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Tillich makes several great points regarding religion. Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned with something infinite, and doubt and uncertainty are necessary for faith. Many organized religions of experience in my life leave no room for doubt. It’s unacceptable to question faith, it simply is what it is and you must believe it, not question it. Tillich embraces doubt and focuses on the idea of infinite faith. Knowledge is infinite, therefore we should question things. Tillich gave me a logical way to comprehend faith in a way that doesn't make me feel like I’m going against my better judgment by believing in the unbelievable. Marx’s views on religion are similar to that of my own. As mentioned in my previous reflection, I feel
First, I want to identify who Marx and Nietzsche are and their critiques on religion. Karl
The fear of early twentieth century dystopian writers is the fear that people in general had in this era; what is the impact of communism or what the future of religion with evolution and Darwinism would be. The may concern was that if religion was obsolete, what would replace it as the moral compass of the people. One of the most important individuals of the early twentieth century Karl Marx had his own philosophy for a replacement. The role of religion in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is stated as,” But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis…’" (Marx 19) That new bases he mentioned in the quote is the state, the new morale code that society must follow.
The book A Prayer for Owen Meany brings forth various themes and questions that can't be answered easily. One of these questions is "Can religious faith exist alongside doubt, or are the two mutually exclusive?" There are several different possible takes on this question may be answered. How a person answers this question is related to their belief in faith.
In Paul Tillich’s 1957 work Dynamics of Faith, he mentions that there are six major components of faith. These six components of faith describe the Franciscan perspective of “faith”. According to Tillich, the first component of faith is “the state of being ultimately concerned”. The second component of faith is that it is supposed to be at the center of all of our personal lives and everything that we do throughout our own individual lives. The third component of faith is that we should have an awareness for “infinite” things such as God himself. The fourth component of faith is that we need to understand that faith can act as fear, fascination, or both of these qualities at the same time. The fifth component of faith is that doubt is a major product that will always exist with faith. The last component of faith is that we need a community in order to have a “language of faith”.
Marx argues religion acts as a drug to be more exact like opium. People who usually do drugs do it typically because it is an escape from their problems. Likewise, people typically follow a religion because it help’s them escape from their problems. Following a religion helps them to numb the pain of reality. Some people born in society have it better than others and for those who do not religion turn into a great hope for them. Additionally, Marx goes onto say religion is man made and we do not need it to survive. Furthermore, the more people have the less they tend to care about religion. For example,
According to Marx, religion comes from the imagination of the mind, “Man makes religion.” (H/R,p.11) Marx believes in Atheism and that religion is simply justification to our actions and behaviors as “followers.”
Faith is believed to be one of the most important elements attached to the life of a human being. Faith brings meaning to life. It is the essence that ties a person to life no matter the struggle encountered. Whenever some one looses faith in the people of their society, all he has felt is a religious believe which can be translated into “faith in God(s)';. In the stories “Bontsha the Silent'; and “Gimpel the Fool'; by Isaac Loeb Peretz and Isaac Bashevis Singer respectively, the protagonists are victims of tremendous sufferings, where faith is the only way out. However, the faith focused by both authors differ somewhat. Peretz prioritizes faith in the divine, while Singer elaborates faith in man around their protagonists.
"Karl Marx on Religion: The Opiate of the Masses?" About.com Agnosticism / Atheism. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 May 2014.
Religion is a symbolic representation of society. The sociological approach to religious belief looks at how society behaves on a whole, to answer the question, “Why are people religious?” We express our participation in religious events through plays, acts of confession, religious dances, etc. To begin to understand why we have such term, let’s understand the common elements of religion. There are different types in which people believe in or follow and that is: animatism, animism, ancestral spirits, god and goddesses, and minor supernatural beings. Beyond these different elements, such one is to have religious leaders to follow.
The role of faith has been debated among many theologians, scientists, and philosophers. It has been greatly discussed and depicted throughout history as whether faith is logical when it comes to religion or whether faith is completely absurd. In this essay, I will focus on the role of faith through the lenses of Christian philosophers Sorean Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich. Faith plays an important role in Kierkegaard and Tillich theology; I will critically examine their depiction of faith and compare and contrast their passages. Kiergarrd view of faith is that it is completely absurd where as Ti
In discussing the similarities between Marx, Weber and Durkheim, it is important to understand what social order and social change are. Social order is the systems of social structures (relations, values and practice etc.) that maintain and enforce certain patterns of behaviour. Whereas, social change refers to an alteration in the social order of a society, examples of such alterations can be changes in nature, social institutions, behaviours and/or social relations. (Bratton and Denham 2014) Throughout time, religion has always been a hot topic of controversy, whether it is based on being a part of the same religion, to having different religious views on life and how to live life. This is due in large to the ever changing views on religion and the way it can be practised. Religion can be viewed in both aspects of social order and social change because it is part of a system, however, alterations are frequently made. The three sociologists Marx, Weber and Durkheim have all expressed their views on religion with respect to society. Webers’ views show the effects
Marx argues that religion is just a man-made thing to create a community because humans can’t survive without community. He says that the communist government can replace the feeling of “being equal in God’s eye” to “being equal in the eyes of the law” (Wolff, 2003). Marxism fights for the freedom of the working class, who are usually paid minimum wage just to survive (Blunden, n.d.).
In today’s modern western society, it has become increasingly popular to not identify with any religion, namely Christianity. The outlook that people have today on the existence of God and the role that He plays in our world has changed drastically since the Enlightenment Period. Many look solely to the concept of reason, or the phenomenon that allows human beings to use their senses to draw conclusions about the world around them, to try and understand the environment that they live in. However, there are some that look to faith, or the concept of believing in a higher power as the reason for our existence. Being that this is a fundamental issue for humanity, there have been many attempts to explain what role each concept plays. It is my belief that faith and reason are both needed to gain knowledge for three reasons: first, both concepts coexist with one another; second, each deals with separate realms of reality, and third, one without the other can lead to cases of extremism.
In many aspects of our lives, the use of faith as a basis for knowledge can be found. Whether it is faith in the advice of your teacher, faith in a God or faith in a scientific theory, it is present. But what is faith? A definition of faith in a theory of knowledge context is the confident belief or trust in a knowledge claim by a knower, without the knower having conclusive evidence. This is because if a knowledge claim is backed up by evidence, then we would use reason rather than faith as a basis for knowledge . If we define knowledge as ‘justified true belief’, it can be seen that faith, being without justification, can never fulfill this definition, and so cannot be used as a reliable basis for knowledge. However, the question arises, what if a certain knowledge claim lies outside of the realm of reason? What if a knowledge claim cannot be justified by empirical evidence and reasoning alone, such as a religious knowledge claim? It is then that faith allows the knower to decide what is knowledge and what is not, when something cannot be definitively proved through the use of evidence. When assessing faith as a basis for knowledge in the natural sciences, the fact arises that without faith in the research done before us, it is impossible to develop further knowledge on top of it. Yet at the same time, if we have unwavering faith in existing theories, they would never be challenged, and so our progress of knowledge in the natural sciences would come to a standstill. Although I intend to approach this essay in a balanced manner, this essay may be subject to a small degree of bias, due to my own non-religious viewpoint.
Marx saw religion as an evil that existed in society and that it brought down all the people that believed in that religion. Marx said that, ?It [religion] is the opium of the people,?[1] and in saying this, Marx meant that religion was contagious on society. Once the society had a taste for the religion, they became totally engulfed it in, and then they do not want to get out of that way of live because they see it as a good way to live. Then even if people wanted to get out of the religion it was hard to get out because the whole society had already been infected by the ?opium.?