CEVAP:

Marxist scholars emphasize religion’s role in justifying the political status quo by cloaking political authority with sacred legitimacy, and thereby making opposition to it seem immoral. The concept of alienation is an important part of Marx’s thinking, especially in his ideas of the origin and functions of religion. Alienation is the process by which people lose control over the social institutions they themselves invented. People begin to feel like strangers (aliens) in their own world. Marx further believed that religion is one of the most alienating influences in human societies, affecting all other social institutions and contributing to a totally alienated world. According to Marx, “Man makes religion, religion does not make man”. The function of God thus was invented to serve as the model of an ideal human being. People soon lost sight of this fact, however, and began to worship and fear the ideal they had created as if it were a separate, powerful supernatural entity. Thus, religion, because of the fear people feel for the god they themselves have created, serves to alienate people from the real world. Marx saw religion as the tool that the upper classes used to maintain control of society and to dominate the lower classes.