In Karl Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, Marx states that “Religion does not make man, man makes religion.” (Pals. Pg.145 Paragraph 3) From this statement, multiple natural occurrences in the world can be linked to support the reductionist approach to religion and why we as mankind, should reduce what we project into a “divine being” back into ourselves. Referencing other reductionist theorists, in Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Will to Power, it is a generalized thought that the religious man in the past is much like man today, except they were much more naïve. Anger, thought, and feelings have been explained by either anger, spirit or even the soul. (Nietzsche, 135, (March-June 1888)) The difference between man now versus man then is that “those conditions that seemed to him [man in the past] strange, thrilling, overwhelming, he interpreted as obsessions and enchantment by the power of a person.”
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1) The person studying the religion must peel away all of the constructs of religion that have been laid out over the decades that it has existed and will eventually find that there is simply nothing to peel away more and that religion is not real. In Peter Berger’s essay, The Will to Power, he takes the reductionist approach and says that the only way to truly study religion is by experience. Therefore, because we cannot scientifically study religion by experience, then we must “rigorously bracket” off the experiences that those men who are religious have experienced. With these being said, Marx’s statement “religion does not create man, man creates religion” is a prime example of the reductionist approach to religion. If we “peel away” all of these constructs and trace religion back to its origins, we will find that there is nothing to peel away any more and that religion is simply
1) The person studying the religion must peel away all of the constructs of religion that have been laid out over the decades that it has existed and will eventually find that there is simply nothing to peel away more and that religion is not real. In Peter Berger’s essay, The Will to Power, he takes the reductionist approach and says that the only way to truly study religion is by experience. Therefore, because we cannot scientifically study religion by experience, then we must “rigorously bracket” off the experiences that those men who are religious have experienced. With these being said, Marx’s statement “religion does not create man, man creates religion” is a prime example of the reductionist approach to religion. If we “peel away” all of these constructs and trace religion back to its origins, we will find that there is nothing to peel away any more and that religion is simply