Religion and Logic have been considered to be mutually exclusive. Logic being reality and science and religion being the world of make believe. Many people from the world of logic look at religion as a form of mental defect that undermines the principles of science. However pure Atheism doesn't tell us what right and wrong is or how we should live our lives as humans exploring reality. The Atheist community is aware of the fact that it doesn't fill this void. Religion provides more than just a fictional doctrine. It provides a community. It provides a moral compass to determine what is right and what is wrong. It's a blueprint of how to live our lives.
In modern times the scientific and atheistic communities have made some progress towards addressing the human side of Atheism. Humanism is a good start towards addressing these issues. Atheists who want to eliminate churches and religion often realize that they will never succeed until they have a working substitute that fulfills the legitimate functions of religions to form community, to care for one another, to create a basis for right and wrong, to perform weddings and funerals, to provide spiritual counseling, and to provide a sense of belonging. Fiction based religions provide these services and often do so in a very flawed way. But fiction based religion is the only source of this type of community, until now.Most people say that it can never be done, the task of creating a religion based on reality that supports logic and reason as its standards for creating the guidelines for humanity to live by. But I say that it can be done, and it must be done. As a scientist I can not accept the premise that a fictional based worldview is required to perform the legitimate and necessary functions of a church. Therefore there must be a model for a religion that functions as a church but is based on reality. If we assume that such a model can exist then it becomes a puzzle to be solved. How do we do that? How do we create a religion based on reality? How do we unite the two?
That is one of our missions. We are the Church of Reality and we have to live up to our name bringing the Church and Reality together. And we have to do it in a way that stays true to the standards and requirements of both worlds. On the Reality side the Church of Reality must be scientifically pure. We can not compromise science for example by accepting a deity just because it's popular. On the Church side we have to create a sense of right and wrong, provide guidance on how people should live their lives. We have to create a moral code, a community, and address the spiritual needs of the community without having to resort to spirits to do so. The Church of Reality is primarily a church which is based on reality. We are a religion first. We are about people and the human experience. We are people exploring reality as it really is.
By taking the name Church of Reality we have accepted as an axiom that the problem is solvable and that it is our dharma to solve the problem.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Religion based on Logic
Friday, December 4, 2009
Logika Menentang Agama
“Man tamanthaqa faqad fazandaqa”, demikian ungkapan terkenal dari tokoh besar di dunia Islam, Ibn Taimiyyah. Arti harfiahnya kira-kira adalah, “Barang siapa menggunakan logika maka ia telah kafir”. Apakah sikap seperti ini dapat dibenarkan? Ataukah memang mutlak salah? Apa implikasi jika sikap seperti ini dibenarkan? Dan apa pula konsekuensinya jika ia mutlak salah? Ataukah sikap seperti ini relatif, bisa benar sekaligus bisa salah secara bersamaan atau secara fuzzy ? Dan apa-kah konsekuensinya jika kebenaran sikap seperti ini fuzzy atau relatif?
Logika adalah kaidah-kaidah berfikir. Subyeknya akal-akal rasional. Obyeknya adalah proposisi bahasa. Proposisi bahasa mencerminkan realitas, apakah itu realitas di alam nyata ataupun realitas di alam fikiran. Kaidah-kaidah berfikir dalam logika bersifat niscaya atau mesti. Penolakan terhadap kaidah berfikir ini mustahil (tidak mungkin). Bahkan mustahil pula dalam semua khayalan yang mi\ungkin (all possible intelligebles). Contohnya, sesuatu apapun pasti sama dengan dirinya sendiri, dan tidak sama dengan yang bukan dirinya. Prinsip berfikir ini telah tertanam secara niscaya sejak manusia lahir. Tertanam secara spontan. Dan selalu hadir kapan saja fikiran digunakan. Dan harus selalu diterima kapan saja realitas apapun dipahami. Bahkan, lebih jauh, prinsip ini sesungguhnya adalah satu dari watak niscaya seluruh yang maujud (the very property of being). Tidak mengakui prinsip ini, yang biasa disebut dengan prinsip non-kontradiksi, akan menghancurkan seluruh kebenaran dalam alam bahasa maupun dalam semua alam lain. Tidak menerimanya berarti meruntuhkan seluruh bagunan agama, filsafat, sains dan teknologi, dan seluruh pengetahuan manusia.Sebagai contoh perkataan ‘Ibn Taimiyyah di atas, jika misal pernyataan itu benar, maka menggunakan kaidah logika adalah salah. Karena menggunakan kaidah logika salah, maka prinsip non-kontradiksi salah. Kalau prinsip non-kontradiksi salah . Artinya seluruh kebenaran tiada bermakna, tidak bisa dibenarkan ataupun disalahkan, atau bisa dibenarkan dan disalahkan sekaligus. Kalalu seluruh keberadaan tidak bermakna, maka pernyataan itu sendiri “Man tamanthaqa faqad fazandaqa” juga nafi. Tak bermakna. Tak perlu dipikirkan.
Menerima kebenaran pernyataan beliau tersebut sama saja dengan mengkafirkan beliau. Karena jika peenyataan tersebut benar, maka untuk membenarkannya telah digunakan kaidah logika. Dan karena beliau telah menggunakan kaidah logika, menurut pernyataan-nya sendiri beliau kafir. Jadi sebaiknya pernyataan pengkafiran orang yang menggunakan logika ini benar-benar ditolak. Pernyataan ini salah. Salah. Dan mustahil benar. Karena kalau benar, semua orang yang berfikir benar kafir. Dan ini mustahil.
“Wa qul jaa ‘al-haqqa wazahaaqal-baathil, innal-baathila kaana zahuuqa.” Dalam pandangan saya, Islam jelas menentang adanya relativisme Kebenaran. Dalam Islam yang benar pasti benar dan tidak mungkin salah. Sedang yang salah pasti salah dan tak mungkin benar. Dalam dunia dikenali adanya golongan relativis kebenaran yang disebut sufastaiyyah. Golongan relativis kebenaran ini merupakan pewaris mazhab pemikiran sophisme, yang bermula pada abad ke-5 dan ke-4 SM di Yunani melalui pemikiran Protagoras, Hippias, Prodicus, Giorgias dan lain-lain. Beberapa pemikiran yang mendasari gelombang filsafat pasca-modernis juga merupakan cerminan dari pandangan golongan ini. Dalam majalah Ummat No.3/Thn.I/7 Agustus 1995, hal 76, DR.Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud menjelaskan bahwa Akidah Islam jelas menentang keras sikap golongan sufastaiyyah ini. Bagi golongan sufastaiyyah, benar itu bisa salah dan salah itu bisa benar. Bagi golongan shopisme Yunsni, semua yang jelas-jelas ada ini dianggap tidak memiliki keberadaan. Jadi ada dan tiada sama saja. Bagi golongan positivis pasca- Renaisance, semua yang tidak bisa diukur tidak bisa ditentukan benar salahnya. Bagi pengikut Marx dan Hegel, kontradiksibukan saja mungkin terjadi, tapi menjadi arah gerakan alam yang sering disebut sebagai dialektika Hegel. Bagi golongan relativis pasca-modern, yang mendasarkan pemiokirannya pada language games ala Wittgenstein ataupun Russel seyiap propisisi adalah bahasa, dan setiap bahasa nilai kebenarannya relatif, karena itu setiap keberanan itu relatif.
Adapun sufastaiyyah, misalnya sama. Menghancurkan kaidah dasar logoka. Yaitu prinsip non-kontradiksi. Hanya Protagoras meniadakannya dalam tingkatan ada-tidaknya segala sesuatu, para positivis meniadakannya pada tingkatan hal yang tidak bisa diindra, Marx dan Hegel meniadaknnya sebagai watak umum segala yang maujud, dan Wittgenstein maupun Russel menghilangkan otoritas fikiran untuk menerapkan kaidahnaya kepada alam di luar fikiran. Hasilnya sama. Runtuhnya seluruh bangunan pengetahuan manusia. Runtuhnya suatu bangunan keyakinan manusia. Bahkan keyakinan tentang adanya dirinya sendiri ! Na’uudzubihi min dzaalik.
Penerapan kaidah-kaidah berfikir yang benar telah menghantarkan para filosof besar pada keyakinan yang pasti akan keberadaan Tuhan. Socraets dengan The Most Beauty -nya. Plato dengan archetype -nya. Aristoteles dengan prime-mover-nya.. ‘Ibn Arabi dengan al-jam’u bainal-‘addaad (coincindentia in oppositorium) nya. Suhrawardi dengan Nur-i-qahir nya. Mulla Shadra dan Mulla Hadi Sabzavary dengan Al-Wujud Al-Muthlaq-nya. Jelas-jelas penerapan logika bagi mereka tidak menentang agama. Malah sebaliknya, me-real-kan agama sampai ke seluruh pori-pori rohaninya yang mingkin. Atau dengan kata lain, mencapai hakikat. Dalam dialog terakhir Socrates, digambarkan betapa figur filsuf ini mati tersenyum setelah menyebut nama Tuhan sebelum akhir hayatnya. Tentang Aristoteles, sebuah riwayat menyatakan bahwa ia adalah seorang nabi yang didustakan ummatnya. Tentang ‘Ibn ‘Arabi, tidak ada yang menyangsingkan sebagai salah seorang sufi terbesar sepanjang sejarah dengan tak terhitung pengalaman ruhani yang tertulis di kurang lebih 700 kitabnya. Sedang Mulla Shadra , tujuh kali haji ke Mekkah dengan berjalan dari Qum (Iran) hanya untuk memenuhi panggilan kekasih-Nya. Alih-alih logika menentang agama, malah logika adalah kendaraan super-executive untuk mencapai hakikat. Dan sekali lagi alih-alih logika menentang agama , tanpa logika agama tak-kan dapat terpahami. Jadi apakah logika menentang agama?
Monday, July 13, 2009
Sartre vs. Camus
As we learn from Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel that Ended It, a fascinating and intermittently astute book by Ronald Aronson,1 the two men met in Nazi-occupied Paris at the height of World War II. The occasion was the June 1943 opening of Sartre’s play, The Flies, a recasting of the Orestes revenge story with overtones of Resistance heroism.
By this time, both men were public figures. Sartre’s novel, Nausea, an account of slipping out of ordinary life into the gradually liberating awareness of life’s meaninglessness, had come out five years earlier; his monumental existentialist tract, Being and Nothingness, was about to be published. As for the younger, Algerian-born Camus, both his first novel, The Stranger, and his philosophical signature piece, The Myth of Sisyphus, had been brought out within the previous year to general amazement and acclaim.
Even before the two met, they had reviewed each other’s books. Writing in a left-wing Algerian newspaper, Camus had praised Nausea for its dramatic demonstration that “at the bottom of the most elementary act is its fundamental absurdity.” A few months later, reviewing a collection of Sartre’s short fiction, he singled out its portraits of individuals who, apprehending the absurdity of existence, begin to realize they are free to make anything they choose of their lives, even if they are sometimes distressingly unsure just what that should be.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus would offer his own depiction of the freedom that comes of accepting the godless universe in which one happens to exist for a brief spell. His appeal to the singular adventure of a life well lived, without hope or fear of eternity, registered powerfully with Sartre. In a 6,000-word review of Camus’s The Stranger—about a man who drifts numbly through life until, condemned for murder, he finds happiness in “the benign indifference of the universe”—Sartre sketched an author, Camus, sounding very much like Sartre himself, especially the Sartre of the fiction Camus had himself reviewed.
Soon after their meeting, as Aronson tells it, an obviously thrilled Sartre offered Camus the chance to direct and play the lead in a touring production of his new play, No Exit (the best thing he ever wrote in any genre). Although the production never came off, the bond had been forged, and seemed made to last. The two men “prized living authentically,” Aronson writes, and authenticity could extend to, and survive, candor and even bluntness between them. During one night’s boozing, Sartre announced their order of intellectual rank: “I’m more intelligent than you, huh? More intelligent.” Camus agreed.
But if Sartre’s was by mutual consent the more imposing mind, Camus was the more impressive man, and both of them knew that as well. Simone de Beauvoir, the writer who was Sartre’s lifelong lover, but whose romance with him admitted all manner of extraneous erotic possibilities, told Camus that he could have her if he wanted her. He did not want her. Sartre, one suspects, found Camus’s refusal more disturbing than Beauvoir’s offer, especially as he happened to be toadishly ugly and Camus handsome and charming.
In addition to handsomeness and charm, Camus also had boldness and courage and integrity; these, along with intelligence, were the qualities Sartre most esteemed. Camus had proved his honor and his nerve in the Resistance against the occupying Nazis, when he edited the clandestine newspaper Combat, whose proud socialist banner read “From Resistance to Revolution.” Sartre for his part had served in the defeated French army, spent several months as a prisoner of war, and then returned to full-time literature.
Sartre was extremely productive during the war. But when he later spoke of himself as “a writer who resisted” rather than a member of the Resistance who wrote, he was implicitly comparing himself to the less intelligent but more impressive Camus. What is Literature?, the classic of literary theory that Sartre wrote just after the war, espouses writing that is itself vital with political commitment—that commitment being, naturally, to the radical Left. Aronson makes the case that the writer who, to Sartre’s mind, best fit his specifications was Camus: “This young man was already the person Sartre was trying to become: the engaged but not starry-eyed or ideological writer, at once ‘poet of freedom’ and political activist.”
Sartre’s enshrining of Camus bore a price, however. In Aronson’s judgment, it complicated the friendship, making Camus fear he would be thought of as Sartre’s creature rather than as his own man. The younger man began to feel that “he had to define himself in contrast to Sartre.”
There may be something to this, but Aronson makes too much of it. In fact, the principal source of the growing disagreement between the two was not psychological but philosophical and political. Already in a 1945 interview Camus contended that his understanding of the absurd had nothing to do with Sartrean existentialism. To be more precise, he was becoming disenchanted with the movement’s Marxist underpinnings, and was looking for a more accommodating basis for the idea of complete freedom of choice. As Camus saw it, if a man was really free, then he could make of himself anything at all; his actions ought not be circumscribed by the particular historical situation he found himself in, and especially ought not be dictated by some intellectual’s telling him he had to decide between behaving admirably like a revolutionary socialist or piggishly like a bourgeois.
By 1951, at any rate, the divergence had become an irreparable rupture. That was the year in which Camus published L’homme révolté, known in English as The Rebel but translated more accurately by Aronson as Man in Revolt. This book ranks with The Myth of Sisyphus and The Fall (1956) among Camus’s greatest works, and as one of the landmark titles of the last century. Unfortunately, Aronson finds it ideologically tendentious, and is not much use in helping one appreciate its excellence.
Man in Revolt indicts what Camus sees as the highest form of modern criminality: mass murder on behalf of noble ideas, and specifically on behalf of the idea of a perfected humanity in the manner of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. To Camus’s mind, the revolutionary nihilism exemplified by the Russian Revolution and by Nazism (though he barely touches upon the latter) is the supremely beguiling and supremely terrible theme of modern life. He traces its intellectual origins to the metaphysical ponderings of such figures as de Sade, Baudelaire, Hegel, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Lautréamont, as well as to the revolutionary zealotry of Saint-Just and Marx. To overthrow the divinely appointed natural order, to institute forever the humane and rational arrangements that will allow all to thrive as never before—these became the ends of the revolutionary, and anything at all was permitted in order to achieve them: starvation, slave labor, a bullet in the back of the skull. Camus wanted no part of this viciousness with its eyes wide open.
Sartre, not unexpectedly, loathed Man in Revolt, considered it a personal affront, and spearheaded the effort to discredit it in the pages of Les temps modernes (Modern Times), the hugely influential journal he edited. A Sartre disciple, Francis Jeanson, was enlisted to savage the book; when Camus wrote a hotly contemptuous letter to the editor, Sartre himself responded by turning up the heat in 10,000 vitriolic words, while Jeanson tossed off a 15,000-word justification of his review. Camus wrote an answer that he never sent.
The controversy between the two men, which would only deepen over time, has been newly documented together with four long essays of scholarly commentary in Sartre and Camus: A Historic Confrontation, edited and translated by David A. Sprintzen and Adrian van den Hoven.2 The decisive quarrel boiled down to this: Camus spoke for freedom and nature, two of the central principles of liberal democracy; Sartre spoke for justice and history, the guiding lights of socialist dictatorship.
Theoretically, an intelligent liberalism could accommodate all of these competing claims. Of the two men, Camus was more willing to approach such a compromise than the intransigent Sartre. But each had his hierarchy, and in the throes of disputation each hardened his own position so that any reconciliation became impossible.
Like Aronson, who decries “cold-war partisanship,” Sprintzen and all but one of his colleagues have a simple explanation for the friends’ bitter falling-out. In Sprintzen’s words, “the polarized environment” of the cold war delimited the thinking of supposedly free and reasonable men. What was responsible for causing this polarized environment was, of course, the conflict between Western democracy and Soviet Communism. About this, the commentators in Sartre and Camus strike a putatively agnostic view, apportioning the blame pretty much equally between the two parties, but with a slight preference for the idea that the West, and particularly the United States, was really the more culpable.
Sartre himself was under no compunctions on this score. In the wake of his dispute with Camus, he began to cleave ever more closely to Moscow’s party line. He became precisely the sort of Communist whom Camus hated most: not only a zealot for his maniacal idea of justice, careless with other men’s blood, but a horrific cynic as well.
To gain admittance to a Communist charade known as the World Peace Congress in Vienna in December 1952, Sartre prohibited a scheduled Viennese production of his 1948 play Dirty Hands, which had offended the Communists, and required that all future productions have the approval of the local Communist party. Two weeks before the Peace Congress opened, he refused to comment publicly on the show trial of the Czech Communist leader Rudolf Slansky, convicted along with others of belonging to an international Jewish conspiracy to undermine the cause of world Communism. Early the next year, he again kept his mouth shut about the “Jewish doctors’ plot” that Stalin had contrived to whip up anti-Semitic hysteria.
Even Aronson is appalled by Sartre’s doggish behavior. For their part, the scholars assembled in Sartre and Camus generally agree that the brouhaha over Man in Revolt showed both Camus and Sartre at their worst, and that their unthinking vehemence in the thrall of competing cold-war ideologies robbed them of their customary perspicacity. But they are utterly wrong about Camus, and wrong again in thinking Sartre customarily perspicacious. The deformity caused by his political vocation was by no means peculiar to the cold-war period but had showed itself earlier and affected his entire literary career.
The philosophical audacity that was existentialism had itself been born of the most banal political idea. As presented in Sartre’s 1946 essay, “Existentialism Is a Humanism”—the essay is essentially a précis of Being and Nothingness—the litany runs like this: there is no God; there is no human nature; there is only the human condition, which is to say, historically determined conditions; within these conditions man is free; “man is nothing else but what he makes of himself”; and each man is responsible for himself—as well as for everyone else.
To put the case plainly, Sartre’s existentialism ends in a socialist fantasy because it begins in a socialist fantasy. The nonexistence of God is treated by him as an indisputable given, not as a demonstrable proposition; the idea that man can make what he will of himself is similarly treated as a given and for the same reason—because it is indispensable to his political project. Without these two assumptions, the argument would go nowhere, for if men are created by God, then Sartrean existentialism is a ridiculous exercise in the higher narcissism. The existence of God must be annulled, because it leads to bad politics.
The same flawed reasoning infects almost all of Sartre’s work, including some of his best. Within the realm of good socialist politics, the war to the death is the war against the bourgeoisie and its political and religious beliefs, which Sartre lavishly despised. In Anti-Semite and Jew (1946), which professes to be a sober meditation on the rational and the irrational in politics, Sartre is lucid and penetrating about the anti-Semitism directed particularly at Jewish intelligence; but when he proceeds to declare anti-Semitism “a bourgeois phenomenon,” from which the virtuous proletariat is, at least in theory, happily free, his analysis goes off the rails. Though he does not spell out the conclusions of his argument, its inexorable logic is that the unsavory attitudes of the bourgeoisie can be eradicated with a clear conscience, even if doing so entails eradicating bourgeois persons along the way.
As Sartre’s politics deform his moral philosophy, so do they turn his fiction into tub-thumping. In the trilogy The Roads of Freedom (1945-1949), which is really an unfinished tetralogy, the word “freedom” appears almost as often as “and” or “the.” Once again, the enemy to be slaughtered without mercy is bourgeois minginess, the epitome of anti-existential unfreedom. In the first installment of the trilogy, titled The Age of Reason, Mathieu, a thirty-year-old intellectual, scrambles over the course of 400 pages for the money to procure an abortion for Marcelle, his lover of seven years; marriage and child being unthinkably bourgeois, both Mathieu and his creator speak of the fetus inside Marcelle as a ripening pustule. In the end, Mathieu gets his “freedom for nothing”—that is, freedom to no apparent purpose—and we are meant to understand this exalted aimlessness as the highest existential awareness anyone can reach. Although there are flashes of brilliance throughout the trilogy, the politicking that shapes Sartre’s philosophy kills his every effort to render living beings in art.
Both as a man and as a writer, Camus had a truer feeling for life, including life’s freedom. This vital capacity made him more sensible, in the fullest meaning of the word. But it must also be said that it limited his penetration as a political intellectual. For all his loathing of Communism and his devotion to freedom in the abstract, for example, Camus fastidiously declined to come out for the democratic West, and particularly for the United States, as bulwarks against the former and champions of the latter.
Camus’s personal moderation and decency make Sartre look like the scoundrel he was. But his hope that moderation and decency would triumph against barbarity was insufficiently appreciative of the unfathomable depth of certain political quandaries—like the one in his beloved native Algeria. In his “Appeal for a Civilian Truce in Algeria,” a lecture delivered in Algiers in 1956 just as Arab anti-colonial militants and immovable French colonists were about to dive into a bloodbath, Camus spoke of a tragic collision of two bands of heedless fanatics, as if, by parting the combatants, temperate intermediaries could yet bring a lasting peace.
But temperance and reasonableness could only delay, not forestall, the fanatical violence, which in Algiers as elsewhere in the modern world was soon directed against the temperate and the reasonable. To argue, as Camus did, that “French and Arabs can be made to coexist . . . [and] that such coexistence will do justice to the rights of both sides” was unconscionably naïve. Today, even Arabs and Arabs do not coexist in Algeria.
The first tremors of militant Islam’s crusade against the West, and also against Arab political moderation, were already shaking the ground in the 1950’s. Camus felt them, but could not divine their full significance. He did write, in his “Preface to Algerian Reports” and “Algeria 1958,” about the dangers that the ambition for Islamic empire presented; that ambition, he said, if unchecked, could lead to World War III. But he mistakenly assumed it would be checked.
How so? In his philanthropic enthusiasm, Camus exhorted men and women like himself to “gather together to beg merely, without making any other claims yet, that on a single spot of the globe a handful of innocent victims be spared.” Camus did not understand, or could not bear to think, that saving lives then would do nothing to prevent the loss of many others’ lives later, and that violent fanaticism must be extinguished if it is not to increase and multiply. Today’s free Algeria, which is what the uncompromising Arabs of Camus’s day demanded, is a place where 100,000 civilians have died since 1992 in a civil war notable even in that part of the world for its uninhibited brutality, and where the Arabs of the Islamic Salvation Front awaken sleeping Arab children in order to slash their throats. Reality has proved too cruel for Camus’s political imagination.
In fact, neither Camus nor Sartre had sufficient imagination when it came to politics. Had they philosophized more and politicized less, their opinions—and, in Sartre’s case, his art—could have been what their exaggerated reputations make them out to be: the outstanding intellectuals of their time.
Still, as between the two of them, and despite Sartre’s extraordinary intellect, Camus’s was without doubt the more significant achievement. Even if he felt too much to think dispassionately, he possessed a born novelist’s instinct for capturing the truth alive. As for Sartre, his passionate temperament issued in a disfiguring taste for revolutionary violence, while his ambition to explain the world as nobody had adequately explained it before issued in encyclopedic fatuity. Sartre knew everything, and everything he knew was wrong.
(see at : http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/)
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804—1872) was a famous German philospher and atheist. The founder of psychoanalysis Freud heavily borrowed from his book Essence of Christianity to create The Future of an Illusion. What are often thought of as "Freudian" terms are in fact Feuerbachian. Such borrowings can be seen in the words and passages of Essence of Christianity: "wish-fulfillment"; "What man misses—whether this be articulate and therefore conscioius, or an unconscious need—that is his God"; "Man projects his nature into the world outside himself before he finds it in himself"; "To live in projected dream-images is the essence of religion. Religion sacrifices reality to the projected dream." [1] Karl Marx also borrowed from Essence of Christianity, most famously the idea that "religion is the opium of the masses."
Education
Feuerbach matriculated in the University of Heidelberg with the intention of pursuing a career in the Church. Through the influence of Prof. Karl Daub he was led to an interest in the then predominant philosophy of Hegel and, in spite of his father's opposition, enrolled in the University of Berlin, in order to study under the master himself. After twenty two years, the Hegelian influence began to slacken. Feuerbach became associated with a group known as the Young Hegelians, alternately known as the Left Hegelians, who synthesized a radical offshoot of Hegelian philosophy, interpreting Hegel’s dialectic march of spirit through history to mean that existing Western culture and institutional forms—and, in particular, Christianity—would be superseded. "Theology," he wrote to a friend, "I can bring myself to study no more. I long to take nature to my heart, that nature before whose depth the faint-hearted theologian shrinks back; and with nature man, man in his entire quality." These words are a key to Feuerbach's development. He completed his education at Erlangen, at the Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg with the study of natural science.
Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity)
In part I of his book Feuerbach developed what he calls the "true or anthropological essence of religion." Treating of God in his various aspects "as a being of the understanding," "as a moral being or law," "as love" and so on. Feuerbach talks of how man is equally a conscious being, more so than God because man has placed upon God the ability of understanding. Man contemplates many things and in doing so he becomes acquainted with himself. Feuerbach shows that in every aspect God corresponds to some feature or need of human nature. "If man is to find contentment in God," he claims, "he must find himself in God."
Thus God is nothing else than man: he is, so to speak, the outward projection of man's inward nature. This projection is dubbed as a chimaera by Feuerbach, that God and the idea of a higher being is dependent upon the aspect of benevolence. Feuerbach states that, “a God who is not benevolent, not just, not wise, is no God,” and continues to say that qualities are not suddenly denoted as divine because of their godly association. The qualities themselves are divine therefore making God divine, indicating that man is capable of understanding and applying meanings of divinity to religion and not that religion makes a man divine.
The force of this attraction to religion though, giving divinity to a figure like God, is explained by Feuerbach as God is a being that acts throughout man in all forms. God, “is the principle of [man's] salvation, of [man's] good dispositions and actions, consequently [man's] own good principle and nature.” It appeals to man to give qualities to the idol of their religion because without these qualities a figure such as God would become merely an object, its importance would become obsolete, there would no longer be a feeling of an existence for God. Therefore, Feuerbach says, when man removes all qualities from God, “God is no longer anything more to him than a negative being.” Additionally, because man is imaginative, God is given traits and there holds the appeal. God is a part of man through the invention of a God. Equally though, man is repulsed by God because, “God alone is the being who acts of himself.”
In part 2 he discusses the "false or theological essence of religion," i.e. the view which regards God as having a separate existence over against man. Hence arise various mistaken beliefs, such as the belief in revelation which he believes not only injures the moral sense, but also "poisons, nay destroys, the divinest feeling in man, the sense of truth," and the belief in sacraments such as the
Lord's Supper, which is to him a piece of religious materialism of which "the necessary consequences are superstition and immorality."
Part 2 comes toa crux though by seemingly retracting previous statements. Feuerbach claims that Gods only action is, “the moral and eternal salvation of man: thus man has in fact no other aim than himself,” because man's actions are placed upon God. Feuerbach also contradicts himself by claiming that man gives up his personality and places it upon God who in turn is a selfish being. This selfishness turns onto man and projects man to be wicked and corrupt, that they are, “incapable of good,” and it is only God that is good, “the Good Being.” In this way Feuerbach detracts from many of his earlier assertions while showing the alienation that takes place in man by worshipping God. Feuerbach affirms that goodness is, “personified as God,” turning God into an object because if God was anything but an object nothing would need to be personified on him. The aspect of objects having previously been discussed; in that man contemplates objects and that objects themselves give conception of what externalizes man. Therefore if God is good so then should be man because God is merely an externalization of man because God is an object. However religion would show that man is inherently corrupt. Feuerbach tries to lessen his inconsistency by asking if it was possible if, “I could perceive the beauty of a fine picture if my mind were aesthetically an absolute piece of perversion?” Through Feuerbach’s reasoning it would not be possible but it is possible and he later states that man is capable of finding beauty.
The “New” Philosophy
there are certain fundamental themes that occur again and again in the later Feuerbach, even though, as we shall see, commentators have differed among themselves concerning the interpretation of these themes, differences occasioned in part by Feuerbach's own ambiguities and sometimes by his changing views. Chief among these themes are: (1) that the human organism is related to the world through its body and the senses (Sensuousness); (2) that the species-being (essence) of man is contained only in community which, however, “rests on the reality of the distinction between I and thou” (GW IX: 339; PPF 91); (3) that mind and body are just two aspects of one material organism; (4) that this organism is animated by an overwhelming drive for fulfillment (Glückseligkeitstrieb) which, in turn, manifests itself in needs and desires. Of these needs, the need for human community is fundamental as are also certain biological needs. Given these themes, the two dominant philosophical problems that emerge are (a) how to delineate the relationship between perception and thought in order to give an intelligible account of knowing and (b) how, after basing human nature on a drive to fulfillment, he can reconcile this with his ethics of altruism.
Many of the themes are, of course, formulated in antithesis to idealism and, hence, an affirmation of some mode of materialism. The argument is that modern philosophy in its search for something immediately certain founded itself on self-consciousness, that is, the thinking ego. But this self-consciousness was only a being conceived and mediated through abstraction. The new philosophy claims that “certainty and immediately are only given by the senses, perception, and feeling” (GW IX: 320; PPF 55). Only the sensuous is clear and certain. Hence, “the secret of immediate knowledge is sensuousness” (GW IX: 321; PPF 55).
Whereas the old philosophy started by saying, “I am an abstract and merely a thinking being to whose essence the body does not belong,” the new philosophy, on the other hand, begins by saying, “I am a real, sensuous being and indeed, the body in its totality is my ego, my essence (Wesen) itself.” (GW IX: 320; PPF 54)
What Feuerbach ultimately proposes is a thorough examination of human nature, its needs, successes and desires. It is only then, he argues, that we will have a complete “philosophy of the future’”
He expressed in an eager, disjointed, but condensed and laboured fashion, certain deep-lying convictions -- that philosophy must come back from unsubstantial metaphysics to the solid facts of human nature and natural science, that the human body was no less important than the human spirit ("Der Mensch ist was er isst", "Man is what he eats") and that Christianity was utterly out of harmony with the age. His convictions gained weight from the simplicity, uprightness and diligence of his character; but they need a more effective justifcation than he was able to give them.
econdo Feuerbach invece, è nel finito che deve essere ritrovato l'infinito , non viceversa; l'infinito stesso è pensabile soltanto attraverso il finito e la negazione del finito. L'inizio della filosofia non è dunque Dio o l'Assoluto, ma ciò che è finito, determinato e reale. La filosofia dell'avvenire, in quanto antropologia, riconoscendo il finito come infinito, deve partire, non da come aveva fatto Hegel, dal pensiero autosufficiente, inteso come soggetto capace di costruirsi con le sue proprie forze, bensì dal vero soggetto, di il cui pensiero è soltanto un predicato. Esso è l'uomo in carne e ossa, mortale dotato di sensibilità e bisogni: in questo consiste l'umanesimo di Feuerbach. Occorre dunque partire da ciò che dà valore al pensiero stesso, ossia dall'intuizione sensibile perché veramente reale è soltanto ciò che è sensibile . Solo attraverso i sensi un oggetto è dato come immediatamente certo: il sensibile infatti non ha bisogno di dimostrazione, perché costringe subito a riconoscere la sua esistenza. In questa prospettiva, la natura non si trova più ridotta a semplice forma estraniata dello spirito, come avveniva in Hegel, ma diventa la base reale della vita dell'uomo. Si apre così la possibilità di una nuova filosofia, il sensualismo , che è la risoluzione compiuta della teologia in antropologia: in essa è superata ogni scissione tra uomo e mondo, corpo e spirito.
La filosofia dell’avvenire. La filosofia di Feuerbach vuole essere un completo rovesciamento della filosofia religiosa e dell’idealismo hegeliano. L’inizio della filosofia non deve più essere Dio o l’Assoluto bensì l’uomo, e l’uomo determinato, concreto. L’uomo è un essere naturale, reale, sensibile, e come tale deve essere considerato dalla filosofia che non può ridurlo ad un concetto o a puro pensiero o a sola razionalità ma deve considerarlo integralmente, "dalla testa al calcagno". La nuova filosofia, la filosofia del futuro sarà la "risoluzione completa della teologia (hegeliana) nella antropologia". La nuova filosofia di Feuerbach vuole essere un umanesimo: è l’uomo l’unico vero oggetto della filosofia, e l’uomo nella sua concretezza, nella sua corporeità, nella sua fisicità (Feuerbach giunge a dire, in modo un po’ paradossale ma che indica bene la sua esigenza di concretezza, che "l’uomo è ciò che mangia": si noti che in tedesco è un gioco di parole che suona così : Mann ist wa isst). "La vera dialettica – sostiene Feuerbach – è un dialogo tra l’io e il tu". Non ha nulla a che vedere con assoluto, essenze e simili. Se poi l’uomo è un essere sociale, allora l’amore è la passione dominante dell’uomo stesso. Dunque l’amore per l’uomo, la filantropia, dev’essere lo scopo principale della filosofia
Atheism, Agnosticism, and Skepticism
While it might seem odd at first to include atheism, agnosticism, and skepticism in a series on religion, these three systems of thought should be addressed here. Religion is sometimes defined as whatever about which a man is deeply concerned,1 and it is to such concerns that we now turn. Everyone, even the nontheist, attempts to make sense of and explain the reality around him While those who believe in some form of God attribute this world's existence in some way to that God (or gods); the atheist, agnostic, and skeptic form an alternative naturalistic explanation for this world.
Since our space is limited, we usually will refer to the three views as one, recognizing the great overlap among them. Where their distinctions are important we will point them out. After defining the three terms we will review briefly the history of the nontheistic (apart from God) movement. Then we will discuss five kinds of objections which represent most of the arguments brought by nonbelievers against a belief in God. These five objections include problems in the areas of language, knowledge, moral concepts, scientific method, and logic. Since this is to be a survey of nontheistic religions, and not a presentation of Christianity, we will not present systematic proofs for the existence of God, but we will present short theistic resolutions to the five problems mentioned. We have included the names of the major philosophers whose writings would be helpful in understanding these areas of belief.
Definitions
Atheism
The word atheism comes from the Greek prefix a (no or non-) and the noun theos (god or God). An atheist is one who believes that there exists positive evidence that there is no God. To the atheist, all of existence can be explained naturally rather than supernaturally. An atheist is convinced that all religious belief, evidence, and faith are false.
Popular authors and philosophy professors William and Mabel Sahakian explain it as follows:
Unlike Agnostics, the Atheist takes a definite stand, arguing that proof regarding God's existence or nonexistence is available, but that the evidence favors the assumption of nonexistence (William and Mabel Sahakian, Ideas of the Great Philosophers, New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1966, p. 100).
Bishop Charles Gore summarizes atheistic belief as presupposing
that we see in the world of which we form a part no signs of anything corresponding to the mind or spirit or purposes which indisputably exist in man – no signs of a universal spirit or reason with which we can hold communion, nothing but blind and unconscious force (Charles Gore, The Reconstruction of Belief, London: John Murray, 1926, pp. 45,46).
Historically, atheism sometimes refers to a rejection of only particular gods or a particular God. Hans Schwarz informs us that :
When the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, for instance, declared that the sun was an incandescent stone somewhat larger than the Peloponesus, he was accused of impiety or atheism and forced to leave his hometown Athens (Hans Schwarz, The Search for God, Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1975, p. 16).
Plato in his Laws X (c. 352-350 B C ) defined two basic kinds of atheists: those who are sincerely convinced God (or gods) does not exist; and those who assert that there is no place for God (or gods) in this world. The first kind of atheist is considered moral and upright while the second kind is seen as an anarchistic (without law) threat to society.2 Socrates may have been put to death for being this second kind of atheist. Again, Schwarz notes,
...when Socrates was indicted for "impiety" in 399 B.C. on grounds that he had corrupted the young and neglected the gods during worship ceremonies ordered by the city and had introduced religious novelties, he was sentenced to death and was condemned to drink the hemlock within twenty-four hours. But Socrates' position and that of other atheists was far from being atheistic in the modern sense (ibid., p. 17).
Agnosticism
Agnosticism comes from the Greek prefix a- (no or non-) and the noun gnosis (knowledge, usually by experience). An agnostic is one who believes there is insufficient evidence to prove or disprove the existence or nonexistence of God or gods. Agnostics criticize the theist and the atheist for their dogmatism and their presumption of such knowledge.
William and Mabel Sahakian say that agnosticism "refers to a neutralist view on the question of the existence of God; it is the view of the person who elects to remain in a state of suspended judgment" (Sahakian and Sahakian, Ideas, p. 100}.
The Runes Dictionary of Phi1osophy defines agnosticism as:
l. (epist.} that theory of knowledge which asserts that it is impossible for man to attain knowledge of a certain subject-matter. 2. (theol.) that theory of religious knowledge which asserts that it is impossible for man to attain knowledge of God (Dagobert D. Runes, ed, Dictionary of Philosophy, Totowa, NJ. Littlefield, Adams 8. Company, 1960, 1962, p.&).
This is complemented by Peter Angeles' Dictionary of Phi1osophy, which defines agnosticism as:
1. The belief (a) that we cannot have knowledge of God and (b) that it is impossible to prove that God exists or does not exist. 2. Sometimes used to refer to the suspension of judgment ..about some types of knowledge such as about the soul, immortality, spirits, heaven, hell, extraterrestrial life (Peter Angeles, Dictionary of Philosophy, New York: Harper S Row, Publishers, 1981, p. 20).
There are two types of agnostics. One type says there is insufficient evidence but leaves open the possibility of sometime obtaining enough evidence to know with certainty. The second type is convinced that it is objectively impossible for anyone to ever know with certainty the existence or non-existence of God or gods.
William and Mabel Sahakian add this distinction to their definition of agnosticism (see above):
One group of Agnostics assumes that it merely lacks the facts necessary to form a judgment and defers any conclusion pending the acquisition of such facts; another group assumes a more dogmatic position, contending that facts are not available because it is impossible now (and will continue to be impossible) to obtain these facts – a view exemplified in Immanuel Kant's attacks upon the traditional arguments for the existence of God (Sahakian and Sahakian, Ideas, p. 100)
Christian authors Norman Geisler and Paul Feinberg also point out the distinction between the two kinds of agnostics:
One form of agnosticism claims that we do not know if God exists; the other insists that we cannot know. The first we'll call "soft" and the second "hard" agnosticism We are not here concerned about "soft" agnosticism, since it does not eliminate in principle the possibility of knowing whether God exists. It says in effect, "I do not know whether God exists but it is not impossible to know. I simply do not have enough evidence to make a rational decision on the question." We turn, then, to the "hard" form which claims that it is impossible to know whether God exists (Norman Geisler and Paul Feinberg, Introduction to Philosophy: A Christian Perspective, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1980, p. 296)
Skepticism
Skepticism is derived from the Latin scepticus (inquiring, reflective, doubting). The Latin in turn comes from the Greek scepsis (inquiry, hesitation, doubt). The Greeks used the word to refer to a certain school of philosophical thought, the Skeptics3 (see History below), who taught that because real knowledge is unattainable, one should suspend judgment on matters of truth. This meaning is carried in Runes' Dictionary of Phi1osophy:
A proposition about a method of obtaining knowledge: that every hypothesis should be subjected to continual testing; that the only or the best or a reliable method of obtaining the knowledge of one or more of the above kinds is to doubt until something indubitable or as nearly indubitable as possible is found; that wherever evidence is indecisive, judgment should be suspended; that knowledge of all or certain kinds at some point rests on unproved postulates or assumptions (Runes, Philosophy, p. 278).
This is confirmed by B. A. G. Fuller's A History of Philosophy, where he reminds us that the "role of skepticism is to remind men that knowing with absolute certainty is impossible" (B. A G. Fuller, A History of Philosophy, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1955, vol. II, p. 581).
Peter Angeles shows in his definition of skepticism that there is a range of belief within the system He writes that skepticism is:
l. A state of doubting. 2. A state of suspension of judgment. 3. A state of unbelief or nonbelief. Skepticism ranges from complete, total disbelief in everything, to a tentative doubt in a process of reaching certainty [Angeles, Philosophy, p. 258).
While skepticism is sometimes synonymous with certain definitions of agnosticism, other writers distinguish between skepticism and agnosticism as does Warren Young, who writes:
Skepticism carries the negative attitude a step farther than agnosticism, denying the possibility of human knowledge. Truth in an objective sense is unattainable by any means within man's reach (Warren Young, A Christian Approach to Philosophy, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1954, p.61)
Keeping in mind Geisler and Feinberg's two kinds of agnosticism (see above under the definition of agnosticism), their comments on the differences between agnosticism and skepticism are important. They write,
The skeptic neither affirms nor denies God's existence. And in contrast to the (hard) agnostic, the skeptic does not say it is impossible to know. For (hard} agnosticism too is a form of dogmatism – negative dogmatism The skeptic claims to take a much more tentative attitude toward knowledge. He is not sure whether a man can or cannot know God. In fact, the complete skeptic is not sure of anything (Geisler and Fein-berg, Philosophy, p. 299).
Because of the overlap of definitions for atheism, agnosticism, and skepticism, it is at times difficult and even unnecessary to distinguish one's usage of the terms. What is most important to remember is that most nonreligious people, while they may label themselves with one of the three terms, usually have no clear understanding of how their own views fit one category but not the others. A person may be regarded as an atheist but, in actual practice, fall under the common definition of an agnostic. Another person may be regarded as a skeptic but admit to the possibility of change to accept some universal truths. If someone questions everything, the title "skeptic" can be applied. But since certainty might be found someday it would be appropriate to be seen as an agnostic. However, if at this time that person does not believe in God, is "atheist" the proper term'. While the three terms are useful to us (as in reading other philosophy works), the terms are relatively unimportant in most personal encounters. If we can establish what someone believes about knowledge, about obtaining knowledge, and about the ultimate meaning of existence, then we can deal with that person on the level at which he is comfortable. In such a situation, the label of atheist, agnostic, or skeptic is unimportant.
History
As we look at brief histories of atheism, agnosticism, and skepticism, we will reverse our order of discussion to reflect the chronological development of these three areas of philosophical thought. There have been skeptics, atheists, and agnostics throughout the history of mankind, and we will treat skepticism first, then atheism, and finally agnosticism
Skepticism
The Greek schools of Skepticism began around 365 B.C. The first skeptic philosopher of note was Pyrrho of Elis (365-275 B.C.). The Pyrrhonic School held that skepticism was so pervasive that even their theory of skepticism was not certain. Skepticism was adopted as a way to avoid mental and emotional distress caused by conflicting data.
... the central idea of the early Skeptics was to avoid mental insecurity or doubt by abstaining from judgment on issues; suspension of judgment (epoche) became the fundamental theory of Skepticism. The policy of withholding judgment applied not only to metaphysical and logical questions, but also to value judgments pertaining to right conduct, the good, and the desirable....
The Skeptics, who were called the doubters, suspenders of judgment, and inquirers, based their philosophy on the premise that since we can know nothing of ultimate reality, then such basic things are matters of indifference to us, and they must be treated as inconsequential (William Sahakian, History of Philosophy, New York: Harper 8. Row, Publishers, 1968, pp. 48,49).
A second school of Skepticism is called Academic Skepticism, or the Middle Academy. Its leaders were Arcesilaus of Pitane in Aeolia (315-241 B.C ), Carneades of Cyrene (214-129 B.C.), and Clitomachus (187-109 B.C.). The basic premise of Academic Skepticism is summarized well by Sahakian:
The Academic Skeptics set forth the fundamental premise that they could know only one thing, namely, that nothing is knowable (ibid., pp. 49,50).
The Academics spent most of their efforts attacking the teachings of the Stoics,4 and their presentation of Skepticism was often done in direct contrast to Stoicism. Arcesilaus stated that, while one could not know, even about ethics, one could judge probability and that, in fact, one should order his life by probability. He was followed by Carneades, who postulated three degrees of probability.
l. In the first place, we have mere probability, where we act with little or no observation of similar situations to help us, and where the chances therefore are about fifty-fifty, but seem worth taking in view of what we shall gain if we win.
2. Secondly, we have undisputed probability, where empirical observation shows us that other people have repeatedly taken the same chances successfully and to their advantage, and have never lost. Here the face-value of the probable truth and reliability of an impression is backed up by all the other impressions and notions related to it.
3. Finally, we may be able to act upon chances that not only look worth taking on a fifty-fifty basis and are uncontradicted and backed up by the experiences of other people, but have been thoroughly investigated and found to have solid reasons for taking them. In other words, we may be able to discover a "system" for life's gamble that mathematically, so to speak, ought to work. Then, says Carneades, we have a basis for action that is probable, undisputed, and tested (Fuller, Philosophy, pp. 277,278}.
Clitomachus (sometimes spelled Cleitomachus) was the third leader. He attacked the three degrees of probability, opting for a more uniform system of Skepticism
Sensationalistic Skepticism was the last of the classical schools of Skepticism. Its two most prominent leaders were Aenesidemus of Gnossus (first century B.C.) and Sextus Empiricus (200 A.D.). Aenesidemus exposed what he felt were fallacious tests for truth: sensation and confirmed opinion. He felt that these were subjective tests and could not be trusted. However, he had no objective tests for truth and instead was a confirmed skeptic, viewing life and existence as uncertain but livable on the basis of custom and probability. Sextus Empiricus was a doctor, from the empiricist school of doctors, and he put forth the maxim that life should be ordered by observation, or empiricism. Loyal to skepticism, Sextus promoted the study of Socrates' remark, "All that I know is that I know nothing." Sextus set forth his skepticism as follows:
The arche, or motive, for skepticism was the hope of reaching ataraxia, the state of "unperturbedness." .. Sextus Empiricus' skepticism had three stages: antithesis, epode (suspension of judgment), and ataraxia. The first stage involved a presentation of contradictory claims about the same subject. These claims were so constructed that they were in opposition to one another, and appeared equally probable or improbable.... The second state is epode, or the suspension of judgment. Instead of either asserting or denying any one claim about the subject at hand, one must embrace all mutually inconsistent claims and withhold judgment on each of them The final stage is ataraxia, a state of unperturbedness, happiness, and peace of mind. When that occurs one is freed from dogmatism. He can live peacefully and un-dogmatically in the world, following his natural inclinations and the laws or customs of society (Geisler and Feinberg, Philosophy, pp. 85, 86).
Skepticism died out for the most part during the ascendancy of Christianity. It did not become a noticeable philosophical movement again until the post-Reformation period of western European thought with Bishop John Wilkins (1614-1672) and Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680). They are sometimes called "mitigated skeptics." While clinging tenaciously to one area of skepticism, they compromised by not embracing skepticism as the answer to all knowledge problems in all fields. They distinguished between two types of knowledge. The first type, which they agreed was unreliable, was called "in-fallibly certain knowledge." Nothing, in other words, could be known infallibly and certainly. However, the second type of knowledge, by which one could order life, was called "indubitably certain knowledge." This was knowledge that one had no reason, experience, evidence, or report by which to doubt its veracity. Using this knowledge, Wilkins and Glanvill developed their own system of determining truth within the limits of "reasonable doubt."
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) wrote at the same time as Wilkins and Glanvill, although he is not considered to be a "mitigated skeptic." As a Christian theist, he used skepticism as a tool to prove the existence of God. Rather than seeing skepticism as an end in itself, he saw it as the way to begin to show the undeniability of the existence of God.
For Descartes, skepticism was not the conclusion of some argument, but the method whereby all doubt could be overcome. Descartes claimed that it is possible to arrive at indubitable knowledge through the rigorous and systematic application of doubt to one's beliefs (ibid., p. 91) .
From the time of Descartes, the majority of such thinkers have been atheists or agnostics. We will treat some of these skeptical thinkers more thoroughly in the historical sections on atheism and agnosticism. However, we will mention them briefly here.
David Hume (1711-1776) is known as a metaphysical5 skeptic. He believed that it was impossible to have any accurate knowledge about anything metaphysical. He pointed out that standards of probability for beliefs go beyond our immediate experience and must be accepted with some measure of faith.
Nicholas Horvath in his book, Philosophy, explains that: Hume claimed that only sense-knowledge based on experience is possible. Ideas are mere copies of sense impressions. Impressions and ideas constitute the human intellect. Ideas are not entirely unconnected; there is a bond of union between them and one calls up another. This phenomenon is called association of ideas.
Neither material nor spiritual substances exist in reality; their ideas are purely imaginative concepts, being nothing other than a constant association of impressions. Likewise there is nothing in man's experience that justifies a notion of necessary connection or causation; cause and effect designate merely a regular succession of ideas. Since the principle of causality is mere expectation due to custom, no facts outside consciousness are known to man.
Granted the negation of substance, the existence of God and the immortality of the human soul are only hypothetical. Freedom of will is an illusion; virtue is that which pleases, and vice is that which displeases (Nicholas A. Horvath, Phi1osophy, Woodbury, NY: Barron's Educational Series, Inc., 1974, pp. 88,89).
More recently, A. J. Ayer (1910-1970), a limited skeptic, taught that any talk about metaphysics is meaningless. In addition, Albert Camus (1913-1960), one of the most important of all the so-called "irrational" skeptics, asserted that there is no meaning, no knowledge that is objectively true, and no objective value. The entire history of skepticism has the same basic theme. It suspends judgment about truth. At various times skeptics have said that even their statement of skepticism is doubtful. At other times they have said that the one non-skeptical statement is the same statement, that skepticism is doubtful.
Atheism
Although the term atheism as a reference to the belief that God (or gods) does (do) not exist dates from the late sixteenth century, Niccolo Machiavelli (d 1527) had already promoted a social ethic which did not depend on belief in, or the existence of, a supreme God. In his satirical essay, The Prince, he taught that the ruler ought to rule wisely and justly in order to secure his position and to satisfy his ego, rather than to satisfy some divine mandate. Machiavelli was one of the first to champion the then novel idea that "the end justifies the means." He argued that a ruler should not burden his subjects too much, not because it would be morally wrong to do so, but because it would not be expedient, for his oppressed subjects would then be more likely to revolt, depose him, and perhaps even kill him for his cruelty. Although Machiavelli cannot be termed an actual atheist, his system for successful governorship does not depend on, or presuppose, any divine order to this world.
Ideas from many philosophers, not all of whom were actually atheists, helped shape the atheistic philosophy of today.
During the enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Baron P H. T. d'Holbach referred to an atheist as
a man who destroys the dreams and chimerical beings that are dangerous to the human race so that men can be brought back to nature, to experience, and to reason (Enclyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, et. al. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1978, Macropaedia, II, p. 2,59).
As a brief and circumscribed overview of the history of atheism, we will review some of the contributions to modern atheism made by Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Comte, Nietzsche, Jaspers, and Sartre. Ideas from philosophers such as Bayle, Spinoza, Fichte, and Hume, although not mentioned here, also contributed to the development of modern atheistic thought.
Georg W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) was the man whose writings became an inspiration for the modern atheistic movement. He was one of the first prominent philosophers to advance the idea that God6 was dependent upon the world at least as much as the world was dependent upon God. He said that without the world God is not God. In some way, God needed His creation. This was the first step in saying that, since God was not sufficient in Himself, He was then unnecessary and ultimately imaginary.
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) was an early prominent atheistic philosopher. He denied all supernaturalism and attributed all talk about God to talk about nature. Man, he said, is dependent not on God, but on nature. Feuerbach promoted what is sometimes referred to as the wish-fulfillment idea of God He postulated that the idea of God arose as a result of men desiring to have some sort of supernatural Being as an explanation for their own existence and the events they observed around them This wish, or desire, was the seed from which the God-myth grew. Feuerbach thought this hypothesis proved that God actually did not exist.
Hegel and Feuerbach strongly influenced Karl Marx (1818-1883) and his collaborator, Frederich Engels (1820-1895). Marx, an avowed atheist, preached that religion is the opiate of the people and the enemy of all progress. Part of the task of the great proletariat revolution is the destruction of all religion.
Auguste Comte (1798-1857) was an early contemporary of Marx and Engels. He believed that God was an irrelevant superstition. As a result, Comte divided human development into three main stages:
"the Theological, or fictitious," "the Metaphysical, or ab-stract" and the Scientific, or positive." In the first the human mind looks for first causes and "supposes all phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings." The second is a transitional stage where the mind searches for "abstract forces" behind phenomena. But in the third and ultimate stage man's mind applies itself to the scientific study of the laws according to which things work. God and the supernatural are left behind as irrelevant superstition (Colin Brown, Phi1osophy and the Christian Faith, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968, pp. 241, 142).
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is often called the Father of the Death of God School. He laid the cornerstone for later nihilists by teaching that since God does not exist, man must devise his own way of life.
Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1971} were two prominent existentialist thinkers who discussed the ambiguous (and therefore meaningless) nature of religious transcendence. In addition, Heidegger stressed that one's salvation lay in his own independence as an individual separated from every other individual, including, of course, any sort of God.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1981} was the most popular proponent of existentialism. He argued that man not only creates his own destiny, but that each man has only himself as the sole justification for his existence. There is no ultimate, objective, eternal meaning to life. An individual simply exists without reference to others.
A good example of atheistic perspective is contained in the Humanist Manifesto (1933). It was composed and signed by leading secular humanists who declared, in part, that "Humanism is faith in the supreme value and selfperfectability of human personality " Although there have been many other important thinkers in the history of atheism, these are representative of the most influential contributors shaping modern atheistic thought. Other modern atheistic thinkers are discussed in some of the references mentioned in the bibliography.
Agnosticism
Although agnosticism is a very broad field, we have chosen to limit our historical discussion of it to three of the most influential philosophers in its recent expressions. As we stated before, there is some overlap among atheism, agnosticism and skepticism, and many of the philosophers important in the development of one are also important to the others.
David Hume (1711-1776}, known for promoting metaphysical skepticism, showed the close marriage between skepticism and agnosticism. As a British Empiricist, he declared that the probabilistic standards for beliefs go beyond our immediate experience. We act on faith, then, not on knowledge. We do not know for sure: we are agnostic. However, we still act, having chosen to trust faith while at the same time being prepared for faith to let us down. Belief is not to be confused with ultimate truth, which is unknowable.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), although a theist, developed Hume's skepticism into metaphysical agnosticism. He believed it was impossible to know reality and consequently impossible to know metaphysical reality.
Colin Brown credits T. H. Huxley (1825-1895) with the term agnostic.
The word agnosticism is of much more recent coinage. It is generally ascribed to T. H. Huxley, the Victorian scientist and friend of Charles Darwin, who devised it to describe his own state of mind. He used it, not to deny God altogether, but to express doubt as to whether knowledge could be attained, and to protest ignorance on 'a great many things that the-ists and the-ites about me professed to be familiar with' (ibid., p. 132) .
Hume, Kant and Huxley represent a short history of contemporary agnosticism, which is distinguished by its assertion that one cannot know. Other prominent agnostics include Charles Darwin and Bertrand Russell.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Karl Marx: Religion Detach Self Human being
Marx alone believe that capitalistic society it is true offer the happening of human being itself realization, but that thing is only happened to some people and non for all society. Marx later offer what referred as with communist society that in communist society each individual will enjoy active life, rich, and have a meaning of; even that thing are barbed coexisted, however itself realization remain to be enabled.
In alienation context, Marx differentiate at least there is three things which must be referred as by when people converse about alienation or detached that is alienation as no realize itself, as no autonomous and alienation related to role of capital to the labor. But here I will only try to comprehend detached deeper which confessed by Marx as alienation because no itself realization. Told by Marx that in religion there no forms realize itself truthfully. This matter because in human being religion shall only bow and unopened to be dialogued giving possibility for every individual to express itself. Religion do not develop man innermost intact, because human being only depend on sham authority which created its own.
According to Marx religion which only can punish his, surely capitalist clan creation religion to grind and lay down small people with pious doctrine. Where in that doctrine of people obliged by pious life processed heavy asceticism and accept grief voluntarily to be can win the day in heaven. Here Marx sees that that thing is only representing society creation, is specially referred as by Marx: power society, to strengthen its power hegemony to small society which led it
But in fact what becoming concern of Marx? Clear that Marx see in such religion action of people very depend on its own creation. Human being is not autonomous. Human being have to at one's feet of rule which have made of own. This can be explained like in course of production. Marx says that in course of production every worker will within call goods which is making of, so that he spatially can touch and treating him. But when that goods change hands, the worker shall no longer in command to the goods. In religion, according to Marx, when human being above the ground as free creature – without religion- he spatially can make order, sanction, rites and others; but when he enter and start to believe a[n religion, human being then bow with made rites and order it own. At the time of that's detached human being from his self. Human being throw itself go out and bow to the its own creation, which none other than beautiful shadow from creature which suffering, longing authority protecting it, but that happened exactly on the contrary that that authority progressively handcuff and add its grief.
Despitefully also, Marx see that religion give exemption grind namely with surrenderness attitude. This referred as by Marx as nature of fetishism referred at material object having the power of supernatural. Marx says that that religion fetishism emerge when illusion in life lifted to become doctrine which will do not want to peremptory by each individual. This Fetishism will bear what referred as by Marx as ‘sham expectation of oppressed people.’ Religion Fetishism makes society unable to make a move spatially to free itself from poorness clutch. This which progressively settle confidence of Marx mentioning religion is not other as society opium.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Life and Work
Sartre, Jean Paul (1905-80), French philosopher, dramatist, novelist, and political journalist, who was a leading exponent of existentialism.
Sartre was born in Paris, June 21, 1905, and educated at the Écôle Normale Supérieure in Paris, the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and the French Institute in Berlin. He taught philosophy at various lycées from 1929 until the outbreak of World War II, when he was called into military service. In 1940-41 he was imprisoned by the Germans; after his release, he taught in Neuilly, France, and later in Paris, and was active in the French Resistance. The German authorities, unaware of his underground activities, permitted the production of his antiauthoritarian play The Flies (1943; trans. 1946) and the publication of his major philosophic work Being and Nothingness (1943; trans. 1953). Sartre gave up teaching in 1945 and founded the political and literary magazine Les Temps Modernes, of which he became editor in chief. Sartre was active after 1947 as an independent Socialist, critical of both the USSR and the United States in the so-called cold war years. Later, he supported Soviet positions but still frequently criticized Soviet policies. Most of his writing of the 1950s deals with literary and political problems. Sartre rejected the 1964 Nobel Prize in literature, explaining that to accept such an award would compromise his integrity as a writer. Sartre's philosophic works combine the phenomenology of the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, the metaphysics of the German philosophers G. W. F. Hegel and Martin Heidegger, and the social theory of Karl Marx into a single view called existentialism. This view, which relates philosophical theory to life, literature, psychology, and political action, stimulated so much popular interest that existentialism became a worldwide movement.
Critique of Dialectical Reason
In his later philosophic work Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960; trans. 1976), Sartre's emphasis shifted from existentialist freedom and subjectivity to Marxist social determinism. Sartre argued that the influence of modern society over the individual is so great as to produce serialization, by which he meant loss of self. Individual power and freedom can only be regained through group revolutionary action. Despite this exhortation to revolutionary political activity, Sartre himself did not join the Communist party, thus retaining the freedom to criticize the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. He died in Paris, April 15, 1980.
Other Writings
Sartre's other works include the novels Nausea (1938; trans. 1949) and the unfinished series Les chemins de la liberté (The Roads of Liberty), comprising The Age of Reason (1945; trans. 1947), The Reprieve (1945; trans. 1947), and Troubled Sleep (1949; trans. 1951); the biography of the controversial French writer Jean Genet, Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952; trans. 1952); the plays No Exit (1944; trans. 1946), The Respectful Prostitute (1946; trans. 1947), and The Condemned of Altona (1959; trans. 1961); his autobiography, The Words (1964; trans. 1964); and a biography of the French author Gustave Flaubert (3 vol., 1971-72).
Monday, April 13, 2009
Life and His Work
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian physician and founder of psychoanalysis. Through his skill as a scientist, physician, and writer, he created an entirely new approach to the understanding of human personality by bringing together ideas prevalent at the time, along with his own observation and study, into a major theory of psychology. Most importantly, he applied these ideas to medical practice in the treatment of mental disorders. These newly created psychotherapy treatments and procedures, many of which in modified form are applied today, were based on his understanding of unconscious thought processes and their relationship to neurotic symptoms. Regarded with scepticism at the time, Freud’s ideas have waxed and waned in acceptance ever since. Nevertheless, he remains regarded as one of the greatest creative minds of the 20th century.
Freud was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Freiberg, Moravia (now Pribor in the Czech Republic) on May 6, 1856. When he was three years old, the family was forced to flee riots that characterized the strong anti-Semitic feeling that prevailed within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After a brief period in Leipzig the family settled in Vienna, where Freud remained for most of his life. At school the young Freud was at first drawn towards study of the law, but on reading the work of Charles Darwin he became intrigued by the rapidly developing sciences of the day. Especially inspired by the scientific investigations of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, he decided to become a medical student based on his having heard Goethe’s essay on nature read aloud shortly before he left school.
Freud’s medical education began in Vienna in 1873 when he was 17. At 20, he was drawn to further study of the central nervous system under the tutelage of the German neurologist Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke. This delayed his graduation in medicine until 1881, by which time he was 25 and had also completed a year of compulsory military service. He remained at the university as a demonstrator in the physiology laboratory continuing his wide-ranging studies, which included researches into the drug cocaine, and the condition of cerebral palsy. He explored the neurophysiology of aphasia and agnosia, terms he applied to the neurological disorders of communication and recognition. Largely at von Brücke’s insistence, Freud relinquished his research interests temporarily to gain clinical experience in psychiatry, dermatology, and nervous diseases, as resident physician to the General Hospital of Vienna. After three years he was to return to the university, where he was appointed lecturer in neuropathology.
His contributions included The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1902), Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious (1905), Three Essays on Sexuality (1905), Totem and Taboo (1913), New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933), in which he added further revisions to his theory, The Ego and the Id (1923), and Moses and Monotheism (1939).
Once again threatened with religious persecution, renewed as a result of the German annexation of Austria in 1938, Freud escaped with his family to England. He died in London on September 23, 1939.
Freud’s ideas have stood the test of time. They are revisited by other schools of psychology and neuroscience as these various disciplines attempt to refine our still uncertain understanding of human mental processes. Despite their opposition, Adler and Jung and other successors further studied and modified many of his concepts. These concepts are fundamental to so many of the variants of psychoanalysis now in existence, and have evolved with it.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Modern Atheism: Feuerbach, Freud dan Sartre
Sangkal Jika Anda Bisa!!!!
Tesis: ”Tiga bentuk ateisme filosofis modern paling utama adalah yang diajukan oleh Feuerbach, Freud dan Sartre. Menurut Feuerbach, agama hanyalah proyeksi diri manusia yang terasing daripadanya. Menurut Freud, agama itu sebuah neurosis kolektif umat manusia, Menurut Sartre, Tuhan tidak bisa ada karena kalau Tuhan ada, manusia tidak lagi bebas”.
Feuerbach: agama hanyalah proyeksi diri manusia yang terasing daripadanya.
Titik tolak pemikirannya: kritik atas pandangan Hegel bahwa di balik pikiran dan tindakan manusia, ‘roh semesta’ mencapai tujuannya; bahwa meski manusia berpikir dan bertindak sesuai seleranya, meskipun ia bebas dan mandiri, akan tetapi melalui kemandirian itu, roh semesta menyatakan diri.
Sebaliknya bagi Feuerbach, bukan manusia itu hasil pikiran Allah, melainkan Allah adalah hasil pikiran manusia; manusia inderawi tidak dapat dibantah, sedangkan roh semesta hanya berada sebagai objek pmikiran manusia. Jadi bukan Allah yang menciptakan manusia melainkan Allah adalah ciptaan angan-angan manusia. Manusia inderawi tidak dapat dibantah, sedangkan roh semesta hanya berada sebagai objek pikiran manusia. Agama hanya sebuah proyeksi manusia; Allah, malaikat, surga, neraka tidak nyata pada dirinya, hanya angan-angan manusia tentang hakikatnya sendiri. Agama tidak lebih dari proyeksi hakikat manusia.
Agama adalah penyembahan manusia atas ciptaannya sendiri, namun tidak disadarinya sebagai itu. Ciptaan dan angan-angannya itu dianggapnya sebagai eksistensi yang ada pada dirinya, yang disembahnya, ditakuti, dihormati sebagai Allah. Demikianlah agama merupakan keterasingan manusia dari dirinya sendiri. Karena manusia menjadi takut, ia seakan-akan menjadi lumpuh; ia tidak berusaha untuk mewujudkan diri sendiri sesuai dengan gambarannya itu. Dari pada merealisasikan hakikatnya, ia secara pasif mengharapkan berkah daripadanya.
Karena itu menurut Feuerbuch, manusia hanya dapat mengakhiri kerterasingannya dan menjadi diri sendiri apabila ia meniadakan agama; ia harus menarik agama ke dalam dirinya. Teologi harus menjadi antropologi.
Freud: agama itu sebuah neurosis kolektif umat manusia.
Neurosis: kelakuan-kelakuan dan perasaan-perasaan yang aneh dalam arti tidak sesuai dengan kenyataan yang dihadapi. Misalnya orang tidak bisa berkomunikasi dengan normal, takut tanpa alasan.
Freud tidak mempersoalkan apakah ada Tuhan atau tidak. Baginya jelas bahwa Tuhan tidak ada; yang ada adalah alam dan manusia dan segala masalahnya. Yang menjadi pertanyaan Freud adalah: mengapa gagasan tentang Tuhan sedemikian menguasai kesadaran dan kehidupan manusia, padahal Tuhan tidak dapat dilihat ataupun dirasakan.
Agama menurut kodrat psikologisnya merupakan ilusi. Melalui agama, manusia mau melindungi diri terhadap macam-macam ancaman dan penderitaan. Namun perlindungan itu ilusi: dewa-dewa bukan sungguih-sungguh ada dan melindungi manusia, tetapi hanya diinginkan manusia untuk melindunginya [mirip sikap umat Israel kuno yang percaya dan menyembah dewa baal, yang tidak ada pada dirinya]. Keyakinan bahwa suatu harapan akan terpenuhi, bukan karena kenyataan mendukung harapan itu, melainkan karena orang menginginkannya.
Agama itu nerosis kolektif, maksudnya: bahwa setiap individu biasanya beragama karena ia menjadi besar, mengalami sosialisasi dasar dalam masyarakat yang sudah beragama, maka ia mempercayai dan menghayati agamanya seperti ia mempercayai dan menghayati semua unsur lain pandangan dunia masyarakatnya.
Akan tetapi sebagai gejala sosial, agama sama dengan neurosis sekelompok orang. Mereka melakukan perintah Allah dan menghindari dosa karena takut akan Allah – ‘Ayah super’ yang sekaligus dicintai dan ditakuti. Manusia menyikapi keinginan yang dirasakannya bukan karena pertimbangan yang masuk akal, melainkan karena ia merasa dilarang Tuhan. Yang khas bagi neurosis adalah ketakutan. Orang beragama berfokus pada aturan ritual yang detail supaya tidak masuk neraka, agar tidak berdosa dan karena itu tidak dihukum, jadi bukan atas pertimbangan absah-tidak absah. Demikianlah agama menggagalkan kemungkinan manusia untuk mengembangkan diri dan mencapai tingkat kebahagiaan yang sebenarnya.
Sartre: Tuhan tidak bisa ada karena kalau Tuhan ada, manusia tidak lagi bebas. Sartre yakin bahwa “manusia bertanggung jawab atas diri sendiri”, artinya ia sendirilah yang membentuk dirinya senidiri. “Manusia bukan lain hanyalah apa yang diciptakannya sendiri. Itulah prinsip pertama eksistensialisme Sartre”. Nah, percaya kepada Allah sama dengan menyangkal tanggung jawab itu; sebab yang bertanggung jawab sekarang adalah Allah, bukan dirinya sendiri. Manusia tidak lagi bebas, Allahlah yang menciptakan manusia dan bertanggung jawab bagaimana manusia berkembang dan bertindak. Sikap itu tidak jujur karena sebetulnya manusia tahu bahwa dialah yang bertanggung jawab. Selama manusia percaya kepada Allah ia tidak bisa menjadi dirinya sendiri, ia tidak otentik- artinya manusia adalah ketiadaan.
Keyakinan bahwa adanya Allah menghancurkan kebebasan manusia berkaitan dengan pengertian Sartre tentang manusia. Ia membedakan dua kenyataan: berada pada dirinya sendiri (etre en soi) dan berada bagi dirinya sendiri (etre pour soi). Yang pertama adalah realitas pada objektif; yang kedua adalah kesadaran diri yang hanya bisa ada sebai penolakan terhadap berada pada dirinya sendiri. Manusia dalah sang berada bagi dirinya sendiri, artinya ia tidak mempunyai hakekat yang pasti, ia menemukan dirinya terlempar ke dalam eksistensi. Manusia adalah “satu-satunya makhluk yang eksistensinya mendahului esensinya”. Ia sama sekali bebas, sama sekali tidak terdeterminasi. Tidak ada sebuah realitas dari luar yang padanya manusia bersandar, yang padanya manusia mencari orientasi moral. Jelas bahwa dengan kebebasan radikal itu, manusia akan gagal dalam usaha menemukan diri apabila ada Allah.
Kalau tidak ada Allah (yang Mahakuasa), semuanya boleh; tidak ada penentuan sebelumnya, manusia bebas. Kalau hakikat manusia adalah kebebasan total sebagai ada bagi dirinya sendiri, adanya Allah mesti merupakan sebuah kerangka acuan yang tidak dapat diabaikan dan dengan demikian manusia tidak lagi bebas.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Karl Marx: Agama Mengasingkan Diri Manusia
Marx sendiri meyakini bahwa masyarakat kapitalistik memang menawarkan terjadinya realisasi diri manusia, tetapi hal itu hanya terjadi bagi segelintir orang dan bukan bagi seluruh masyarakat. Marx kemudian menawarkan apa yang disebut dengan masyarakat komunis bahwa dalam masyarakat komunis setiap inidividu akan menikmati kehidupan yang aktif, kaya, dan bermakna; kendati hal itu berkait dengan hidup bersama, akan tetapi realisasi diri tetap dimungkinkan.
Dalam konteks alienasi, Marx membedakan setidaknya ada tiga hal yang harus disebut ketika orang berbicara tentang alienasi atau keterasingan yaitu alienasi sebagai tiadanya realisasi diri, sebagai tiadanya otonomi dan alienasi yang berkaitan dengan peran modal atas tenaga kerja. Namun di sini saya hanya akan mencoba memahami lebih dalam keterasingan yang diakui oleh Marx sebagai alienasi karena ketiadaan realsasi diri. Dikatakan oleh Marx bahwa dalam agama tidak ada bentuk realisasi diri yang sesungguhnya. Hal ini karena dalam agama manusia hanya boleh tunduk dan tidak terbuka bagi dialog yang memberikan kemungkinan bagi setiap individu untuk mengekspresikan dirinya. Agama tidak mengembangkan jati diri manusia secara utuh, karena manusia hanya tergantung pada otoritas semu yang diciptakannya sendiri.
Menurut Marx agama yang hanya mampu menghukum pemeluknya, pastilah agama ciptaan kaum kapitalis untuk menindas dan ‘meninabobokan’ orang-orang kecil dengan doktrin-doktrin kesalehan. Di mana dalam doktrin itu orang diharuskan hidup saleh dengan olah tapa yang berat dan menerima penderitaan dengan sukarela agar dapat memperoleh kemenangan di surga. Di sini Marx melihat bahwa hal itu hanya merupakan ciptaan masyarakat, khususnya disebut oleh Marx: masyarakat penguasa, untuk memperkuat hegemoni kekuasaannya terhadap masyarakat kecil yang dipimpinnya.
Tapi sebenarnya apa yang menjadi keprihatinan Marx? Jelas bahwa Marx melihat dalam tindakan agama semacam itu orang sangat tergantung pada ciptaannya sendiri. Manusia tidak otonom. Manusia harus tunduk pada ketentuan-ketentuan yang telah dibuatnya sendiri. Hal mana dapat dijelaskan seperti dalam proses produksi. Marx mengatakan bahwa dalam proses produksi setiap pekerja akan sangat dekat barang yang sedang dibuatnya, sehingga ia dengan leluasa dapat menyentuh dan memperlakukannya. Tetapi ketika barang itu berpindah tangan, sang pekerja itu tidak lagi berkuasa atas barang itu. Dalam agama, menurut Marx, ketika manusia masih hidup sebagai makhluk yang bebas –tanpa agama- ia dengan leluasa dapat membuat aturan-aturan, sanksi, ritus dan lain-lain; tetapi ketika ia masuk dan mulai meyakini suatu agama, manusia kemudian tunduk dengan aturan dan ritus yang dibuatnya sendiri. Pada saat itulah manusia terasing dari dirinya sendiri. Manusia melemparkan dirinya keluar dan tunduk atas ciptaannya sendiri, yang tidak lain adalah bayangan-bayangan indah dari makhluk yang menderita, yang merindukan otoritas yang melindunginya, tetapi yang terjadi justru sebaliknya bahwa otoritas itu semakin membelenggu dan menambah penderitaannya.
Di samping itu juga, Marx melihat bahwa agama memberikan pembebasan dari penindasan yakni dengan sikap pasrah. Inilah yang disebut oleh Marx sebagai sifat fetisisme dengan merujuk pada benda-benda material yang memiliki kekuatan supranatural. Marx mengatakan bahwa fetisisme agama itu muncul ketika ilusi-ilusi dalam kehidupan diangkat menjadi doktrin yang mau tidak mau harus ditaati oleh setiap individu. Fetisisme ini akan melahirkan apa yang disebut oleh Marx sebagai ‘harapan semu orang tertindas.’ Fetisisme agama membuat masyarakat tidak mampu bergerak dengan leluasa untuk membebaskan dirinya dari cengkeraman kemiskinan. Ini yang semakin memantapkan keyakinan Marx yang menyebut agama tidak lain sebagai candu masyarakat.
Karl Marx: Agama sebagai Candu Masyarakat
Bagi Marx, agama merupakan medium dari ilusi sosial. Dalam agama tidak ada pendasaran yang real-objektif bagi manusia untuk mengabdi pada kekuasaan supranatural. Ia justru melihat bahwa agama tidak berkembang karena ada kesadaran dari manusia akan pembebasan sejati namun karena kondisi yang diciptakan oleh orang-orang yang memiliki kuasa untuk melanggengkan kekuasaannya. Propaganda inilah yang disebutnya sebagai candu bagi masyarakat. Berkaitan dengan hal ini Marx mengkritik agama Kristen yang telah mempropagandakan etika ketertundukan. Dalam etika ketertundukan itu manusia hanya bisa tunduk terhadap segala aturan yang dilegitimasi sebagai aturan dari Allah. Manusia pasif dan menerima penderitaan sebagai karunia, sebagai sarana untuk mencapai kebahagiaan kekal. Ini mengindikasikan bahwa manusia akhirnya hanya bisa menerima penderitaannya tak berbuat apa-apa. Justru sikap tunduk inilah yang menguntungkan kaum kapitalis yang nota bene menguasai roda perekonomian. Dalam konteks ini Marx melihat bahwa agama adalah ekspresi langsung dari kelas yang berkepentingan, kelas yang dominan secara ekonomi bahkan politik yaitu kelas kapitalis.
Untuk itulah, Marx mengusulkan lahirnya masyarakat komunis. Dalam masyarakat komunis ini tidak ada lagi bentuk-bentuk penindasan kelas satu terhadap yang lain. Untuk mencapai cita-cita masyarakat komunis itu –yang dipandang olehnya sebagai suatu penghapusan stratifikasi sosial dalam masyarakat- agama harus sepi. Artinya agama harus dipinggirkan dan tidak mendominasi kehidupan masyarakat.
Kritik agama yang dilancarkan oleh Marx di atas sebenarnya merupakan langkah awal atau sebagai ‘pintu gerbang’ untuk memasuki wilayah kritik masyarakat. Bagi Marx, kritik agama tidak akan mengubah keadaan manusia yang menderita. Yang dibutuhkan adalah kritik masyarakat, agar agama tidak lahir. Dengan demikian, dapat dikatakan di sini bahwa kritik surga menjadi kritik dunia, kritik agama menjadi kritik hukum, dan kritik teologi menjadi kritik politik
Karl Marx: Agama Sebagai Instrumen Penindasan
Karl Marx menjelaskan bahwa tidak ada alasan lain bagi siapa pun bahwa orang harus menganut agama karena penderitaan dan penindasan. Keyakinan Marx ini, berangkat dari kritik agama Feurbach yaitu bahwa agama adalah institusi alienatif. Berangkat dari hal ini, Marx yakin bahwa orang menganut agama karena orang tersebut mengalami penderitaan dan penindasan dalam hidupnya. Penindasan yang dipahami oleh Marx adalah suatu perilaku eksploitatif-ekonomistik, di mana manusia dijadikan objek yang bisa dimanfaatkan untuk kepentingan tertentu. Marx yakin bahwa orang jatuh dalam kemiskinan karena tindakan-tindakan penindasan kepada mereka. Hal ini paling nyata dilakukan oleh para kapitalis. Dengan kata lain, kemiskinan itu disebabkan oleh struktur-struktur ekonomi masyarakat yang menindas, yang diciptakan oleh para kapitalis demi memperbesar modal mereka.
Berhadapan dengan struktur-struktur yang menindas dan memiskinan itu, orang tidak bisa berbuat lain kecuali pasrah dan akhirnya bersimpuh di hadapan Tuhan yang diciptakannya sendiri. Inilah yang disebut oleh Marx sebagai alienasi bahwa dalam agama alienasi itu terjadi karena manusia tunduk dan berada di bawah entitas suci yang diciptakannya sendiri. Dengan menciptakan Tuhan, dengan sendirinya manusia merendahkan martabatnya sendiri sehingga ia semakin asing dengan dirinya sendiri. Dengan demikian, agama tidak lain adalah instrumen penindas yang diciptakan manusia sendiri.
Berangkat dari perihal di atas, Marx kemudian menjelaskan bagaimana usaha agama untuk melestarikan diri. Agar dapat tetap exist, agama akan melanggengkan kemiskinan, kesengsaraan, dan perbudakan. Sehingga baginya agama hanya akan berakhir ketika kondisi-kondisi yang diperlukan untuk survivenya –kesengsaraan, kekuasaan kelas, eksploitasi komoditas- dihilangkan. Lalu muncul pertanyaan mengapa setiap masyarakat mempunyai agama? Marx menanggapinya demikian bahwa agama mendukung dan melayani kepentingan tertentu yang terkait denga dominasi kelas dan penundukan kelas. Dia menyebutkan bahwa agama dari sudut sosialitasnya adalah rengekan golongan masyarakat yang tertindas, sehingga baginya agama tidak lain adalah candu masyarakat.
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