Feuerbach’s basic idea was that God is a projection of the highest human ideals. Thus we have ideas of justice and goodness and charity, and we project them in their perfection onto God. Now, there’s a good deal of truth in Feuerbach’s idea in this sense: he is describing one of the ways idolatry works. We attribute to God, or to our gods, the ideals we want to be true. A moment’s reflection, of course, indicates that Feuerbach mistakes ‘some’ for ‘all’. Just because some religions are idolatrous projections, it does not follow that all are. After all, a husband may idealize his wife, or a wife her husband, and blindly attribute matrimonial perfection to them; the mere fact the attribution onto the spouse is a mistaken projection does not entail that the spouse does not exist. And, one should add, Feuerbach bypasses the incarnation of Jesus, which is never good.

– Mike Ovey, The Goldilocks Zone