As the same truth is known at a higher-that is, more abstract-level in philosophy, religion is, for all its importance, ultimately inferior to philosophy. Its nature is, as is typically the case in philosophy, open to debate. While the debate over GMOs continues to rage, there is not a single published report of illness caused by eating genetically-modified food products. Moore (1873-1958) and Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) introduced a period of empiricism in Britain, while William James’s pragmatism had a similar effect in America. While some have speculated that there may be a correlation, and that it may be due to some special sensitivity on the part of this species of fish, so far there’s no plausible theory of what this might be. This stimulated the analysis of religious language, and the movement was complicated by the transformation in the thought of the Austrian-English philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), who in his later thought was very far removed from his early, rather formalistic treatment of language. Schleiermacher’s main goal, however, was not the exploration of religion as such but rather the construction of a new type of theology-the “theology of consciousness.” In so doing he relegated doctrines to a secondary role, their function being to express and articulate the deliverances of religious consciousness.

The second of them is usually taken to include the exploration of natural theology (i.e., the truths about God that can be known, as it is claimed, by the aid of reasoning and insight, independently of the truths vouchsafed by revelation). Jung postulated, in addition to the personal unconscious (roughly as in Freud), the collective unconscious, which is the repository of human experience and which contains “archetypes” (i.e., basic images that are universal in that they recur in independent cultures). From a very different standpoint (i.e., that of liberal Protestantism), the German theologian Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89) made an apologetic defense of Christianity in his attempt to analyze theological utterances as essentially affirming value judgments. His wife, Jeanne d’Albret, the Queen of Navarre, remained staunchly Protestant and established Protestantism completely in her domains. The region with the greatest proportion of Eastern Orthodox Christians was the Bruxelles-Capital Region, in which they formed 8.3% of the population. From this cross-cultural syncretism emerged Serapis, a god who combined Osiris and Apis with characteristics of Greek deities, and who became very popular among the Greek population. Allah Almighty will not bless those who has no love, affection and sympathy for other people.

Most scholars agree, however, that more needs to be done to make results in the psychology of religion more precise, and also, for reasons that are unclear, very few people recently have concerned themselves with the field, which thus is in a state of suspension after a flurry of activity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Immanuel Kant’s powerful critique of traditional natural theology appeared to rob religion of its basis in reason and to make it an adjunct to morality. Scholars have suggested that the sūtra’s emphasis on the Buddha as a father has helped make the sūtra popular. Theoretically, the analytic attempt to exhibit the nature of religious language could have been a chiefly descriptive task, but, in fact, most analyses have occurred in the context of questions of truth. The relationship between abstract and concrete truth was, incidentally, taken up in the 19th-century Hindu renascence as a parallel to the doctrine of the Absolute-the Advaita (nondualism), the dominant expression of Hindu metaphysics-held by the 8th-century Hindu philosopher Shankara. Thus, incidentally, it became important for New Testament historians who were influenced by Schleiermacher to penetrate the religious consciousness of Jesus-this becoming, in effect, the reputed locus of his divinity.

Even if this position can be sustained, it is clear, nevertheless, that acceptance of Freudian insights makes a considerable difference to the way in which religious experience and behaviour are viewed. Schleiermacher’s delineation of religious experience was complemented by attempts among the Romantics and by the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) to exhibit the nature of symbolic thinking and in particular the special character of religious symbolism. Thus, much of philosophy of religion is concerned with questions not so much of the description of religion (historically and otherwise) as with the truth of religious claims. According to this notion, religion arises as the relation between humanity and the Absolute (the spiritual reality that undergirds and includes the whole universe), in which the truth is expressed symbolically, and so conveyed personally and emotionally to the individual. Often the extraterrestrial beings are seen to plead with humanity to improve itself and to move away from a society of greed and violence. Matthew 11:28-30 Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Another was that of the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), sometimes regarded as the father of modern existentialism, who reacted against the metaphysical and “rational” approach to Christianity in Hegel’s thought.