AS181: Portable Atheist: Karl Marx on Religion

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 181, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Well, it has been a little while. I guess I let a little bit more time go by than I wanted to between Portable Atheist segments. For anyone who's not familiar, I'm slowly going through the Portable Atheists and really getting in deep on the readings and analyzing and providing some background on the authors, kind of going above just what's written down in the Portable Atheist, or rather what's collected in the Portable Atheist, and trying to get to some of the themes and get to a deeper understanding of it. It's usually pretty enjoyable for me anyway, and I know there are those who enjoy it as well.

0:01:16 Thomas: This time I went two months, so I kind of almost need to do two. We'll see, we'll see what happens. But this reading is interesting. The official title is Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right by Karl Marx, but we may not exactly be covering that because, okay, it's a little interesting, so I started to read this and there's a lot of interesting stuff because this, of course, is the work where Marx has the famous religion as the opiate of the people or the masses, depending on how it's translated. This particular one says opiate of the people. And so that's certainly fascinating, and that's something I want to talk a lot about. I want to talk about how people misinterpret that.

0:02:04 Thomas: At first, I didn't really understand how it was being misinterpreted. I think I understand it now. I've done a lot of research into it. I'm going to maybe play a little bit of Hitchens talking about this quote, because that's definitely the most fascinating part about the reading. But here's the thing. The rest of the reading is, well, it's borderline unreadable to me. It's really interesting. I'm curious if there are any Marxists listening. I don't mean to say that all of Marx is unreadability. I've done a lot of research for this show and I've always, ever since I learned about it, I found his theory of economics to be pretty deficient, of course.

0:02:49 Thomas: I mean, it's pretty much proven to be entirely wrong. He tried to, for anyone who doesn't know, he thought that value was just created by labor. Value was created by the labor you put into a product or a good. And it's just, that's obviously not true because it's more determined. It's determined by the market. It is determined by how much someone is willing to pay for it or how much the market in general people are willing to play for it. And so, his whole theory, as far as that goes, it doesn't really hold water.

0:03:22 Thomas: It begs obvious questions like, well, if you developed a machine to do the exact same amount of labor that a person is doing, would there no longer be any value in whatever you're producing? The obvious answer is no, it'd be worth the exact same amount. It's not determined by how much work you put into it. He thought that as society progressed and as technology progressed, that capitalism would actually not produce any value anymore.

He thought because if you create machines to do stuff, if you minimize labor, that's where the... Because he thought that every other product, any value was just the sum of all the parts that went into it. So if you take, I don't know, part A and part B of something and you make a new product, product it's only worth the sum of those two parts, uh, plus the labor, and he thought the labor is where that's where all the value gets added, but if we invent machines to do the labor, pretty soon we'll just be putting stuff together and it, we won't be adding any value to it, so the economy in that sense won't thrive anymore. This is, sorry, sorry, this is a bit of a tangent, but I, I find it kind of interesting because there's stuff that makes sense about what he's saying, um, but his, his underlying economic theory was wrong.

But I have found in reading Marx's thought and stuff that there's definitely some interesting things to be said about his analysis of sort of the class warfare that goes on. He thought that all struggle was essentially between people who own property and people who don't own property who are sort of forced to do the work for everybody else, and this is simplifying, of course, but that that struggle has led to basically all of history, like that's all of the pattern of humanity.

0:05:12 Thomas: And okay, so here's where it becomes relevant to what we're going to talk about. He had a very specific and I'll say nuanced view on religion. And the key is that sometimes he's misrepresented in what he thought because of this quote that always comes up, the religion is the the opium of the people. So let's hear a little Hitchens talking about that, I think. Here's Hitchens in a recording from a debate at Intelligence Squared where he was having his final statement, and in it he talked a little bit about this reading and about this quote by Karl Marx. So let's go ahead and play that.

0:05:51 Clip: I'll correct him also on another point, a very common misapprehension, and I'll try and demonstrate in doing so that we are not on this side deaf to the numinous, as it were. It is flat out not true to say that Karl Marx referred to religion as an opiate or an opium. What he says, I can quote it from memory, from his contribution to the critique of Hegel's philosophy of right, is this. He says, religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the the heart of the heartless world, the spirit of the spiritless situation. It is an opiate for the sufferer, for the people. He goes on to say, the demand to give up its illusion is the demand of the world. The demand to gives up the condition that requires illusions. And he closes by saying that criticism has plucked the flowers from the chain, not so that men and women may wear the chain without consolation, but so that they may break the chain and cull the living flower.

0:06:48 Clip: Now, the fact that you've been lied to about what he said all this time by a religious spokesman shouldn't conceal from you the knowledge that we have a very clear understanding of where this impulse comes. I

0:07:00 Thomas: So there you have that. Very interesting there, and we'll get to more of that later. So I have to say that I read through this selection, and after this part is at the very beginning, the religion is the opiate of the people, and shortly after that it turns into something that I've... I really had another question after reading this essay by Marx. Is Marx an uber genius, or rather was he just an absolute genius, the likes of which I can't comprehend or Or is he an almost Deepak Chopra level creator of deepities, as Dan Dennett might say, because the language, I would encourage some of you to actually, you're going to hear some of it, but it is, I have to read it 20 times and I still am not sure if anything's being said.

0:07:55 Thomas: It's a really weird, who knows, maybe I'm just deficient in this way, but or also there could be some, you know, it was written in German, of course, maybe some translation problems, but I think after analyzing it, I think it's really product of the time and place he's in, Germany in the mid-1800s. Well, he wrote from out of England, but it's mainly about German history and the future and everything like that. And his philosophy and his understanding of the world and economics and society and stuff is just so different from, I don't know, I guess a modern one. Even though I will say, and again, Marxists don't exactly get mad at me.

0:08:41 Thomas: I think there's a lot of stuff to get out of what he has said in other works, by the way. I mean, I think that other works are probably a better indication of his thought than this one. This one, it seems to me that it's a ton of words used in ways that I really am not sure if it's saying anything, or I'm missing something and it's actually brilliant. I really don't know. I'm going to read some of it, and that became quickly the question I was was more interested in. And it is, it's fascinating because with something this difficult to interpret, it can almost turn into, well, is it brilliant? Is it so genius that I can't even comprehend it? Or is it just nonsense in a way? And I want to say, I don't think it's nonsense, but I do think that it's perhaps mainly rhetorical.

0:09:31 Thomas: I think that's what I would, after reading over this a lot of times, I think there's so much rhetoric in it that you can make meaning out of it. And I am sure that he had something in mind. I mean, everyone I think has something in mine when they're writing something. But it's interesting to think like, does he have really firm concepts in mind when he's writing this? Does he really have in his brain? And this is all I can think about. And again, I'll read you some examples later, but does, does he really know what all of these words exactly mean in his mind? Let me backtrack first, though. I'm going to read, as I always do, Hitchin's intro at the beginning, which might be a little bit similar to what we just heard, but not quite. And then I think I'm gonna read a lot of the beginning.

0:10:18 Thomas: I don't normally read the exact words, just for anyone who doesn't know. This isn't like my Thomas and the Bible show. I just read it. I usually try to talk about the ideas, maybe read quotes here and there, of course, but talk about about the theme. But because I'm not going to get into the later part of the reading, I'm just not even... Honestly, I don't think I could summarize it. It's amazing.

I'm going to read, again, a few examples, but I'm going to read the beginning that has the opium of the people thing in it so you can get a feeling for what that's like, and then I want to talk about more in general terms what was Marx's view on religion. That's the topic for today's show. Marx's View on Religion. Is it right? Is it wrong? Of course, does it have parts that are accurate and parts that are inaccurate, in my opinion, and with examples from what he's written. So let's go with Hitchens' intro here.

The attempt to make socialism scientific rather than utopian was a man who had repudiated the Judaism of his ancestors, a man who had hoped in vain to do for political economy what Charles Darwin had done for natural sciences, and the author of perhaps the most widely quoted anti-religious remark ever made. In this discussion of Hegel, it can be seen that Marx was not as simplistic about the sources of belief as most people think. When read in context, the opium observation becomes more profound. Few now doubt that wars between different factions of religion, the subject of the rest of this essay, are the product of unresolved contradictions in the material world. So there it is from the man himself.

0:11:58 Thomas: Now I've picked out the few paragraphs that Hitchens quoted a lot of actually, but let's hear the exact wording here and talk about this part because I think it's critical to the theme today, which again is Marx's view on religion. The basis of irreligious criticism is man makes religion, religion does not make man. In and self-feeling of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world.

Man is the world of man, the state society. This state, this society, produce religion, a reversed world consciousness, because they are a reversed world. Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point de donneur, or some sort of French term, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn completion, its universal ground for consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore immediately the fight against the other world of which religion is the spiritual aroma. Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness, the demand to give up the

0:13:41 Thomas: Illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore an embryo, the criticism of the veil of woe, the hail, the halo of which is religion. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not so that man will wear the chain without any fantasy or consolation, but so that he will shake off the chain and call the living flower. So there you have it. I think that last part that Hitchens quoted is actually the best part of this that I've read. I mean that I can follow that thought process and it's it's a good one. So he's saying, so here's where we get into it. What does he think about religion? Well, I guess, and I, this is where I was confused because I don't think I've ever really interpreted the quote, "Religion is the opium of the people," in precisely the way that Hitchens and others have said it's been misinterpreted.

0:14:39 Thomas: I don't know. I just took that to mean it's something people believe in because it makes them feel good. Maybe that's not exactly what it is. So Hitchens is saying, when you look at the actual context, and we look at everything he says before that, what you have to realize is that Marx's main focus is on economics and basically the situation, the plight of the people, the plights of the underclass that are suffering. So his theory is that religion, religion is just a way for almost for poor people to be tricked, like, "Oh, okay, you don't have anything in this life, but in the next life, it'll be fine." That's one theory he has, another theory is that it's, and and this is maybe written somewhere else, and in all my studying of him, I can't remember, but another theory Marx has about religion is that.

0:15:31 Thomas: It was made in order for rich people to justify what they had, so for people who own property, for people who had a lot more than other people, religion comes up as a way to explain that, and he thinks this goes back forever, from what I can tell. So, in Marx's mind, there are people who, for whatever reason, just accident of reality, whatever it is, way back in the day, somehow owned more than others. He doesn't really go into how, but somehow they've been chosen through luck or whatever. They own more than people. Then, religion starts to evolve to explain that, well, the people who have all this stuff, they actually deserve it. Like, they're divinely been gifted with this stuff.

0:16:18 Thomas: And it's a way to sort of trick the rest of the people to accept it. So, those are kind of his two major theories of religion. And so, when he talks about this heart of the heartless, you know, all that side of the oppressed people, all that stuff, he's also talking about it in a way where it's comforting to those people. But I guess the misinterpretation is that Marx wasn't just saying, oh, it's just BS that people believe in to feel better. He wasn't quite saying that. He was saying that the state of nature is so, I guess, abhorrent for some people, and there's so much suffering for certain people, that it's the natural response. It's where they pour all their, you know, their hope and everything into, and I guess that's different enough from the way that people normally interpret it that you would say people misinterpret it, but that's where I'm a little confused because it doesn't seem that different to me.

0:17:17 Thomas: The important point is that he still believed it was wrong. He still believed that it wasn't correct. I guess, basically, to get back to what I was saying earlier, you have to remember that But his main battle is with the, you know, essentially the haves and the have-nots. I mean, that's his main focus. It's how it's social revolution or social change that will lead to the, you know. The workers not being oppressed and a transfer of wealth or something. Because it's sort of like when, I don't know. It's sort like in the atheist movement when there are people who are clearly more concerned with a different movement. So they see everything. There might be atheists, but they see that everything in terms of social justice, maybe.

0:18:04 Thomas: So everything they interpret with religion and atheism and all that is through the lens of social justice. Whereas maybe there's another person who interprets it all through the lens of atheism, and they will see the world differently in that way. I'm sure you know examples of that. I've come across examples of of that. And I'm not trying to say either one is right or wrong, but I think that's sort of the distinction that's happening here. Marx, I think what he's saying is that getting rid of religion isn't going to solve anything. He thinks that religion is a symptom, and the cause is the inequality and the suffering that's inherent in the world. That's his view in a nutshell. And so, there are other people who might say, not me, I don't think, but there are other people might say no, religion causes all this suffering.

0:18:55 Thomas: It causes everything. And I think that's probably where the misinterpretation, what it really comes down to. Marx doesn't think that taking away religion will solve anything, but what he does say, and what's crucial that that Hitchens latches onto, is that he thinks by taking the flowers off the chain, as it were, by pointing out like, look, these things aren't real, like this doesn't, this isn't real. This isn't a good basis. You don't have good reasons to believe this stuff. It might take away the distraction and get people to realize the situation they're actually in. According to Marx at the time, who knows what he'd say nowadays. Maybe he would. I know there are certainly Marxists who think that nowadays we're in the exact same situation.

0:19:41 Thomas: I don't know. But according to Marx, if we took away those flowers off that chain, people would see, oh, I have this chain around my neck. What am I doing with this thing? And the goal isn't to get people to just wear that chain and take away the flowers. The goal for him is to take away the flowers, which is a great image. I think it's a very effective image. And people will notice the chain, break the chain and then call the living flower. So try to, try to focus on the good that there was. So that I think is this reading at its best is that imagery. And it's a very coherent thought process that I can actually follow. But I want to look at that view that Marx has of a religion, that it's sort of a way for poor people to cope, or people who are suffering to cope.

0:20:27 Thomas: And in other places, as I said, it's a way of rich people justifying everything they have. I want to look at that. Because I don't really think that's true. I think that it's... the rich people I've known, I've known a couple, I have worked for a couple and this is, as always, just my experience, but I'm going to attempt to provide it as counter-example and maybe generalize a little bit from it. But in my experience I mean a lot of the wealthiest people in this country, in this day and age, age are just as religious as anyone else. And there's so much more to religion that this misses, I think, because regardless of whether you're rich or you're poor, most people are still very afraid of death. They're deathly afraid of it.

0:21:14 Thomas: And I think there's so much about religion that it's just a way of dealing with that. I mean, you could almost say, hey, I would say, actually, what do you guys think when you think of the comfort that religion provides? Let's just say you accept the fact, hypothetically, for argument's sake, maybe not all of you would, accept the fact, just for argument's sake, that religion provides people with comfort, okay? In your mind, what do you think that would be? What would be the first thing you'd think of? Now, I would think of comfort in that, you know, life isn't meaningless, in that their death isn't the end, they get to go on, they get to do stuff. That's what I think of. And now, granted, that's, again, that might not be how everyone thinks about it, but I don't really see it as much, or at least not in its entirety, as a way to just take comfort for the bad things that are currently happening in someone's life.

0:22:08 Thomas: So super, you know, unfortunate people in the world, what do you think? Do you think that religion for them is just a way of saying, well, it'll be all be okay in the end, and that's it? It? Because I don't think that for Marx to be right, that would have to be the only, you know, comfort that it provides. But I think there's so much more to it. If I had to estimate, I don't know, I would say it's over 50% of the comfort religion provides is the whole part of, well, I'm going to see my grandma after I die. I'm going to see my kids. When my kid dies, they've gone to a better place. That has nothing to do with wealth. That is nothing to do with the current, you know, your poverty or your current situation being bad. I mean, it might have a little bit to do with it, but it certainly, it applies almost as much to wealthy people.

0:22:57 Thomas: And there's all kinds of things about religion that are like that, that I think makes Marx's view a little simplistic, I think. I think going back to my analogy, it's what is your focus? And someone could say my focus is atheism, and so I'm looking at everything through the lens of my thing, you know, anti-religion or something. And I acknowledge, and I'm trying to keep that in mind, but I think I've pointed out a lot of aspects about religion that are contrary to what Marx is saying. I I think it's complicated. I think a lot goes into why people believe it. I think the, let's say the stereotypical atheist perspective would be, well, people believe in religion because they're dumb and they aren't skeptical and they miss the point and they don't see, you know, that would be the stereotypical atheism simplification where you could say, well his lens that he's seeing everything through is just religion versus irreligion.

0:23:51 Thomas: And I don't think I'm falling victim to that. I think there's a lot to it. There's a lot of cultural factors. There's, there's a certain amount of people forming a belief based on actual metaphysical claims, but it, but it's surprisingly little of that, but I will say from reading the Bible and from, I don't know, just the history of religion, it seems to me that it is a way of, in some, for some people, for the creators of religion, I think it is a way of holding onto power, but I don't think it's done on behalf of rich people. One can look at the priests in the Old Testament. To me, it seems like if they invented this religion, whole cloth, which it's hard to say whether they invented it or whether it's they really believed it and kind of it evolved within them or whatever.

0:24:40 Thomas: But let's say if they invented it, which is sort of what Marx alleges happened, religion was kind of invented as a way to keep people down or to keep people okay with the status quo. If they invented it, I think they did so to sort of hang on to a power of their own, which wasn't material. It was sort of a spiritual power. It was a way of saying, okay, well, you need to go through me if you want to communicate with this deity. And sure, maybe there would be material benefits to it. You certainly got to eat pretty well because when you're the one in charge of all the sacrifices and the animal sacrifices and all all that, and it has to go through you, and God also said we get a part of it to, you know, to eat for ourselves. That's material, but I don't think it's quite what Marx is talking about.

0:25:26 Thomas: It is sort of a spiritual power, too, to be in the decision-making process. It would be more, it would be one thing if rich people invented religion, but I don't know if it would have been they did. I think that a poor person invented religion. And again, this is speaking very broadly, of course, and I'm mainly talking about from the Old Testament, other religions. Other religions, let's not forget, there's metaphysical claims. There's claims about how the world came to exist that people really believed. People believe in religions because they think it explains stuff. They think it explain, well, where did everything come from? All these are concerns that I bring up because I really do think, I would be curious to ask Karl Marx, because from reading him, he was some sort of genius.

0:26:11 Thomas: I don't know what sort, but he was some sort of genius, because I can barely follow this. I had to read everything ten times, and a lot of it toward the end that I'm not even going to get to, I don't even know that I understood it after the tenth time. And he definitely had some thoughts that you could consider genius level. I certainly think so. He was some sort of rhetorical genius. I've read that he basically consumed much of anything that there was to read, like a high percentage of anything at all that there was to read at the time. And he was very, very well read, knew a ton. And so I would be curious to see what he thought of these objections that I'm raising.

0:26:57 Thomas: Maybe he would have an answer to them. I don't know. But it just seems to me that that's not not what religion has been for at all. Religion has not, and think about, okay, think about selling of indulgences. The church itself took advantage of rich people with religion just as much as they might have with poor people. The Church would sell indulgences to rich people as a way of making money, and it's not like the rich people were in with on it, like, okay I know this is all BS, but you know, I know we have this religion thing, wink wink, Mr. Priest that, or Mr. Pope, that we use to keep poor people down. I know that's how it goes. No, not really. I mean, they sold indulgences. They took advantage of this belief. They had rich people at the time, wealthy, well-off people, had a belief that there was this thing called purgatory.

0:27:48 Thomas: There was this thing called hell, and here's how you can get out of it. You can buy, you can give money to the church. So, I don't know. I think it's a little simplistic to say that the, so my overall verdict is that I don't think Marx's view of religion makes much sense. I don't think it does.

I think that that quote, though, that Hitchens talked about is certainly worth understanding in its true context, because it isn't merely, ah, religion, opium of the masses, let's get rid of it. It's not, that is certainly a misrepresentation. But I think even when interpreted properly, I don't know how much sense it makes. I will say, though, how about this? After saying all that, I do think I will say that what Mark said is quite applicable to the religious right in the U.S. and I know this is something that gets harped on a lot, but I think it's particularly relevant here because a lot of the time people say the right wing in this country, the conservative right wing, white wing, it's kind of the same thing actually, but they oftentimes vote for policies and they're all about policies that would benefit them the least, you know, and some people think, some people's theory is that, actually, this is fascinating, sorry, I just thought of this, but in a way, the religion of right, of conservatism, of republicanism in this country, it is almost a religion in itself in certain ways and with certain people.

I don't want to paint a broad brush. It's not that way with everyone. But with certain People, it is sort of this thing where poor people will be incredibly Republican and incredibly conservative, despite the fact that the policies mainly benefit wealthy people.

0:29:36 Thomas: In some ways, you could say that Marx's analysis, analysis of religion really applies to the right wing and to Republicans in this country. It's something, it's this weird fake history that they've created where Reagan's, you know, policies will really, it'll all trickle down to the poor people and you ought to work hard for what, you can't just be given something by the government, etc. All this stuff, sorry to get a little political, but all this stuff is almost fits Marx's definition of religion where it's created, created as a response in order to justify that certain people have way more stuff than others do. That's interesting. Sorry, I just thought of that on the fly. So I apologize if it wasn't incredibly well fleshed out, but it kind of makes sense to me.

0:30:25 Thomas: And that's where I'll say, perhaps Marx was onto something. There is a level of, there is at a certain level, I want to say to super, super religious people in the deep South who vote Republican, where is this getting you? You know, I mean, the South is like the poorest area of the U.S. The policies certainly aren't really helping them. That's where I would say Marx is at its best here in this particular reading. Where is that getting them? They need to sort of look beyond this religion they've crafted that's sort of the culmination. It's a combination of both actual Christianity and it's like a fake, it's a fake version of Jesus, by the way, because what I've learned in reading the New Testament is that Jesus was for everything that Christians today are against.

0:31:16 Thomas: It's incredibly weird. Jesus was, and you all probably already know this, Jesus was incredibly anti-rich. He probably would have agreed with Marx more on stuff. Anti-rich, he thought there's no way rich people are getting to heaven. You have to give away all your money, help the poor. However you treat the poorest among you is how you treat... all this stuff that Republican Christians don't believe. It is the weirdest thing. So it's like this pseudo-religion created from a fake idea of Christianity and, you know, Reaganomics or something. It's really bizarre. And I would say that that religion, if you could call it that, does fit into what Marx is saying here. So I'll give him some credit for that one.

0:32:01 Thomas: Now I want to read a random paragraph, probably not even the whole thing, from later on, just to show, hopefully, maybe to show you that I'm not crazy, or maybe it'll prove that I am crazy, in that I have such a hard time reading this. I really do. So here's a reading sample and why I didn't even bother going on with the rest of this reading for the sake of the show.

"But no particular class in Germany has the consistency, the penetration, the courage, or the ruthlessness that could mark it out as the negative representative of society. No more has any estate the breadth of soul that identifies itself, even for a moment, with the soul of the nation, the geniality that inspires material might to political violence, or that revolutionary daring which flings at the adversary the defiant words, I am nothing but I must be everything. The main stem of German morals and honesty of the classes as well as individuals is rather that modest egoism which asserts its limitedness and allows it to to be asserted against itself. The relation of the various sections of German society is therefore not dramatic but epic.

Each of them begins to be aware of itself and begins to camp beside the others with all its particular claims, not as soon as it is oppressed, but as soon as the circumstances of the time relations, without a section's own participation, create a social substratum on which it can in turn exert pressure. Even the moral self-feeling of the German middle class rests only on the consciousness that it is the common representative of the Philistine mediocrity of all the other classes.

0:33:33 Thomas: It is therefore not only the German kings who accede to the throne, mal à propos, It is every section of civil society which goes through a defeat before it celebrates victory and develops its own limitations before it overcomes the limitations facing it, asserts its narrow..." Again, I'm not even going to... Look, I am not saying it is nonsense. I am NOT at all saying it's complete nonsense. I just... I have no idea what that just meant. There's a few sentences that I kind of get what that means. I don't know if it's just because I need to live in Germany at that time and really understand kind of all the movements and the struggle and the what, or is it that he just is able to form these interesting relationships and conceptual kind of tricks, like these flows of statements that just in reality, I would like to know what each one means.

0:34:27 Thomas: Like I could almost picture, and this is sort of applicable to, like I brought up Deepak Chopra earlier, there really is maybe a bit of nonsense in here, or at least a bit of ambiguity. Ambiguity in which you could hide any meaning, or or rather you could get any meaning you wanted and argue, yeah, I know that's what that means. Like it's just, seriously, like what does it mean? "The relation of the various sections of German society is therefore not dramatic but epic." What, like what is that precisely mean? Really, does anyone? "Each of them begins to be aware of itself?" Okay, and "begins to camp beside the others with all its particular claims. Not as soon as it is oppressed, but as soon as the circumstances of the time relations, without the section's own participation create a social substratum on which it can turn, exert pressure.

0:35:21 Thomas: You know, like, could someone translate what that actually means to me. I really don't get it. So that's just a little sample. And honestly, feel free to, if you want to go ahead and claim that I'm just an idiot. That's fine. I really don't know. If someone asked me, okay, after that bit about the religion is the opium of the masses, what happened in the rest of the reading? I would say I have no idea. I cannot even tell you. I can't even tell a broad theme of what happened in the reading. I read it several times. It was amazing. This was a very interesting experience. I, I'd be curious if someone else wants to read this and tell me why I'm an idiot.

0:36:08 Thomas: I'm, I'm more than happy to hear because I just don't get it. Like, I really don't get most of what I just read. Um, but so, so there you have it. Uh, that's why, that's why I make the big bucks. But I think that his view on religion is interesting and I hope I made it interesting for you guys. And at least I fleshed that out and I did a lot of research on that, that, and I ultimately, again, like I said, I think it's inaccurate, but interesting and perhaps applicable to this day and age in certain ways. So, there you have it, Karl Marx. Interesting Portable Atheist experience. So... I combined two things there. So since we're overdue and since this reading was a little weird, I think I'm going to do the next one on Thursday and I promise it'll be easier to follow and maybe we can actually break down some arguments, you know, because I actually, that's the thing about Marx.

0:37:03 Thomas: I can't, it's all written in, well, okay, I've already said all this, but it's, it's all written in rhetoric that I can, I could not break down, okay. What is the argument here? What's the logical flow of ideas? It's impossible. It's all these loose words that kind of mean something. And I think, I know what they mean, but I'm not really sure. So anyway, so next reading won't be like that. And we'll do another Portable Atheist. So thanks for joining me. And thanks, as always, for your support and for your listenership. I appreciate it so much. And I will see you guys on Thursday.