Stirner might be said to pick up this, perhaps idiosyncratic, characterisation of “true atheism” and run with it. Stirner maintains that religion, properly understood, is characterised by the subordination of the individual to “spirit” in any of its guises. Consequently, the rejection of God as a transcendental subject leaves the essential character and failing of religion intact. Feuerbach’s perfectionist problematic, Stirner remarks, might have altered “the tinsel” (the divine subject) but it