Marxism Attack on Religion
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- Date Submitted: 01/29/2010 01:41 AM
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SECTION ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Among the confronting issues, which philosophers have strived to tackle has been the concept of religion. In the ancient era, religion, though in a shadowy manner, formed the basis of the philosophical doctrines of some of the philosophers of that time. Although it is commonly believed that the pre-Socratic philosophers, particularly Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, were the first to resort to reason in their quest for the explanation of the composition of reality as against the traditional mythological belief of the Greeks on the gods being the directors and shapers of the affair of men and reality in general. But it is sufficing to note that even these seemingly critical and rational philosophers had recourse to religion in the analysis of their philosophical positions. Norman Melchert buttressed this fact in the following parlance:
Thales … is said to have held that the cause and element of all things was water and that all things were filled with gods …. To Say that all things are full of gods, then, is to say in effect that in them … is a principle that is immortal.1
Melchert in his analysis, acknowledged the pantheistic ideology inherent in Thales’ philosophical assertion. He also x-rayed the religious import in Anaximander’s philosophical postulation. He emphatically noted that anaximander reinterpreted the concept of the divine in his philosophical theory. The concept of the indeterminate boundless, thus, which is both endless and infinite is what anaximander called the divine, the Greeks’ feature for the gods.2
Socrates, one of the acclaimed radical philosophers and moralists was also guilty of buiding his thoughts within the ambits of religious dogmatism. This is very obvious in the claim that “he …had a divine mission to test all statements, and that a voice guided him in all his acts by warning him not to do things if they would be wrong.”3 This showed that Socrates was very much religious. It was based...
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Among the confronting issues, which philosophers have strived to tackle has been the concept of religion. In the ancient era, religion, though in a shadowy manner, formed the basis of the philosophical doctrines of some of the philosophers of that time. Although it is commonly believed that the pre-Socratic philosophers, particularly Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, were the first to resort to reason in their quest for the explanation of the composition of reality as against the traditional mythological belief of the Greeks on the gods being the directors and shapers of the affair of men and reality in general. But it is sufficing to note that even these seemingly critical and rational philosophers had recourse to religion in the analysis of their philosophical positions. Norman Melchert buttressed this fact in the following parlance:
Thales … is said to have held that the cause and element of all things was water and that all things were filled with gods …. To Say that all things are full of gods, then, is to say in effect that in them … is a principle that is immortal.1
Melchert in his analysis, acknowledged the pantheistic ideology inherent in Thales’ philosophical assertion. He also x-rayed the religious import in Anaximander’s philosophical postulation. He emphatically noted that anaximander reinterpreted the concept of the divine in his philosophical theory. The concept of the indeterminate boundless, thus, which is both endless and infinite is what anaximander called the divine, the Greeks’ feature for the gods.2
Socrates, one of the acclaimed radical philosophers and moralists was also guilty of buiding his thoughts within the ambits of religious dogmatism. This is very obvious in the claim that “he …had a divine mission to test all statements, and that a voice guided him in all his acts by warning him not to do things if they would be wrong.”3 This showed that Socrates was very much religious. It was based...