Does the belief in a god go against dialectical materialism?
Reza Aslan’s “Zealot” had an interesting position that Jesus was a Jewish national anti imperialist against the Roman Empire.
Not my god, my god would love that shit if it had thoughts
Oh boy, another one of these threads
Yeah, please don’t turn this into a struggle session, everyone. OP’s been posting bait type stuff, but I don’t think they were here for the previous debates.
Thankfully, it didn’t turn out too bad. It might be nice to refer to this next time the topic is brought up.
You can simply choose to be internally inconsistent like every other person in the world.
If you can have faith in a god that you acknowlege is a social construct to direct people to what is in the interest of humanity, yes. You’ll have to acknowlege that everyone is responsible for creating the new forms of good and those forms of good are not static.
TL;DR we Marxists are antitheists. We only align with progressive theists because the enemy of our enemy (capitalism) is our ally.
TIL castro was an antithiest
I will not speak of him as if he were absent, he has not been and he will never be. These are not mere words of consolation. Only those of us who feel it truly and permanently in the depths of our souls can comprehend this. Physical life is ephemeral, it passes inexorably… This truth should be taught to every human being – that the immortal values of the spirit are above physical life. What sense does life have without these values? What then is it to live? Those who understand this and generously sacrifice their physical life for the sake of good and justice – how can they die? God is the supreme idea of goodness and justice
I wouldnt speak for everyone, im not an anti-thiest, im agnostic.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pDSZRkhynXU&t=677
Hakim discusses about one of the mistakes of former socialist nations is the repression of religious practice. Religion may never disappear fully, but it does more harm to suppress progressive theists’ freedom of religious expression as it can lend reactionaries power but also misses the opportunity to use religion as a powerful tool to demonstrate its compatibility with socialist ideals. As many arguments are antitheist in this thread, I am curious about people’s perspectives on this point.
I’m agnostic, btw.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
In a sense yes, but remember that communist philosophy is rooted in Western philosophy which presupposes a Christian personal god and forms of faith or belief.
In other systems of thought, god and belief don’t mean the same exact things. For example in Indian religions, god may mean a personal god, sometimes many, and faith or belief is approximately the same. But god can also mean the universe itself as an infinite spacetime, a fuller reality behind material reality, maybe even no god at all. Likewise belief is ranked as only one form, and a lower form, of knowledge with rational forms ranking higher.
On a practical note, the abolition of religion and its dregs does not always apply across the world as a solution for the proletariat. Which is why you may see communists who are eg. Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, etc. outside the Western world.
Many parts of the Bible are highly compatible with communism (rich people can’t get into heaven etc). There are many based people/groups who are religious like Ansar Allah and the Sandinistas. On the other hand, materialism does contradict religion. Some, like Breht from Rev Left have argued that Buddhist practices can help revolutionaries, and obviously we should support all progressive forces. However we should never fit miracles or god being on our side into our calculus regardless of what we believe. A materialist analysis is not compatible with religion, but cognitive dissonance exists.
A belief in something that isn’t material does go against materialism, yes. However, I doubt you’ll ever find someone with no conflicting opinions. Personal beliefs are only important if they affect material reality; you can be a religious Marxist (and keep in mind that not all religions involve the same kind of beliefs) as long as that doesn’t influence your actions in a way that’s negative for the working class
You don’t need to support dialectics or materialism in order to be communist. It’s true that organized religion in general tends to be reactionary, which is why historically many communists have been antitheists, but throughout history there have also been plenty of lower‐class theists who rightfully rebelled against the upper classes.
I’m atheist myself, and while theism doesn’t make sense to me, I don’t care who gravitates towards it. I outgrew my antitheism a long time ago.
@AYJANIBRAHIMOV@lemmygrad.ml is a Judaist and also a great member here.
Professing religious beliefs can sometimes be useful to gain social standing and do praxis more effectively
I’m not religious but there is no material explanation for why the universe exists. We know that [cause] leads to [effect] but we have no idea why the chain of cause and effect itself exists at all.
Firstly, humanity has tentative grasps as to why the universe exists and came in being, and further, just because we haven’t reached the level of science to explain it, doesn’t mean the explanation is “god”.
Ancient peoples also didn’t know what lightning was or how it worked, so they chalked it up to gods. Where they right? No, that’s silly now as we can perfectly describe the chemistry, physics, and environmental sciences behind lightning, and even create our own.
Firstly, humanity has tentative grasps as to why the universe exists and came in being, and further, just because we haven’t reached the level of science to explain it, doesn’t mean the explanation is “god”.
Do we? Like I said, I’m not religious so I don’t believe in the usual conscious God who loves us because we’re their special children.
But what I’m talking about of lies outside the bounds of science. Science is based on a kind of determinism that isn’t really compatible with the concept of an origin to everything, an uncaused caused, an unmoved mover. If we found out what caused the universe to be in a hot dense state before the big bang, we would still have to keep asking what caused that previous thing.
Don’t you think there’s something inherently unfathomable about existence?
Believe whatever you want as long as you know religion is all made up by people who didn’t understand shit, and that god has nothing to do with communism.
Kinda. But not in any way you need to worry about in your lifetime.
Many religious teachings mesh with communism pretty well as far as their moral core goes. If you’re willing to accept that the associated church or whatever holy office is a wordly organization run by fallible people and probably has a role in the exploitative shitshow of capitalism, you’re good. That one seems to be a bit of a problem for some denominations though, like Catholics, what with the concept of papal infallibility. There are difinitely leftist movements withing Abrahamic faiths at least, which is hardly surprising, you wouldn’t expect the sort of god they worship to be in favor of exploitation, really, it’s just that you don’t hear much about them, cause why would someone advertise them?
