February 2012
18 posts
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Atheism for Lent: Religion as Ideology (Marx 3)
In the opening paragraphs of one of his earliest philosophical essays, Marx writes that ‘[a]s far as Germany is concerned, the criticism of religion is essentially complete, and the criticism of religion is the presupposition of all criticism’ (“Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”). Merold Westphal explains that, here, Marx asserts that the critique of...
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Atheism for Lent: Religion as Ideology (Marx 2)
Although this series of Atheism for Lent posts is about religion as ideology, Marx can be said to radicalize Ludwig Feuerbach’s critique of religion.
Feuerbach’s theory of religion involves the central assertion that religion is a projection – not, as Freud suggests, of humanity’s shameful desires and needs, but of humanity’s own best attributes, ‘that which is...
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Atheism for Lent: Religion as Ideology (Marx 1)
Abridged from Karl Marx, “Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” cited in Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, pp.134-140:
Man has found in the imaginary reality of heaven, where he looked for a superman, only the reflection of his own self. He will therefore no longer be inclined to find only the appearance of himself, the non-man, where he seeks and...
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Atheism for Lent: Sunday 1 (Freud)
Atheism for Lent: Introduction
Atheism for Lent: Religion as Wish-Fulfilment (Freud 1)
Atheism for Lent: Religion as Wish-Fulfilment (Freud 2)
Atheism for Lent: Religion as Wish-Fulfilment (Freud 3)
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Atheism for Lent: Religion as Wish-Fulfilment...
In this last Atheism for Lent blog post on Freud, I raise several questions to aid self-reflection in relation to his psychoanalytic critique of religion. You might like to spend some time this weekend thinking about these things, before we move on to Marx’s critique of religion as ideology on Monday.
Yesterday, I detailed Freud’s work on neurotic and religious ceremonials. He further...
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Atheism for Lent: Religion as Wish-Fulfilment...
For Freud, religious beliefs are ‘illusions’, a technical term which has a specific meaning for him: ‘we call a belief an illusion when a wish-fulfilment is a prominent factor in its motivation, and in doing so we disregard its relations to reality’ (Freud, The Complete Psychological Works, vol.21, p.31).
This is the second post on Freud’s critique of religion in...
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Atheism for Lent: Religion as Wish-Fulfilment...
The permanence of conflict is Freud’s leading theme, and part of his hostility to religion stems from an awareness that religion somewhere assumes a fixed point … at which conflict is resolved. In contrast, Freud maintains an intractable dualism; self and world remain antagonists, and every form of reconciliation must fail.
Philip Reiff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, p.292.
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Atheism for Lent: Introduction
As we approach the festival of Easter, we aim to experience something of what Jesus felt on the Cross. In his cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God confesses the absence of God.
…let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.
G.K....
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RT @KSMoody: Will post my #AtheismforLent material from 2morrow bit.ly/xuGvuv //important 4 any1 exploring Atheism4lent
— Peter Rollins (@PeterRollins) February 21, 2012
twitter.com/PeterRollins/statuses/171945219389014018
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Atheism for Lent
Last year, I ran an Atheism for Lent course at Journey, Birmingham, UK. After participating in Pete Rollins’ Dis-Courses seminar series, I created a six week course based on the great atheist critiques of religion by Freud, Marx and Nietzsche, contemporary atheists Derren Brown and Ricky Gervais, and Pete’s own emerging theology.
While I’m not running the course this year, and...
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The Faith of the Faith/less? →
My piece for the online book symposium on Simon Critchley’s new book, The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology (Verso, 2012). Over the coming months I’ll convert this Political Theology blog post into a Political Theology journal article.
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Excerpt from Simon Critchley's The Faith of the... →
Every Monday for the next few weeks, the Political Theology blog will post responses to Simon Critchley’s new book The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology (Verso, 2012), starting with my response (“The Faith of the Faith/less?”) on Feb 6. Then we’ll work our responses up into articles for the Political Theology journal.
