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Introduction Introduction A The Death of God In 1882, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche announced the death of God. That announcement was made by a lunatic who declared that he was seeking God and shouted the truth in the marketplace to the mockery of the masses: “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him – you and I. All of us are his murderers, […] Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead, God remains dead. And we have killed him”.1 Even though the lunatic here – like Nietzsche himself – declares that he is ahead of his time, the news of the death of God found fertile ground. It reflect- ed a wave of criticism and attacks against religion, which started appearing on all sides in the Western world in the 19th century and increased in the 20th. The criticism of the German philosopher and anthropologist Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) was central. It saw God as the product of man, solely a projection of human features, and religion – as the objectification of human needs.2 Ac- cording to Feuerbach, religion indirectly includes the dreams and visions of individuals and cultures, and is the fruit of a self image of humanity in ideal terms. As such, it is a profound expression of the human spirit. Yet, religion is to be stripped of its theological identity, that is, of its definition as a discipline de- voted to divine research, or else it alienates man from himself by depriving him of the best in him and attributing it to God. But Feuerbach preserved a certain positive anthropological value for religion, while other criticisms went further. One of the most important of them, leading to atheism, is the ideological criti- cism of Karl Marx (1818–1883).3 Marx saw religion as a perverse awareness of 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. with commentary Walter Kaufmann, New York: Random House, 1974, Book 3, #125, p.181. [Hereinafter: in bold – original emphasis, in italics – mine.]. 2 Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot, New York: Harper and Row, 1957; Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, trans. Ralph Manheim, New York: Harper and Row, 1967. 3 Karl Marx, “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law,” trans. Rodney Livingstone and George Benton, in: Early Writings, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975, pp. 57–198. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.��63/978900433984�_00� <UN> 2 Introduction the world, expressing an ideology whose purpose is oppression and whose ex- istence is necessary in a society based on class exploitation. Religion preserves the social order of an impoverished and perverse world which produces it, by diverting attention from its flaws on the one hand, and providing a (partial) refuge from it on the other. Thus Marx’s famous saying can be understood as that religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, the heart of a world bereft of a heart and the soul of heartless conditions; in short: the opium of the masses. Hence, Marxist criticism of religion demands abandoning religion’s perverse world view and crushing the social situation that requires such a perversion for its existence; thus abolishing delusional faith in religion’s salvation (in the next world) is the condition of advancing worldly happiness. The sociologist Emil Durkheim (1858–1917) shared Marx’s notion of religion as a social instru- ment, but unlike Marx, he attributed to it a positive and vital function as the cognitive, intellectual and moral foundation of human society.4 Nevertheless, the critical perspective from which Durkheim examined religion stripped it of the notion that it expresses theological truth about the existence and nature of God (and of this notion’s implications). From another angle, the psycho- logical criticism of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) presented religion as an intel- lectual delusion coming from a deep but childish and neurotic need for love and protection from both the mishaps of nature and the illnesses of human society. Religion responds to that need by granting man a God who serves as a version of a protecting, omnipotent and omniscient father figure. Although religion fills an important function in human life as a psychological mecha- nism of wish fulfilment, Freud claimed one should grow up and overcome that need for protection. The understanding of the unconscious which creates that psychological mechanism can therefore lead to atheism.5 Along with all that is the criticism of (Judeo-Christian) religion from the existentialist perspective of Nietzsche himself (1844–1900). Unlike the Nietzschean ideal of an enthusi- astic affirmation of life for the constant increase of the will to power, Nietzsche saw Christianity as a gloomy religion disgusted with life, whose real purpose was the perpetuation and intensification of human distress. He condemned the values of Christianity because he claimed they depress and castrate life. Its blind pretension to totality leads to nothingness, and it is opposed to life, where every view is always only a perspective. Its means are also mendacious: 4 Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Live, trans. Joseph Ward Swain, New York: Macmillan, 1915. 5 Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, James Strachey (ed.), with an introduction by Peter Gay, New York and London: Norton & Company (Standard Edition), 1989. <UN>.
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