Читать реферат по английскому: "Ontological And Cosmological Arguments Essay Research Paper" Страница 3

(Назад) (Cкачать работу)

Most humans are religious and generally speaking older people are more religious than younger people are. Why do people turn to religion? There are many different answers given to this question. Some do it for giving guidance to their lives. For others, it gives them hope, or gives them rationalization for the lack of justice in this world. Others turn to religion as a kind of irresponsible reaction to a world we cannot cope with. This reaction is similar to a child’s unwillingness to give up an illusion of security that he or she should have outgrown in adolescence. Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud were critical of religion and believed it to be an obstacle to man’s self-determination and self-realization. Their basic idea was that humans invented religion to escape their intolerable social conditions. I do not believe in their premise because religion gives humans an understanding of their purpose in this world. Religion keeps people sane and makes them believe in the order of things.

The basis of Marx’s religious criticism is that man makes religion; and that religion does not make man. It is the man that is the human world, a state, society. This state, this society, produces religion, which is an inverted world consciousness, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this upside-down world. It gives the world its logic, its spiritual guidance, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its general basis of consolation and justification. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly a struggle against the world whose spiritual aroma is religion. According to Marx, religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and protest against real suffering. (Pg.347). Marx advocated that the abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. He was appalled at the masses flocking to religion. He said, “it is clear that the arm of criticism cannot replace the criticism of arms.” Material force can only be overthrown by material force; but theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses. Theory is capable of seizing the masses when it demonstrates ad hominem and it is demonstrate ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. (Pg.348).

Marx’s criticism of religion ends with the thought that man is the Supreme Being for man. This thought desires to overthrow all those conditions in which man is an “abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being – conditions which can hardly be better described than in the exclamation of the Frenchman on the occasion of a proposed tax upon dogs: Wretched dogs! They want to treat you like men!” (Pg.348).

Friedrich Nietzsche was another critique of religion. He called the “Bible,” the book that is perhaps the greatest audacity and “sin against the spirit” which literary Europe has on its conscience. (Pg.348). According to him the Christian conception of God – God as god of the sick, God as a spider, God as spirit – is one of the most corrupt conceptions of the divine ever attained on earth. Not surprisingly, Nietzsche saw the decline of Christianity and religion in general, with great enthusiasm. It is Nietzsche who popularized the old Lutheran phase, “God is dead,” but with an anti-religious twist and a shout of delight that declared open war on all remaining forms of religious “weaknesses.” (Pg.349). This call for “God is dead,” was based on the belief that the Christian God had become unworthy of belief. Many philosophers and “free spirits” felt redemption in this event.

Another person to attack religion was Sigmund Freud, who reduced the grand aspirations of religion to, mere illusions, but, even worse, the illusions of an insecure child who has never properly grown up. According to him, religious ideas are given out as teachings, are not precipitates of experience or end results of thinking; they are illusions, fulfillment’s of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind. An illusion is not the same thing as an error; nor is it necessarily an error. What is characteristic of illusion is that they are derived from human wishes. In this respect they come near to psychiatric delusions. He called a belief an illusion when a wish-fulfillment is a prominent factor in its motivation, and in doing so we disregard its relations to reality, just as the illusion itself sets no store by verification.

All three philosophers agree that the only proper concern of man is humanity. They believe in man and not God. These philosophers did not outright hate religion. Freud was fascinated by Jewish mysticism and Nietzsche offered extravagant praise of Buddhism. But they felt that the balance is very important. They argue that no one can deny that there have been thousands of atrocities – to both spirit and body – in the name of religion.

I believe that religion has taught humans to behave like a man. The self-determination and self-realization of man is not hindered by religion. If people did not believe in God, there might be lessening of good deeds. For some, realization of god is like self-realization. Many peoples in the east believe in re-incarnation and believe that soul never dies. For them this gives continuity to life as a chain of things. These people want to believe in God and immerse themselves in God.

Похожие работы