Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Karl Marx (1818-1883): Religion is the opium of the people. I.e., religion keeps people
(as a group) oppressed by numbing their suffering, and keeping them from acting on their
own behalf. He thinks that it would be better to throw off religion because it is “illusory”
happiness, and to demand real happiness, which requires the overturning of unjust
economic systems.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): God is dead, and we have killed him. If God is dead
(or doesn’t exist) then we are free to be a do anything we desire. This is because God is
our sun (according to the madman) who give our lives their bearings. Without God, there
is no up or down (right or wrong) except that which we make.
He is critical of Christians who ascribe to a “slave morality”, but also to
lukewarm atheists who claim that there is no God, but who do not live in the freedom that
such a claim entails.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939): “The Future of an Illusion”
Definition of religion: “religion consists of certain dogmas, assertions about facts and conditions
of external (or internal) reality, which tell one something that one has not oneself discovered and
which claim that one should give credence” (p. 72).
Ordinarily, dogmas (truth claims) are founded on observation which can be personally confirmed.
Not so with religious dogmas.
Nonetheless, Freud thinks that religious doctrines are further defended through the argument
A. from absurdity (Credo quia absurdum). Religious doctrines stand above
(are superior to reason and its capacities).
B. from “As if”. We act “as if” we believed these absurdities.
“But” in spite of the fact that religious dogmas have not bases in evidence, and they rely on
absurdity, people continue to believe them (p. 75). WHY???
This illusion is based in our infantile helplessness leading to the need for protection provided by
our fathers. Since we never get over the need for a protective father, we have a super-strong wish
for a super-Father to protect us: we call this super-Father God.
Definition of Illusion: an illusion is not the same as error (it is not necessarily an error)… “It is
characteristic of the illusion that is derived from men’s wishes” (p. 76). An example would be
Christopher Columbus’ wish to find a sea-route to India, or a peasant girl’s wish for a prince to
rescue her. Religious illusions border on the delusional.
“No reasonable man will behave so frivolously in other matters or rest content with such feeble
grounds for his opinions or for the attitude he adopts; it is only in the highest and holiest things he
allows this” (77).