests who offered them alleviation of pain” (Manuel, The Changing of the Gods, P. 59). Manuel goes on to say that this fear and superstition even caused followers of religion to sacrifice their own children and fight wars over their gods. All of these criticisms of the gods and religion were broken down to a psychology of religion as the thinkers of the Radical French Enlightenment mentioned by Manuel believed that humans did these things because of their fear of death and the afterlife. In all, the thinkers of the Radical French Enlightenment offer a reductionist theory