To learn about karl Marx` views of religion` To begin to study the

To learn about Karl Marx’ views of religion’ To begin to study the nature and causes of secularisation

Karl Marx was a Jew who became an atheist. His philosophy is known as ‘historical materialism’ (Everything exists in history – that is, has a beginning and an end: material reality is reality; God/mind is not; history consists of a series of economic struggles – the last one would lead to communism) He was greatly influenced in this philosophy by what he saw in the London of the 1840s – the Industrial revolution. The industrial revolution was making the rich richer and the poor poorer; sweat shops, child labour, alienated human beings who never saw the work their labours produced; could never afford to) There were more workers than owners; more proletariat than bourgeoisie – so they could throw off their slavery. They had to be unhappy enough to want to do this. Religion drugged them; led them to accept their terrible conditions on the promise of a better life in heaven if they were ‘good’ and ‘obedient’ -religion is ‘the opium of the masses’

Karl Marx believed that religion acted like a drug, giving people the illusion of happiness as religious leaders promised justice in an afterlife. It prevented them really understanding the depth of their slavery and therefore fighting it. Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

Secularisation What is it? How on earth can you measure it?

1/ The reduction in influence of religious institutions, doctrines and symbols 2/ Increasing concern with the present materialistic world 3/ The separation of religious values from national and political life 4/ The source of knowledge and motivation of behaviour being no longer grounded in religion 5/ The centrality of humanity, nature and reason at the expense of the sacred and spiritual 6/ General acceptance of a change from a sacred to a secular society

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