I found this bit from a blog and I found what it says about the Marx and Engels bit about them being Atheists questionable, especially with essays like this:
Tell me what your thoughts are about this.
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You hit the target! I read both your posts. Most of the philosophers like Marx didn’t have any knowledge about sciences or arts. Most of them follow ancestor philosophers without any information in sciences. Marx wasn’t an Atheist because he know nothing about Logic or Physics.
Scientists didn’t follow the philosophers’ ideas. You can’t find a scientist that ever obeyed any scientific method which was invented by a philosopher. Why? Because all philosophers were and are followers not inventors. The debate is too long to discuss about it here, but as a person who wasted his half of life to read bunch and bunch of nonsense books of philosophers from Wittgenstein to Heidegger, I recommend you Do not take them seriously. Except someone like John Locke, rest of them were some free eaters.(Specially in 19th and 20th century)
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From the first essay it’s clear that Marx was using both atheism and religion to prop up his supposedly “scientific” communist philosophy.
Religion may well be an “opiate” for people, but not necessarily because they are “oppressed” by capitalism (in his mind, the root of all evil).
Atheism isn’t a philosophy, and just because one rejects religion it doesn’t necessarily follow that, as an atheist, one will embrace Marxism (except in his mind). Of course everything, including religion, had to be destroyed, to make way for his communist utopia, which, ironically, was just as much of a delusion of his warped mind as religion ever was.
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I agree - most philosophy (Kant is a good example) is an excruciatingly boring waste of time.
Have you ever read anything on Objectivism?
That is the one exception to the rule that I have found. Any of Ayn Rand’s non-fiction is good.
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No text by Marx is worth the time and effort of exegesis. He dealt in wrong premises, wrong reasoning, and so, not surprisingly, came to wrong conclusions. (Few on the Right have read Marx, but at least some of us have, whereas I have known none on the Left who have read more than the most common quotations from his works, or from the works that bear his name but were actually written by the somewhat more intelligent Engels.)
However, I read the texts you link to, Yazmin, since you have asked us to comment on them.
The first, from “The Spiritual Life”, can simply be discarded. It says nothing worth commenting on. But if there is some particular point you want me to say something about, tell me what it is and I’ll do it.
The second, by Andy Blunden, is also worthless. But it is striking how he misunderstands what he quotes. In the 1842 quotation, the young Marx is saying that atheism is no longer a thing for socialism to be concerned with, no longer “needed”, NOT that it is wrong. Contrary to the title of this essay by Blunden, Marx WAS an atheist. Of course it’s all too easy to mistake Marx’s meaning because he is not a good writer. He makes nothing clear because he could not think clearly. Take the quotation about the “earthly family” and the “holy family” - it is a non-sequitur.
Marx was an atheist, but nothing follows from that. Atheism compels nothing in logic. Being an atheist does not mean that you are a good person or a bad person, a humanist or a nihilist, a communist or a capitalist, a liberal or a conservative.
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Of course it was necessary to write against Marx. He had to be debunked. And he has been, uncountable times. Numerous thinkers have done it. What I mean is, there is no need for me or anyone else to do it again. The more he is scorned, the less attention that is paid to him now and in the future, the better.
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Yazmin and others:
The most readable and sensible critical biography of Karl Marx that I have come across is “The Red Prussian” by Leopold Schwarzschild. If you are looking for one.
There are several editions. One has an Introduction by the famous British Atheist, Antony Flew. Disclosure: I had a hand in getting it published because, at that time, I did not want the English version to go out of print.
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Wow, didn’t know your role in that ! I still have the copy I got when you had recommended it several years ago - it’s very good.
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So glad you found it worth while, Liz!
I only had a hand in getting it back into print in the latest edition. And I asked Antony Flew to write the Introduction.
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Dear Jillian, I think Marx was not a true (pure) atheist He was a nihilist that I think is different as a true Atheist. He pretended, because his ideology had an Utopia like all religions. Atheism which he claimed on, was established on some principles that none was Logic. He called these principles “Dialectic Materialism” but most of them were neither Logic nor scientific. He claimed on Atheism because he wanted the support of young generation.
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Dear Fiangol - can you quote something he said that indicates he was not an atheist?
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No I can’t. I try to conclude his thoughts and I can’t trust only on his quotes. I am sure you know and you recognize him better because in Iran we have less sources for studying about Marxism. (Fortunately)
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I think what you were getting at was that Marx conflated atheism with his own communist ideology. So many who have followed in his footsteps have done the same thing!
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Exactly. He rubbed something from someone to establish a fabricated ideology which is used by people who believe nothing. They don’t believe god, morals, ethics, culture and… . Then they can do everything. Everything that can bring them power. A true Atheist do not believe god, but she/he believes human being. An Atheist is engaged (is undertaking) to ethics-without religion- but Marx and his followers wasn’t (weren’t?) engaged ethics. Therefore I think he was not a true Atheist.
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Dear Liz, unfortunately I’ve lost my trust (belief) to all philosophers, specially new philosophers. Most of them declare that they have built a new system (methodology) by flourishing their thoughts with some strange or up to date concepts and words. But after you study their systems, you will notice that you have found nothing.
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That’s what I like about Objectivism, though.
It’s very reality-based. The “3 R’s” of Objectivism are “Reality, Reason, and Rational self-interest”.
We live by basing our reasoning on the facts of reality, and then use our knowledge of reality to act in our rational self interest.
One of her main foundations was Aristotle.
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In agreement with you, Fiangol -
“For I when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and made great argument
About it and about, but evermore
Came out by that same door as in I went.”
- Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald
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