The God delusion according to Karl Marx
In two previous posts I have commented on Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion,
and the response by Terry Eagleton: Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching, the God Delusion of Richard Dawkins.
Terry Eagleton is a leftwing catholic influenced by marxism. Therefore, it may be of interest what Karl Marx thought about religion. I do not take this from the original Marx, but from the English translation of a book (Three Faces of Fascism. Action Francaise, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, R.Piper and Co., Munich 1965, original German 1963) by the German historian Ernst Nolte. He writes on page 550:
“..Marx is far from declaring, as was often done during the Enlightenment, that religion and philosophy are a delusion and fraud perpetrated by priests. The much-quoted words about religion being the opiate of the masses do not in any way stress the poisonous nature of opium. True, religion is merely the “realization in fantasy of human nature”, but it is nevertheless man’s sole legitimate existence as long as this existence possesses no genuine, that is, earthly, reality: “Poverty in religion is simultaneously the expression of real poverty and the protest against real poverty. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, it is feeling in a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of nonspiritual conditions”. ….”And it is precisely for this reason that the classless society can be essentially atheistic, because, instead of combating and supplanting religion, it makes religion’s legitimate intention a reality, thereby rendering it superfluous”.
Obviously, Richard Dawkins is in the tradition of the Enlighenment and (much earlier) of the Emperor Friedrich II of Hohenstauffen (13th century). Religion still flourishes in spite of all the arguments against it, which suggests that some deep seated need for it exists, as suggested by Marx, among many others. Whether this need is due to poverty as suggested by Marx, is open to discussion. I don’t know what Terry Eagleton thinks about this, but I doubt that he would agree. Perhaps religious beliefs are based on evolutionarily old “instincts” as satirically discussed and illustrated in my book Satire, Politik und Kunst (extracts and review of the book at Satire, Politik und Kunst.)