DWQA QuestionsCategory: MetaphysicsFrankl wrote: “It is philosophical dilettantism (or amateurism) to rule out, for example, the existence of a divine being on the ground that the idea of God arose out of primitive man’s fear of powerful natural forces. It is equally false to judge the worth of a work of art by the fact that the artist created it in, say, a psychotic phase of his life.” What is Creator’s perspective?
Nicola Staff asked 2 years ago
Here again is critical thinking on display, to parse things quite effectively in addressing what has been a false conclusion all along, that because man's history arose in a primitive way, in a primitive setting from modern perspectives, there could not have been a God behind it. The analogy is apt because it uses the example of someone with artistic talent, who might become impaired and deranged and diminished mentally as a consequence, but yet still there is an eye for design, an eye for color, for rendering an expression that will have inherent beauty even if it has characteristics of disordered thinking on display. There are many artists in the grip of delusions and hallucinations who created many bizarre paintings of imaginary worlds and creatures, and dark imagery that was menacing because of their mental state, but their works are nonetheless displayed in eminent galleries around the world, because they truly are fine art despite the motivation and the circumstances affecting the artist at the time of their creation. So those primitive beings who reached out to construct some kind of religious force at a time they were living quite simply and in a state of ignorance is a testament to their divinity, that even in conditions of poverty and unawareness and little cultural history, they saw beyond the forces of nature, knowing inherently and intuitively and quite correctly there was, indeed, a higher force and higher power behind everything, that was supreme over all. That is not primitive thinking but profound, and a testament to the reality humans are divine beings regardless of their circumstances. People are influenced by their surroundings, and that will, indeed, either support and uplift them and empower them or perhaps limit and constrain in destructive ways their reach, but that does not take away from who they are within and they should not be judged by their circumstances.