Introduction

For Germany, the criticism of religion has been largely completed, and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.



The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis , ["speech for the altars and hearths"] has been refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a supernatural being, will no longer be tempted to find the mere appearance of himself, a non-human being ["Unmensch"], where he seeks and must seek his true reality.



The foundation of irreligious criticism is this: 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 already lost himself again. But, man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, it enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.



Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart 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 the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.



Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.



It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.



The following exposition [a full-scale critical study of Hegel's Philosophy of Right was supposed to follow this introduction] -- a contribution to this undertaking -- concerns itself not directly with the original but with a copy, with the German philosophy of the state and of law. The only reason for this is that it is concerned with Germany.



[ * * * ]

It is clear that the arm of criticism cannot replace the criticism of arms. Material force can only be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself. The evident proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its practical energy, is that is proceeds from a resolute positive abolition of religion. The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man -- hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings!



Even historically, theoretical emancipation has specific practical significance for Germany. For Germany's revolutionary past is theoretical, it is the Reformation. As the revolution then began in the brain of the monk, so now it begins in the brain of the philosopher.



Luther, we grant, overcame bondage out of devotion by replacing it by bondage out of conviction. He shattered faith in authority because he restored the authority of faith. He turned priests into laymen because he turned laymen into priests. He freed man from outer religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart.



But, if Protestantism was not the true solution of the problem, it was at least the true setting of it. It was no longer a case of the layman's struggle against the priest outside himself but of his struggle against his own priest inside himself, his priestly nature. And if the Protestant transformation of the German layman into priests emancipated the lay popes, the princes, with the whole of their priestly clique, the privileged and philistines, the philosophical transformation of priestly Germans into men will emancipate the people. But, secularization will not stop at the confiscation of church estates set in motion mainly by hypocritical Prussia any more than emancipation stops at princes. The Peasant War, the most radical fact of German history, came to grief because of theology. Today, when theology itself has come to grief, the most unfree fact of German history, our status quo, will be shattered against philosophy.



[ * * * ]

Where, then, is the real possibility of a German emancipation?



Answer: In the formulation of a class with radical chains, a class of civil society which is not a class of civil society, an estate which is the dissolution of all estates, a sphere which has a universal character by its universal suffering and claims no particular right because no particular wrong, but wrong generally, is perpetuated against it; which can invoke no historical, but only human, title; which does not stand in any one-sided antithesis to the consequences but in all-round antithesis to the premises of German statehood; a sphere, finally, which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society and thereby emancipating all other spheres of society, which, in a word, is the complete loss of man and hence can win itself only through the complete re-winning of man. This dissolution of society as a particular estate is the proletariat.



The proletariat is beginning to appear in Germany as a result of the rising industrial movement. For, it is not the naturally arising poor but the artificially impoverished, not the human masses mechanically oppressed by the gravity of society, but the masses resulting from the drastic dissolution of society, mainly of the middle estate, that form the proletariat, although, as is easily understood, the naturally arising poor and the Christian-Germanic serfs gradually join its ranks.



By heralding the dissolution of the hereto existing world order, the proletariat merely proclaims the secret of its own existence, for it is the factual dissolution of that world order. By demanding the negation of private property, the proletariat merely raises to the rank of a principle of society what society has raised to the rank of its principle, what is already incorporated in it as the negative result of society without its own participation. The proletarian then finds himself possessing the same right in regard to the world which is coming into being as the German king in regard to the world which has come into being when he calls the people hispeople, as he calls the horse his horse. By declaring the people his private property, the king merely proclaims that the private owner is king.



As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy. And once the lightning of thought has squarely struck this ingenuous soil of the people, the emancipation of the Germans into men will be accomplished.



Let us sum up the result:



The only liberation of Germany which is practically possible is liberation from the point of view of that theory which declares man to be the supreme being for man. German can emancipate itself from the Middle Ages only if it emancipates itself at the same time from the partial victories over the Middle Ages. In Germany, no form of bondage can be broken without breaking all forms of bondage. Germany, which is renowned for its thoroughness, cannot make a revolution unless it is a thorough one. The emancipation of the German will be the emancipation of man. Philosophy is the head of this emancipation, and the proletariat is its heart. Philosophy can only be realized by the abolition of the proletariat, and the proletariat can only by abolished by the realization of philosophy.



[ * * * ]



[The complete text may be found at:

http://www.baylor.edu/~Scott_Moore/texts/Marx_Contr_Crit.html ]

A response to Marx on religion



If there is to be a debate going on in various movements about

'religion' I assume that perhaps the catalyst that spurs the debate

might be me, so I wade in briefly to say a few words...

First I should say that I agree with the basic premise of the critique

of Marx, since I hold it to be self evident that , as he put it, "The

foundation of irreligious criticism is this: humanity makes religion,

religion does not make humanity". As in heaven, so on earth, you

might say, and the 'Kingdom of heaven has come down among

you." Therefore in the paintings on church walls we see a hierarchy;

at the top of the pyramid we have 'The Lord and Master, Jesus

Christ." Just below this we see Caesar and the Priest enthroned on

high. Under this in great masses we see painted the hordes of

obedient peasants (who have obeyed the Lord and thus obeyed

their earthy overlords, Caesar and his priests. Then at the very

bottom of the pyramid we see those who defied 'the divine order',

masses of peasants handed over to the eternal torture chamber in

the flaming pits of hell.

The expression then of religion, and of heaven and its 'divine order'

is clearly an expression of the political system on earth. Religion is

much more then, than simply the 'opiate' of the masses, it is the

underlying propaganda foundation for the entire feudal order. To

this day much of the church has not moved beyond this feudal

ideology, and you can still hear the language of this feudal system

in use today - You must 'move off the throne of your life' and place

'Jesus on the throne of your life.' You must accept him as 'the Lord

and Master of your life' relinquishing all your thoughts and ideas to

surrender your mind and your every thought 'to the thoughts of the

Lord' accepting him as the '[personal Lord and Master' and giving

him 'complete control.' The connection between this still hanging

on language of feudalism and the conception of society as being

one of hierarchies of power and control, with ruling thrones, is to

obvious and not something that can be missed. In the Christian

expression of religion then the first and the greatest of all sins is

the 'sin' of being 'born human' (all are born eternally damned due to

the 'corrupted orgasm of Adam', and if you enquire you will find that

'sin' is literally residing in the 'flesh' and this is expressed in modern

terms as 'corrupted genetics'. 'Salvation' is then attained through

the active intervention of priests and ministers, through rituals

such as sacraments like baptism, and the raising of priests then to

the very greatest of importance, combined with the lowering of all of

humanity to the very basest of conditions becomes obvious (and

the connection then between 'morals' and 'flesh' is emphasized in

having this most important clique of priests either completely

celibate (defined this morning by a priest I was listening to as

'holiness') or in the case of the protestant expression of this faith

by focusing all energy and attention upon 'chastity' and

'temptations of the flesh' and other such things, crusades against

the 'moral filth of the degenerates of the nation' and so on. Since

people think of sex at least five times a day, people are constantly

being assaulted by 'devils' five times a day, constantly battling

'impure thoughts' and in the deepest part of their being are

constantly feeling 'soiled' and thus in constant need of the

forgiveness that can only come through the intervention of those

who are 'in authority' over them, by the divine commandment of

God, the priest or the ministers.

It is quite noticeable to me that the effect of declaring 'being born

human' to be the 'sin' which requires 'salvation' and then declaring

morality to be sexual is that there is little true justice in the

churches. For example one will not critique power and inequality

since power and inequality are embedded in the feudal language

and feudal theology of religion (the propaganda device used to

buttress and justify the social order). If one listens one will find no

talk of poverty or the sufferings of humanity or the inequalities that

are at the root of such a condition, nor will one hear much talk of

doing justice, since the humanity who are the victims of this

injustice are 'born evil', and most of them not having 'surrendered

the throne of their life to the absolute Lordship of Christ' are going

to be tortured and burned terribly forever in any case, and thus no

real connection is made with the victims of suffering (thus this

propaganda construct enables the type of pain and suffering

caused by inequality and injustice, which, as Marx would suggest,

having the form of that particular doctrine correctly explained by

noting its function). Morality must become the morality of

condemning the 'criminal and illegal orgasms of humanity' (the truly

greatest of all sins in Christendom) for no religion can be devoid of

morality, but this being a religion of corrupt and unequal power

relationships and injustice in sharing the wealth of the earth at its

very core, since true morality cannot coexist with the feudal

corruptions which lie at the very core of religion, sexual paranoia

must substitute for morality as a device for distracting the masses.

Once again the form of this essential Christian doctrine ('born sinful

and condemned' and requiring 'salvation' through the intervention

of evangelists and priests), well the form of that doctrine and its

accompanying stress on human sexuality and victimless crimes

such as 'orgasm' is once again explained by its function (it is a

substitute morality and such is a distraction). In order to maintain

this obfustication known as 'morals' requires that the peasants who

are the target of the propaganda come to accept first, that their

sexuality is filthy, and this requires apparently not much more than

telling them their sexuality is filthy, the cause of the fall, and that

thus the struggle with the 'sinful flesh' is the great struggle for

'salvation from eternal burnings'. Peer pressure matters, and the

scorn and condemnation of neighbors can induce guilt where no

real guilt should exist. Through centuries of training and inculcation

from birth, peasants become the enablers of a false moral sense

which is hammered into place by approbation by mob. True morality

and social criticism is further submerged through the fantasy of

'the divine order of the Lords and the slaves'. The process by which

this strange situation has become the norm is something about

which much could be said, but let us just say that in spite of

reformations and secularization and the rapid decline of the church

in this century, nevertheless the underlying assumptions of

Christian dogma remain firmly embedded in the unconcious of the

nations where it has held sway for ages past. It remains normative,

as you can see through the silly focus in the news on skirt chasing

congressmen, the wide spread public approbation, while other more

serious acts of immorality garner no great attention, being less

serious 'offenses'.

When considering all this it becomes apparent that religion is much

more than the 'opiate of the masses' and here I have to come into

complete agreement with Marx, because his analysis of religion is

merely stating the obvious. It is self evident (although, truth be told,

his language is the language of an intellectual, and might leave

ordinary people scratching their heads and wondering what he was

talking about).

However, I am not an atheist myself, as many people I am sure

already knwo, and where Marx and other critics of this type fall

short for me is on the following points...

First, it is bad philosophy to make the leap between 'religion' and

'God', and claim that by dismantling religion one has thoroughly

dismantled God. The dismantling of religion is simply the

dismantling of a religious system and nothing more.

Similarly, another common failure is to assume that the dismantling

of priestly documents is the dismantling of God. the dismantling of

a priestly document is simply the dismantling of that document and

dismantling of priests. It is merely a social convention to believe

that somehow God is intimately connected with the documents of

priests, and while I frequently get the argument that now that the

document has been torn to pieces, it has thus been proven that

'God does not exist.' This is bad philosophy, and once again all that

has been proven here is that a document has been dismantled, but

apparently this notion that somehow God is bound together with the

fate of priests and priestly documents is so deeply ingrained in the

public consciousness that critics such as Marx and advocates of

an atheistic belief system often make the philosophically unsound

leap of dismantling one and then arbitrarily declaring that they have

debunked the other. To read an unfounded and philosophically

unjustifiable assertion like this coming from Marx, who was

supposed to be a philosopher. is unfortunate, and is the weakest

part of his argument. His argument is completely valid to this point,

but void as a philosophy from that point on.

Third, it is common to assume that God is 'forever a matter of faith'

and thus always will be outside the bounds of empirical evidence.

This assumption contains at its core a suggestion then that no God

could exist. If there was a God in existence why is it then that one

requires 'a leap of faith'. One requires no leap of faith to confirm

that a postman exists and delivers mail. This assumption once

again needs to be tested, and is simply an assertion in a system of

philosophy, and itself is grounded in experience. If ones experience

is devoid then ones philosophy follows. What has always frustrated

me greatly is the way that this simple assertion is somehow

inviolate, and will not be put to the very test which it claims is the

means of testing the query. In otherwords, I tell people of those

things which I have experienced (and they have not) and they

refuse to accept any evidence. This experience is so deeply

entrenched (or something else is going on here) that it resists all

contrary evidence.

I often suggests that people starting lining up those coincidences,

and then do a rough 'statistical analysis' and determine just how

probable it is that such things could happen one after another

through 'mere chance' (for it is the argument of 'mere chance' that

is the only way to dispose of my combined testimony).

Let us just say then, that I remarkably lucky at the very least. As for

my beliefs, these are not the end result of 'a need for a shot of

opium' but rather are the product of experiences that stretch back

over a couple of decades). Furthermore, these were not the 'private

visions' of an 'authority figure', a mystic seer who sees what no one

else can see and hears what no one else can hear, and then reports

back as the authority on the unknown and the unseen. Rather, as I

report in my testimony, these were group experiences again and

again, and teh pattern has always been the same. Again and again

these things have pushed aside, and the same false claim

maintained that somehow 'there was no evidence' and that this is

merely 'unprovable' and in 'the realm of faith' and so on and so on

and so on.

Well if there is one thing I can make clear here, I would hope, it is

first that certain assumptions about human nature need to be

questioned. For example if we assume that people are always fair

and that their reactions are always just or that people are always

rational and without prejudice in their beliefs and judgments, then

we could do as people do and say 'why then didn't we know'. Well

you didn't know because you weren't told, and as for the reasons

that motivate certain forms of human conduct, well I don't have a

single answer, and feel myself that the real answer is probably many

answers just as there are many people on the earth (could be vanity

- for example someone might be thinking 'but I want to be the

leader' and thus they react to a threat to their position, could be the

imperviousness of human experience which is rigid and inflexible

and wherein beliefs and world views are rigidly encapsulated and

bounded by accumulated experiences, could be fear, fear of falling

(once again the product of experience), could be prejudice, and

other such things. could be so many things. I suppose I could say

more, but at the end of it all, I just make the point that my trust is

the product of experience, and it is not a 'belief' or a 'faith' but

much like someone else 'believes in the postman' (a strange idea) I

'believe in God' and my position on this matter is justifiable, and not

just to myself

Finally I must refute this idea that 'atheism is the rational

philosophy' while 'God' is the 'irrational philosophy'. First I have

found atheism to be a very irrational philosophy when its prejudice

or its firmly held conviction is tested by any sort of evidence

(evidence I say here, and not simply philosophy). At this point

atheism sometimes resorts to character attacks, mockery, ridicule,

scorn, and other such things which are irrelevant, and not rational.

Second there is this notion that somehow if the poor who was say,

tortured to death and deprived of justice, was somehow to be

redeemed by God, well that would be a bad thing. What I am saying

here is that the belief in God (here we must assume that we have

somehow disentangled God from priests or religion, and we must

also combine an element of trust) well such a thing would be the

best possible outcome and hardly the worst.

Marx suggests that "The abolition of religion as the illusory

happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To

call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call

on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism

of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears

of which religion is the halo. "

This really is the weak point of atheism, for to imagine in my

example that the victims of evil in this place lose all is the 'true

happiness of humanity' is irrational, in particular if through

prejudice (or the dogmatism of atheistic belief) one refuses to

acknowledge the simple fact that God is a much desirable outcome

than the empty rewards of atheism. This is obvious and to respond

then that atheism is 'rational' is to insist that religion is mere

'delusion' but let us say then that atheism is also terribly

unfortunate, sad really, and to deny this is the case is irrational.

Well it is sad, unless of course, we assume the worst of God, in

which case, if truth were religion as we have known it, better to be

an atheist and accept the naturally following consequences for

truth and justice. In his critique of religion Marx is a valid

philosopher, making obvious points. "Thus, the criticism of Heaven

turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the

criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of

politics. By declaring the people his private property, the king

merely proclaims that the private owner is king. "

Religion is the opium of the people.