You may be more hospitable to a Christian-Marxian possibility.
The reason that this is the way that things stand in Marxian discussions of such issues, and that there is little argument for naturalism in Marxianism, is that Marxians, like George Santayana, who, politically speaking, was very conservative, just take it as obvious that physicalism and atheism are true (Nielsen, 1971). I think this is so too, but I realize that a good number of knowledgeable people do not, so I have in my writing about religion, my Marxianism notwithstanding, argued for naturalism. If one does not, one just side-steps argument and discussion with theists or Wittgensteinian fideists. That, for good or for ill, is where it is at in "the philosophy of religion game." I wish the philosophy of religion game would wither away (Allen, 1993). It seems to me to pose no intellectually challenging problems, but that notwithstanding, I like Gramsci and Durkheim, I think religion is a very important cultural phenomena indeed. Religion is not just superstition or just a bunch of intellectual blunders or cognitive mistakes. I agree with Marx Wartofsky's remarks, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, that an adequate materialist conception of religion could not so treat religion. but, as Wartofsky does too, I wish we would come to look at religion in good Durkheimian fashion as just an important cultural phenomena and orient ourselves, and orient our understanding of the world and our struggles in the world, in accordance with that perception. but, alas, we cannot just start there, if we wish to engage in the deliberations about religion going on in our society.
As long as there are thoughtful and informed Christians, Jews, and Moslems in our midst, we cannot, if we wish to carry on a discussion of religion which includes them too, just assume naturalism (Nielsen, 1971). So we must, in trying (perhaps hopelessly) to gain some reasonable consensus about the truth about our world, engage in the whole...
Mackie, Antony Flew, Wallace Matson, Michael Martin, Ronald Hepburn, and I have, hoping that someday we can push discussion on to the purely cultural territory on which Feuerbach, Marxians, Freudians, and Durkheimians have placed it: to come to ask not whether its doctrines are true, or reasonably to be believed to be true or rationally to be accepted solely on faith, but instead to consider questions concerning religion solely as questions about what role religion plays, should play, can come not to play, and should come not to play in society and in the lives of human beings (Nielsen, 1971).
Conclusion
Can human beings-not just a few relatively privileged individuals in a sea of religious people, but whole cultures of human beings -- live without religion? and, if they can, should they? These are some of the questions that we should be asking: these are questions that should be on our intellectual and moral agenda. Looking at things this way, among other things, provides common ground for discussion between physicalists-materialists-naturalists, on the one hand, and Jews, Christians, and Moslems, on the other. Here we have something that, standing where we stand now in cultural history, no thoughtful and informed person should think she has a good answer to.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, Barry. Truth in Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Nielsen, Kai. Contemporary Critiques of Religion. London: Macmillan Press, 1971;
Nielsen, Kai. Reason and Practice. New York: Harper and Row, 1971, 138-257,
Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism, xiv. He, in this famous remark, is quoting, with acknowledgment, Wilfrid Sellars, Science, Perception and Realty. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976, 19.
Sellars, Wilfrid. Science, Perception and Reality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,…
