We create God in our own image (quotes)

Many believe we are made in the image of God

The noble man is only God’s image. Johann Ludwig Tieck
Beloved is man, for he was created in the image of God. Rabbi Akiva
God made us in His own image so that His image would be shown. John Piper
God will become visible as God’s image is reborn in you. Bernard of Clairvaux
Honor the image of God. Human beings are not accidents, but creations. Timothy Keller
The soul is in itself a most lovely and perfect image of God. St. John of the Cross
Check your spiritual birth certificate, you were made in the mighty image of God. Joel Osteen
You are a mirror of the Almighty…this is the reason you were created…your purpose. Aiden Wilson Tozer
Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God. Thomas Merton
First, a man is created in his own image, and only afterwards in the image of God. Menachem Mendel of Kotzk
Everyone has a spark of divinity inside them. After all, we were created in the image of God. Deepak Chopra
If all are created in the divine image, then our images of God must be fluid and multifarious. Judith Plaskow
Man was made in the image of God, and nothing will satisfy Man but God, in whose image he was made. Charles Spurgeon
Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all. Andre Gide
We are created in God’s image – or are we?

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Others believe it is we who create God with our imaginations

God waits for us to create him. – Dominique de Menil
Man created God in his own image. Ludwig Feuerbach
When men make gods, there is no God! Eugene O’Neill
The universe… is a machine for the making of gods. Henri Bergson
God was created by evolution, inside the imagination… Steve Fowler
I do not believe in God, but I believe God is man’s greatest idea. Camille Paglia
Our notions of God are tinged by our own characters and ignorance. Austin O’Malley
Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders? Friedrich Nietzsche
It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him. Arthur C. Clarke
People fashion their God after their own understanding. They make their God first and worship him afterwards. Oscar Wilde
What gods are there, what gods have there ever been, that were not from man’s imagination? Joseph Campbell
Man is quite insane. He wouldn?t know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen. Michel de Montaigne
All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours. Aldous Huxley
Faith is a very clever concept. We invented God from our imagination and we use faith to justify His absence from reality. J. Anderson
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. Robert Heinlein
To imagine the world without gods and religion is reasonable enough; to imagine mankind without them is an entirely different matter. Anthony Marais
There is no place in the Humanist worldview for either immortality or God in the valid meanings of those terms. Humanism contends that instead of the gods creating the cosmos, the cosmos, in the individualized form of human beings giving rein to their imagination, created the gods. Corliss Lamont
Grant that the idea of God is the most splendid single act of the creative human imagination, and that all his multiple faces and attributes correspond to some need and satisfy some deep desire in mankind; still, for the Inquirers, it is impossible not to conclude that this mystical concept has been harnessed rudely to machinery of the most mundane sort, and has been made to serve the ends of an organization which, ruling under divine guidance, has ruled very little better, and in some respects, worse, than certain rather mediocre but frankly manmade systems of government. Katherine Anne Porter

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We create God in our image

Man created God, not God, man. Giuseppe Garibaldi
Man makes god in his own image. Friedrich Nietzsche
All your images of God are your own creation. Rajneesh
Each man creates god in his own image. Mordecai Richler
We created god in our own image and likeness! George Carlin
Gods always behave like the people who make them. Zora Neale Hurston
God made in the image of Man is an imperfect master. Laurence Overmire
Gods always behave like the people who make them. Zora Neale Hurston
If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor. Voltaire
God made man in his own image, and man returned the favour. Frank Wedekind
If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated. Voltaire
On the sixth day God created man. On the seventh day, man returned the favor.
If god created man in his own image, how come I’m not invisible? David Powers
On the sixth day God created man. On the seventh day, man returned the favor.
In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him. Jethro Tull
Man created God in his image: intolerant, sexist, homophobic and violent. Marie de France
Moreover, we are showing a dismaying tendency to recast God in Man’s image. James L. Buckley
God created man in his own image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favor. Henri Rousseau
God said, Let us make man in our image. Man said, ‘Let us make God in our image. Douglas William Jerrold
We say that God is the Uncreated One and then proceed to create God in our own image. Morris T. Johnstone
You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. Anne Lamott
God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs. Georg C. Lichtenberg
It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image. Ludwig Feuerbach
It is said that God has created man in his own image. But it may be that humankind has created God in the image of humankind. Thich Nhat Hanh
There is an old joke that went around- it goes, in the beginning God made man in His own image, and since the fall, man has been seeking to return the compliment. Alistair Begg
Man made ‘God’ in his own image. The eternal, the infinite, the unnameable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as ‘my god’ or ‘our god’. Eckhart Tolle
It was the greatest honor God did to man that he made man in the image of God; but it is the greatest dishonor man has done to God that he has made God in the image of man. Matthew Henry
In the beginning, Man created God In the image of Man created he him And Man gave unto God a multitude of names, That he might be Lord of all the earth . . . When it was suited to Man. Jethro Tull
God is not a Being who exists independently of us, but is instead a product of our language and ideas. This can be restated: God did not create us in God’s image; we created God in our image. Don Cupitt
I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is eminently circular; and thus would every one ascribe his own attributes to God. Baruch Spinoza
Man first creates the universe in his image, and then turns round to say that God created man in his image… As Voltaire quipped, if God created man in his image, man has returned the compliment. Neel Burton
God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was quite the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization. Christopher Hitchens
During the youthful period of mankind’s spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man’s own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favour by means of magic and prayer. Albert Einstein
We often create God in our own images. That is not to say that it is good or bad that we do so, but simply to say that we do it. It is something our spiritual ancestors did. It is something we do today. We project onto God traits that are human. Of course we do. We can understand human, and we cannot understand the Divine. Doug Hammack
In the face of nature’s overwhelming forces, humans needed a God who would protect them from harm. When they felt that they had broken the law or committed wrongdoing, people turned to a God who would judge them on the one hand and redeem their sins on the other. In this way, purely from self-interest, the project of creating God in our own image proceeded–and continues to proceed. Deepak Chopra
There’s an old saying that God made us in His image, and we’ve been trying to return the favor ever since. People often view God in a human image. This God changes His mind, gets upset, answers some prayers but not others, loves some people but not others. But even with that limited image, if we pray sincerely, we’ll eventually realize that God is changeless. He’s the same all the time because He’s not in time–time is in Him. Michael Beckwith
The awful atrocities of religion happened when people assume that God shares your likes and dislikes. The Crusaders went into battle to kill Muslims and Jews and cried, God wills it. That was their battle cry. Obviously God willed no such thing. The Crusaders were simply projecting onto a deity they’d created on their own image and likeness, all their hatred and loathing of these faiths and made it endorse some of their most awful prejudices and lethal prejudices. Karen Armstrong
There is no God separate from you, no God higher than you, the real you. All the gods are little beings to you, all the ideas of God and Father in heaven are but your own reflection. God Himself is your image. “God created man after His own image. That is wrong. Man creates God after his own image. That is right. Throughout the universe we are creating gods after our own image. We create the god and fall down at his feet and worship him; and when this dream comes, we love it ! Swami Vivekananda
In the beginning, Man created God
In the image of Man created he Him
And Man gave unto God
a multitude of names,
That he might be
Lord of all the earth…
When it was suited to Man
– Jethro Tull

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…as part of our search for meaning

In the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind; they are the creatures of man, not vice versa. They are needed and invented to give meaning and purpose to the struggle that is life on Earth, to explain strange and irregular phenomena of nature, haphazard events and, above all, irrational human conduct. They exist to bear the burden of all things that cannot be comprehended except by supernatural intervention or design. Barbara Tuchman

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If triangles had a God, He’d have three sides

There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three- sided. Charles De Montesquieu
If cows and horses had hands and could draw, cows would draw Gods that look like cows and horses. Xenophanes

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As a result, our images of God are flawed

Everything flows from God, but we are limited by imposing our human perceptions upon him. Man designs God according to his own image and the image man has of himself is flawed. Tobsha Learner
Imagination magnifies small objects with fantastic exaggeration until they fill our soul, and with bold insolence cuts down great things to its own size, as when speaking of God. Blaise Pascal
It is only partly true that religion does more harm than good in society. The community makes God into the image it wants, vengeful, or milky sweet, or scrupulously just, and so on. Mary Douglas
A God whom we could understand exhaustively, and whose revelation of Himself confronted us with no mysteries whatsoever, would be a God in man’s image, and therefore an imaginary God, not the God of the Bible at all. J. I. Packer
Deities are invented by fallible and finite beings in the hope and desire to create immortal perfection; unfortunately, such deities only reflect their creators and inspire their followers to similar imperfections. E. Modesitt Jr.
Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. we can assume that he loves What we love and hates What we hate, endorsing our prejudices Instead of compelling us to transcend them. Karen Armstrong
No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light! Jose Rizal
The gods we make in our own image are tribal gods. They tell you how very, very little you should tolerate outsiders, who are less favoured of the Lord. Amazingly, there are no recorded cases of the holy man going up the mountain and finding that it’s the others who are right. It always turns out that God wants unbelievers to suffer, and what could be more noble than to help him a little? When religion rules, toleration disappears, for you cannot cherish the verdict of death to the infidels, yet also tolerate those who disagree – for those are the very same infidels… Simon Blackburn

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We humanise God

Some of the most beautiful and moving writing in history speaks of God in human terms. It is one of the best ways we make meaning. We compare something we don’t know to something we do. We use what we can experience to understand and talk about that which we cannot. So humanizing God is not a bad thing. It’s just an incomplete thing. Doug Hammack
The word “anthropomorphism” comes from two Greek words: anthropos (humanity), and morphous (having a shape or form). It means to give a human form to something that isn’t human. In religion, it points to our tendency to project human characteristics onto God. We get angry, so we assume God gets angry. We treat people according to how they treat us; God must do the same. Doug Hammack

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God becomes a projection of the human mind…

How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves. If God brings to mind mostly fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us. If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we. Elif Safak

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…a projection of our human frailty

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own – a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Albert Einstein
The traditional God is a patriarchal, controlling authority figure, an often angry man who you should live in fear of, as the Old Testament suggests. This God is a projection of the human mind. Eckhart Tolle
To think that God is compassionate is a terrible mistake. To think that God is wrathful is equally stupid. God isn’t emotional. You are. To superimpose your emotions on infinity is typically human. Frederick Lenz
We have made up a God in our image. Because we are angry and judgmental, we have projected those characteristics onto Him. But God remains who He is and always will be: He is the energy, the thought of unconditional love. He cannot think with anger or judgment. He is mercy and compassion and total acceptance. Marianne Williamson
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Richard Dawkins

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In truth, God is far greater than a projection of human traits

God is more than a projection of human traits, writ large. God is greater than our conception of him. David Layman

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Our images of God tells us more about ourselves than about God

Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him. Thomas Merton
Whatever conclusions we reach about the reality of God, the history of this idea must tell us something important about the human mind and the nature of our aspiration. Karen Armstrong

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If we have created God in our image, then its true to say we have also created the devil in our own image

I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness. Fyodor Dostoevsky
Man creates both his god and his devil in his own image. His god is himself at his best, and his devil himself at his worst. Elbert Hubbard
Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home. Stephen King

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