Communism vs. God

Okay, it’s Saturday morning and I had a few thoughts in the shower. Mind-blowing, I know. I thought, self, maybe this is a good question for the blog.
The question is: what exactly is the relationship between communism and religion? Someone told me that a fully communist state has no religion. I am confused by this. Based on my basic understanding of each topic, about the best I could come up with was that a communist state would be opposed to religion because the existence of a god would admit there being a higher power than the state itself. For me, it’s troubling that the two can’t co-exist. Are the concepts of state and deity so intermingled they interfere with each other? Conversely, does a capitalist state need to be religious?


Comments

5 responses to “Communism vs. God”

  1. Communism is prefaced on the desire for a purely ‘rational’ state, one which doesn’t admit the existence of superstition, read religion. The almighty Marx said that religion was the ‘opiate of the masses’, of course.
    And you’re right; a communist state can’t admit that there is an absolute morality since it would be a higher order than the state; however, communism’s ethical relativism conflates absolute morals handed down by God and absolute morals that stem from rationality; they’re quite different. Absolute morality is quite independent from God, religion, or anything other than reason and respect for human life.
    (/soapbox)

  2. Yeah! That’s what I was thinking. Only you were able to express it with quotes and stuff. ๐Ÿ™‚
    (By the way, if anyone’s curious, “conflate” means to merge multiple concepts into one.)

  3. I’m a philosophy nerd ๐Ÿ™‚

  4. neil Avatar

    Well, ‘nerd’ isn’t quite the right word.
    That’s just perfectly rational thinking. (Not that I could come up with it, but that doesn’t make you a nerd, not unless you view it as a compliment, in which case..)
    (/P. Correctness)
    Nerd!! ๐Ÿ˜€

  5. eric Avatar

    “Absolute morality is quite independent from God, religion, or anything other than reason and respect for human life.” So our current configuration of carbon atoms is the only one which can have morality? Sounds limited to me… I think anything can have morality if it has enough brain power, which I don’t think has a very high bar. For example, I think my dog possesses tinges of morality, or at least is on the cusp of achieving it.