“The religious reflections of the world can only vanish when the practical relations of everyday life offer man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations to his fellow man and to nature.” - Karl Marx
So much can be said about religion; it has started wars but it has also caused peace; it has destroyed families and out casted minorities but it has also saved millions of lives and brought strangers together through a common belief. Its scale is massive and is something that can not be ignored and is something that will never disappear. Or can it?
What I believe Karl Marx means by this statement is that religion will vanish completely when the negative aspects of capitalism or capitalism itself has been removed, this however is a huge claim to make and hard to prove. Marx believed that religious beliefs have social causes which is something I am willing to acknowledge, being an atheist I share a similar belief to Marx in that Religion stems from the stories of people who don't have the capability to understand the world around them, if something is uncomprehendable to someone than a more simple explanation will suffice and this more simple explanation then becomes religion. Marx then goes on to say that as the hierarchy and classes of human society grows and develops that religion becomes a way for leaders to justify the system they are in ruling over. This is why religion is majorly capitalist because the rulers of the world use it to gain power and money. Rulers that range from the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt to the earlier monarchs of England were thought of as conduits to the Gods themselves and this was thought fact by the society at the time. However this doesn't explain why the people who don't win though capitalism still follow religion, only why the rich would believe in religion. Marx said that these people see religion as a solution to the suffering and oppression that they face and that is why they follow it.
So why does Marx believe that religion will disappear with the collapse of capitalism? We can view the example of a farmer. A capitalist farmer when facing drought will pray for rain so his crops will grow which in turn will make him enough money to live. A communist farmer however has no need to pray when he is facing drought as he knows he will be supported by the communist regime and the society he lives in. This change of society completely eliminates the necessity of religion. Or so it would seem. In reality it is not as simple as the farmer example. Religion isn't only caused by the perversions of a capitalist society; it is also here to answer questions in relation to the universe like “Where did humans come from?” and also to help deal with personal problems such as behavior to others. These are things which no social system can solve.
Marx's views on religion solely explain the basic functions of religion and his thoughts on the capitalist regime are destined to be bias against capitalism because of the very nature of his political beliefs. His quote however can be taken in a different way.
What I believe the statement could mean is that religion will only vanish when everything can be explained by scientific fact. This isn't a Marxist argument however; it's an argument which can be simplified to Science vs. Religion. This grudge match has been the crux of many topical debates over the last couple of centuries however one side in the western world particularly seems to be reigning supreme, that side being science. A vain attempt to mix the two together was spawned in the south of America, called creationism but that was met with ridicule by anyone who had half a brain.
Religion and Science remain on opposing sides which to an extent I believe to be true. However one aspect which I believe to be a major similarity of these two perspectives is faith. A scientist will criticize a practitioner of religion of being ignorant of the facts that the scientist has brought to the world but also how the only way someone who follows religion can back up and justify their beliefs is by saying that they have faith. The scientist will see faith as an excuse and a lazy way of saying they have no proof.
Faith though isn't something exclusive to religion, as an atheist myself, faith plays a major part in my life. For example, when travelling abroad I travel by airplane. I get on this contraption with no knowledge of how it works or why it works, if it has been inspected thoroughly by a trained engineer or even if it will explode. I have no evidence that it won't but I have faith that it will fly, that a trained engineer has done his job properly and that it won't explode, faith in a system is no different to fait in God. Both involve faith in a power that is higher than you. For some reason a scientist will except this type of faith but not the faith involved in religion.
Religion is something that is different to science and always will be, but an atheist can't always hide behind science to disprove religion. I have no idea how gravity works, or Newton's laws, or even relativity but I still believe them to be true. I have faith in science and is that much different to having faith in a God/ Gods? Neither me nor my pastor have the knowledge to justify our claims on how the universe was created, but we both have theories on how it happened and we both have faith in men we've never met. Be it Jesus Christ or Georges Lemaitre.
This draws me to the conclusion that Science and Religion is Science and Religion and not Science Vs Religion. Both can exist whilst the other exists. Marx's statement can be seen as true on a basic level but not in a more complex setting which is more true to real life, he focuses on the aspects of religion that affect his view on politics and not much else.
