Critical of the religion

The critical of the religion , which can emanate as well from the religion itself as of secularized mediums, goes back to the Antiquité. One finds it in particular in the epicureanism. It is however only at the 17th century that this criticism starts to come up, then to really develop at the 18th century, in particular under the influence of the Lumières. It continues at the 19th century, accompanying by the virulent forms of anticlericalism. It still today is found, emanating in particular from anxious scientists of progress of the Créationnisme.

Antiquity

In the Of will natura rerum , Lucrèce written: Whereas with the eyes of all humanity on ground a contemptible life, crushed under the weight of a religion trailed whose face, showing top of the celestial areas, threatened the mortals of his horrible aspect, the first a Greek, a man, dared to throw his eyes mortals against it and it to draw up itself (, towards 62-67 of song I).

XVIIe century

In its Treated théologico-policy , Spinoza develops according to Léo Strauss a criticism of the religion, which however would not lead to a refutation of divine and its any power, but on the idea that “the positive spirit” modern, a spirit] rose, in its bottom, of the hedonism epicurean, was incompatible with the religious spirit .

Lights

The project of emancipation of the Lights, the Kantian aufklärung, without necessarily carrying in him a criticism of the religion (Kant does not formulate any criticism of the religion, with strictly speaking), inevitably nourished it.

As regards criticism of the religion, Voltaire is the most known figure of the Lights. For as much, Voltaire is not atheistic.

The XIXe century

Feuerbach and Marx

Ludwig Feuerbach is one of the large philosophers critical of the religion of the 19th century. Its thought will influence in particular Karl Marx, author of the well-known formula: the religion is “the opium of the people”. But the position of Marx however evolved/moved, and of anti-nun, it became have-nun. It is not a question any more of criticizing the religion, but of criticizing the right, to more generally criticize the concrete situation of the people: The true happiness of the people requires that the religion be removed as an illusory happiness of the people. To require that it be given up the illusions concerning our own situation, it is to require that it be given up has a situation which needs illusions. The criticism of the religion is thus, in germ, the criticism of this vale of tears, whose religion is the aureole .

Friedrich Nietzsche

The XIXe century is not summarized with criticism Marxist, of a political nature. Friedrich Nietzsche also develops a well-known criticism of the religion, with its advertisement of “died of God”. But more than of the religion in general, it is rather about a critic of the Christianisme.

The Freudienne critic

Sigmund Freud introduces into the criticism of the religion, or tries to introduce there, a prospect for order scientific, by developing a pathological approach of the religious fact: The religion would be the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity; like that of the child, it derives from the Oedipus complex, the reports/ratios of the child to the father .

The critic positivist

If Marxist criticism, like that of the Lights, rests on a political project aiming at releasing the men either of the influence of the monk, or of a situation which leads it to take refuge in the monk, criticism positivist of the religion rests more on the questioning of the principles metaphysics which guide the religious thought, and seem to enter in contradiction with the principles of the scientific thought, which according to some should be alone to guide the men towards the truth. Among the positions of this species, or at least neighbor, or can in particular retain that of Bertrand Russel, exposed in Religion and Science .

Contemporary situation

In the modern democratic countries, the political criticism of the religion is not really any more of topicality, the project having been largely accomplished: the policy today is largely secularized.

Remain the scientific critic, who seeks in particular to answer the fundamentalist movements being able to defend of the positions creationnists. And while some affirm the possibility of a convergence of science and religion, others insist on their irreducible incompatibility

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