The philosophy of religion

Philosophy of Religion

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels said that man makes religion, religion does not make the man (p 160). What they meant to say is that man makes religion in that it is something that man needs, it is not something that religion needs. Religion is something for the man who does not know his place in the world. Marx believed that religion is the "sigh of an oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people" (p 160).

Marx and Engels were right to be atheists, to believe that religion is the "opium" of the people because it is the exact thing that keeps people quiet and contained. It is the thing, the element in life that keeps people in a place where the world wants them to be. The world wants people to be oppressed in the sense that they are calm and they are unknowing of what else is out there. Religion is an institutionalized thing and nobody needs this except the very thing of religion itself. Without men, all of the dogma and doctrine of religion is neither here nor there; it doesn't matter. Religion needs men to exists -- to keep on keeping on, but men do not need religion.

Marx and Engels believed that if there were not any religion people would be happy. People without any type of religion would be very happy because there would not be any dogma to have to live up to. Religion keeps people in a place of feeling less than. It keeps people feeling shameful and guilty and it keeps them from realizing their true selves because they are too busy trying to make up for who they really are.

Religion does nothing but put men's lives in the hands of something that is supernatural -- something that does not exist (or that isn't proven to exist -- i.e., God). Marx and Engel saw it as something that is fantastical -- a fantastical reflection of the minds of men (Marx & Engel p 161).

Buddhadasa writes that the Buddha believed in the reality of a spiritual existence, yet he refused to interpret it as something -- a revelation -- beyond itself (p 146).

Feuerbach thought that religion saw the main difference between man and brute was the fact that brutes did not have any sort of religion (p 9). However, Feuerbach himself sees that the main difference between man and brute is consciousness -- "but consciousness in the strict sense in the perception and even judgment of outward things according to definite sensible signs, cannot be denied to brutes" (p 9). This is to say that man is able to talk with himself and the brute is not able to do this. Man is something, in a sense, which is outside of himself (herself). Man has speech and man has thought, but the brute does not have this. How this plays into religion is in that religion is something that Feuerbach calls "consciousness of the infinite" (p 10). This means that man is simply just a reflection of himself and thus he becomes some sort of object. He is no longer himself but rather an object.