Create yourself out of nothing. Religious and atheistic understanding of man as a "project"

Now the word "project" became very fashionable. It is everywhere. Only you can hear: the project is there, the project is here. When they talk about successful investment, about a good film, opera, play, play, etc. Everywhere the word "project" is used. And man today is also a "project" - biological, financial, social, and whatever. Previously they said: "You must find yourself," and now they say: "You must create yourself." Is it possible? Does a person have a so-called nature and on what does the person's interpretation of himself, his inner worldview, depend?

Religious understanding of the creation of man

Christian worldview believes that man is naturally dualistic. On the one hand, he has a sinful nature. He received it from the fall of the first people. And on the other hand, each person carries within himself the image and likeness of God. His task is to overcome his sinful nature and discover the image of God in himself. Thus, a person should not create himself, he must only penetrate into the highest spiritual meaning of his life, which was given him originally by a higher being.

Hence follows the interpretation of human destiny: God knows what and how will happen to man, everything is already decided. "Even the hair can not fall from the head of a man without the will of God." Such an understanding of the human part was developed, for example, by Blessed Augustine (see Blessed Augustine, "Confession").

The question of human destiny as a "project" is removed by itself.

Atheistic world outlook and "project"

Atheistically minded thinkers are all much more interesting. They understand with all clarity that it is impossible to find oneself, one can only create oneself. It is also interesting that in theory our world (especially in Russia) is terribly religious, but in fact no one in God hopes, everyone hopes only for their own strength. For modern people, the axiom is that a person must create himself from the dust, out of nothing.

Of course, if a person does not accept ideas about the divine management of the world, then one can not say that he remains with nothing. Man is a sociobiological creature. But in this case he has no one to rely on. He is alone in the world, like the Bulgakovite Yeshua. And he has everything outside, then inside. What he learned, the fact that he lived - this is what makes up his inner world. As Jean-Paul Sartre put it, "existence precedes essence."

True, a person is not completely empty at first: he has makings, genetic predispositions, etc. But it does not guarantee anything, everything that a person has is a pure potentiality. Who he becomes, depends only on himself.

Faith as the main factor in the realization of the human project of creating oneself

Here, faith is understood outside the religious context. A person is fully self-determined, so it is very important what he believes in exactly. Does he worship the Buddha or Christ, and, perhaps, he considers Marx's teaching to be just. Or a person is close to psychoanalysis or existentialism. From what he believes, it depends on whether he can create himself, what form his life will eventually acquire.