A response to Marx on religion
The piece posted on various indy sites (a summary of Marx on religion) can be found here among other places....
 http://la.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=12841


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. "