| QUOTE |
| Man makes religion; religion does not make man. Religion is indeed man's self-consciousness and self-awareness so long as he has not found himself or has lost himself again. But man is not an abstract being, squatting outside the world. Man is the human world, the state, society. This state, this society, produce religion which is an inverted world consciousness, because they are an inverted world... Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, the embryonic criticism of this vale of tears of which religion is the halo. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not in order that men shall bear the chain without ... consolation but so that he shall cast off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man so that he will think, act and fashion his reality as a man who has lost his illusions and regained his reason; so that he will revolve about himself as his own true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun about which man revolves so long as he does not revolve about himself ... Luther ... shattered the faith in authority by restoring the authority of faith. He transformed the priests into laymen by turning laymen into priests. He liberated man from external religiosity by making religiosity the innermost essense of man. He liberated the body from its chains because he fettered the heart with chains. But if Protestantism was not the solution it did at least pose the problem correctly. It was no longer a question, thereafter, of the layman's struggle against the priests outside himself, but of his struggle against his own internal priest, against his own priestly nature - Karl Marx |
This is not put forward as an attack against religion. I am looking for honest well-thought-out responses to this view of religion. To get you started here is the text of a commentary I am reading about this passage.
| QUOTE |
| This, though religions claim to be making assertions, for instance, about God, the language of religion is not cognitive; it is only expressive. Religions do not report what is true of the world; they express our inner feelings, tensions, and anxieties. Specifically, they express our despair at "the alienation of man from himself and from nature." Furthermore, religions express the despair in forms that exactly correspond to the other institutions of a culture at any given time. For instance, the objectification and alienation that infect economic and social institutions are reflected in religious beliefs and practices. "Objectification is the practice of alienation. Just as man, so long as he is engrossed in religion, can only objectify his essence by an alien and fantastic being; so under the sway of egoistic need, he can only affirm himself and produce objects in practice by subordinating his products and his own activity to the domination of an alien entity, ... name money." It follows that the different religions of men living in different places and in different ages "are nothing more than stages in the development of the human mind--snake skins which have been cast off by history, and man is the snake who clothed himself in them..." |
It is helpful to have a basic understanding of marxist social theory, but not necessary. If you have comments I'd like to hear them. I find Marx fascinating.