Nowadays religion is really questioned by many people. Is there any relationship between morality and religion as many religion followers say? Or is religion a tool to excuse us from the human condition and the reality as atheists defend? Unlike the usual atheists, who completely refuse God and religion, there are people who still believe in religion but not in God; the writer George Eliot is one of them. Contrary to most of atheists, George Eliot defends that religion is necessary to be morally correct. Furthermore, this morality has to be reached without the influence of believing in God. This religion belief is a frequent topic in Eliot’s works, especially in Silas Marner, in which the main character evolves spiritually thanks to the events that challenge his religious vision.
In her youth, George Eliot followed her family’s evangelism. However, “she gave up her faith due to her studies in science and in the German ‘higher criticism’ of the bible, which examined it as a historical rather than a sacred text” (Maitzen, 2012). Besides, she studied Feuerbachian philosophy, which reinforced her new religion view. As Feuerbach, Eliot thought that ‘God’ was not an external being but a projection of our best qualities. Feuerbach argued that “Religion is the relation of man to his own, but regarded as another nature, separate, nay, contradistinguished diction to reason and morality; herein lies the noxious source of religion fanaticism, the chief metaphysical principle of human sacrifices, in a word, the prima materia of all the atrocities, all the horrible scenes, in the tragedy of religious history” (Essence of Christianity). Thus, according to them, God is the element that breaks the natural flue of religion towards goodness, and fo...
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... the readers, to understand and empathize with the characters of Silas Marner.
Works Cited
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Eliot, George, and Terence Cave. Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.
Feuerbach. "Essence of Christianity." Essence of Christianity. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 June 2014.
Maitzen, Rohan. "Look No More Backward: George Eliot and Atheism." Los Angeles Review of Books. N.p., 5 Oct. 2012. Web. 06 June 2014.
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Zhang, Liang, and Lingqin Zeng. "A Moral World without God—On the Religion of Humanity of George Eliot in Silas Marner." Theory and Practice in Language Studies 3.3 (2013): n. pag. Web. 06 June 2014.
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...f course, this analysis leaves me with a glaring question. Why does Eliot hold onto the morality defined by Christianity after surrendering its God? Why doesn't she re-evaluate that structure as well, rather than holding onto it by transferring authority? Why bother dismissing God if the visible fabric remains static? Perhaps she's being pragmatic -- perhaps she fears anarchy in the wake of a passing God.
Paris, Bernard J. Experiments in Life: George Eliot's Quest for Values. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965.
Logos plays a relatively minute role in this paper due to logos being about rational or logical appeal and because this essay is about Thomas’s religious beliefs and the belief in God is not based rational or logical facts, it is based on faith and faith does not fall under logos. Also logos is hard to have in this case because everyone has different religious beliefs causing a religious statement to be true fact for some and ghastly lie to other. This makes religion views seen as that of opinion which ...
Murphy, B. & Shirley J. The Literary Encyclopedia. [nl], August 31, 2004. Available at: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2326. Access on: 22 Aug 2010.
My father has always reminded me that religion plays a big role in one’s morals. Of course that only applies if a person is religious and has a religious background. There are a lot of religious people in this world, and if one were to ask them where their morals came from, they would say that it is based on their religion. So what is it that makes these two things so similar and distinct? Iris Murdoch, author of “Morality and Religion,” discusses how morals and religion need each other in order to work. Morals without religion is nearly impossible because; religion influences our morals, religion allows to set better morals for one’s self, and ideally morality is essentially religious.
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Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993.
Man cannot live without religion. Man cannot live without God. If the true God is not available, then man is bound to create home-made gods. "The Church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned, and what have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards in an age which advances progressively backwards?" Yes, T.S. Eliot is right. In his poem, Choruses from “The Rock,” Eliot berates society for losing their faith in God and placing it in non-Christian symbols. This is exactly the movement that will harm us all in the long run.
Faced with a world lacking variety, viewpoints, vibrancy, and virtue- a world without life- a fearful and insecure T.S. Eliot found himself the only one who realized all of civilization had been reduced to a single stereotype. Eliot (1888-1965) grew up as an outsider. Born with a double hernia, he was always distinguished from his peers, but translated his disability into a love of nature. He developed a respect for religion as well as an importance for the well-being of others from his grandfather at a young age, which reflected in his poetry later in life. After studying literature and philosophy at Harvard, Eliot took a trip to Paris, absorbing their vivid culture and art. After, he moved on to Oxford and married Vivien Haigh-Wood. Her compulsivity brought an immense amount of stress into his life, resulting in their abrupt separation. A series of writing-related jobs led Eliot to a career in banking and temporarily putting aside his poetry, but the publication of “The Waste Land” brought him a position at the publishing house of Faber and Gwyer. His next poem, called “The Hollow Men” reflected the same tone of desolation and grief as “The Waste Land.” Soon after, he made a momentous shift to Anglicanism that heavily influenced the rest of his work in a positive manner. Eliot went on to marry Valerie Fletcher, whom he was with until the end of his life, and win a Nobel Prize in literature. T.S. Eliot articulates his vast dissatisfaction with the intellectual desolation of society through narrators that share his firm cultural beliefs and quest to reinvigorate a barren civilization in order to overcome his own uncertainties and inspire a revolution of thought.
Eagleton, Terry, "George Eliot: Ideology and Literary Form," in Middlemarch: New Casebooks, Ed. John Peck.
“Justice is the quality of being just as well as complying with the principle of righteousness and also performing one’s moral obligations” (Oxford Dictionary). Moral values are important in Silas Marner throughout the novel as those people who do good deeds are rewarded while those who fail in their moral duties to others are punished. As George Eliot was a religious person, she believed in fate and providence as there was a higher being rewarding and punishing our conduct. This theme is portrayed throughout the book and seen most prominently in the characters of Silas Marner and Godfrey Cass.
George Herbert’s struggle to be humble enough to fully accept God’s undying love can be located within each of his poems. The way in which Herbert conveys this conflict is by utilizing structure as well as metaphysical techniques. This combination of literary devices creates a physical reality that allows Herbert, or the poetic speaker, to “make his feelings immediately present” (245). These devices, at first, appear to be artificial and contradictory to the poet’s goal of making God’s word visible. Instead, literary techniques, for Herbert, help to emphasize how God controls everything from daily life to literature. Therefore, Herbert believes he is not the sole author of his writing; rather, he is an instrument of God chosen to write down poetry praising Him. Herbert battles with this idea as he must refuse the pride that comes with being the author of such beautiful devotional and metaphysical poetry. If Herbert were to give into this “temptation of success” (243), he would be giving himself up to sin and thus rejecting God’s love. This process of rejecting and accepting, or of “conflict and resolution” (243), is done throughout “The Temple,” which leads Herbert to an ultimate acceptance of God and to an “achieved character of humility, tenderness, moral sensitiveness” (249).