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 coulddo 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. "

See also The Greek Stoic Canon of the Christ cult

And The Christ myth - a collection of protest writings
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