ROD ASKS:<\/p>\n
Was Marx right? Is religion the opiate of the masses?<\/p>\n
THE RELIGION GUY ANSWERS:<\/p>\n
This blog\u2019s third item about atheism and atheists in seven weeks!\u00a0 Rod cites the famous quote about religion from a 26-year-old Karl Marx in 1844, four years before he co-authored the momentous \u201cCommunist Manifesto.\u201d Here\u2019s the full context in his typically prolix prose, from the introduction to \u201cA Contribution to the Critique of Hegel\u2019s Philosophy of Right\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against\u00a0that 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\u2026\u201d (Oxford University Press translation, 1970).<\/p>\n
Before seeing how some analysts unpack those words let\u2019s scan a bit of biography. Marx came from an ethnically Jewish clan with rabbis as forebears. When Karl was six the family officially converted to Protestantism to escape social discrimination but remained essentially secular. Marx may have retained some formal belief in God when he entered the University of Berlin, but intellectual circles were awash in skepticism and he soon joined the atheist ranks.<\/p>\n
Notoriously, many German intellectuals harbored even more contempt for Judaism than Christianity. Echoing this, the year before the \u201copium\u201d passage Marx produced his controversial \u201cOn the Jewish Question.\u201d Among other things, he wrote, \u201cWhat is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is the worldly god? Money\u2026. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist.\u201d Princeton University\u2019s Bernard Lewis considers this work \u201cone of the classics of anti-Semitic propaganda\u201d and many Jewish writers see Marx as a stereotypical \u201cself-hating Jew.\u201d Yet a recent piece in Australia\u2019s Marxist magazine \u201cLinks\u201d defended Communism\u2019s founding father as simply using \u201cthe language of the day\u201d to assail both Jewish and Gentile capitalists.<\/p>\n
In addition to alienation from his Jewish roots, Marx\u2019s sweeping hatred of all religion presusmably reflected cynicism about the family\u2019s calculated switch to Christianity, the influence of Ludwig Feuerbach and other professors who scorned biblical religion, and concern for the downtrodden that fed Marx\u2019s disgust at church links with Prussia\u2019s economic and political elite.<\/p>\n
Such is the backdrop of the \u201copium\u201d quote, which atheistic blogger Austin Cline says \u201cis often misunderstood.\u201d Cline explains that Marx meant religion creates \u201cillusory fantasies for the poor\u201d that made them accept the indignities of earthly life by focusing on their \u201ctrue happiness in the next life.\u201d Cline thinks Marx recognized that \u201cpeople are in distress and religion does provide solace, just as people who are physically injured receive relief from opiate-based drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n
In that limited sense, Marx admitted\u00a0religion helps people. David Smith, principal of Britain\u2019s Northumbria Bible College, has written with appreciation about Marx\u2019s \u201csensitive and nuanced awareness\u201d that until the Communist revolution occurs people \u201cwould need the comforts offered by religious faith.\u201d Of course believers would say\u00a0faith is far more than that.<\/p>\n
Just as drugs help patients survive pain but do not cure the underlying cause, Marx viewed faith as a palliative that prevented the necessary revolutionary fury. He also branded it false, delusional, irrational, hypocritical, and thus destined to die out in his future utopia. As things worked out, however, the 20th Century experienced Marxism in action not as paradise but as dogmatic collectivism heedless of results, suppression of personal freedoms, and a \u201cdictatorship of the proletariat\u201d that produced tyrants and astonishing atrocities.<\/p>\n
What are analysts saying now that Communism has been overthrown in Europe and suffers a loss of credibility in Asia? In 2009, Britain\u2019s liberal Guardian newspaper ran a forum on whether Marx was correct\u00a0about religion as \u201copium.\u201d Jewish contributor Dan Rickman observed charitably that the \u201cabolition of religion\u201d Marx hoped for \u201ccaused much suffering (that) one doubts Marx himself would have welcomed.\u201d Anglican priest turned agnostic Mark Vernon thought that with Marxism\u2019s downfall \u201cthe possibility emerges that religion itself is proper to being human\u201d since it seems \u201cto most of humanity to be the very path to life.\u201d<\/p>\n
And what are Christians saying? The folks at www.thinkinginchrist.com credit Marx with wisdom in calling religion \u201cthe heart of a heartless world\u201d because Christianity indeed gives love and justice priority over personal self-interest and fosters charity. But \u201cThinking\u201d thinks Marx was wrong that the only problem is heartless capitalists when actually it\u2019s the heartlessness that can afflict all people mired in sin and in need of (non-materialistic) salvation. \u201cBy replacing the capitalist with the politician, or the masses, [Marxism] didn\u2019t do anything to reduce the heartlessness of the world,\u201d which requires spiritual, moral, and social renewal.<\/p>\n
This commentary concludes with a bit of historical knife-twisting: \u201cMarx, like all those who seek utopia on this earth, used half-truths to clothe lies and led millions of people to their unhappy deaths in the name of creating a new life.\u201d\u00a0 True? Or too harsh?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ROD ASKS: Was Marx right? Is religion the opiate of the masses? THE RELIGION GUY ANSWERS: This blog\u2019s third item about atheism and atheists in seven weeks!\u00a0 Rod cites the famous quote about religion from a 26-year-old Karl Marx in 1844, four years before he co-authored the momentous \u201cCommunist Manifesto.\u201d Here\u2019s the full context in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1275,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n