Zhao Gaiping and Wang Fan: Engels' Critique and Transcendence of Feuerbach's View of Religion
Engels, as the "second fiddle," devoted an extraordinary amount of attention to the question of religion throughout his life. In his youth, Engels adhered to theistic Christianity; in his early adulthood, influenced by the Young Hegelians [1], he shifted from theism to atheism; and after coming into contact with Feuerbach’s philosophy, he turned toward a materialist view of religion. In his critique of Feuerbach’s religious outlook, Engels elucidated the historical materialist view of religion, explicating the essence, origin, development, and disappearance of religion from the perspective of the materialist conception of history. This realized the sublation [2] and transcendence of Feuerbach's view and formed the Marxist view of religion, marking the maturity of Marxist religious theory. Here, this article offers some explorations and reflections centered on Engels's critique of Feuerbach's view of religion.
I. Affirming Feuerbach’s Reversal of the Religious "Inverted Worldview": From Theocentrism to Humanism
Marxist philosophy was formed by absorbing the "basic kernel" of Feuerbach’s materialism. In the preface to Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Engels pointed out that the "settling of accounts with our erstwhile philosophical conscience" was achieved through a critique of post-Hegelian philosophical forms, and that Feuerbach’s philosophy constituted the "intermediate link between Hegelian philosophy and our own outlook," noting that "Feuerbach had a greater influence on us than any other philosopher after Hegel." Hegel believed that nature was merely the "externalization" of the Absolute Idea and was secondary, while spirit, thought, and ideas were the origin and primary—an idealist view that matter is a product of spirit. In response, Feuerbach pointed out: "Hegel’s 'Absolute Idea' existing prior to the world, the 'pre-existence of logical categories' before the world, is nothing but a phantom remnant of the belief in a creator outside the world; the material, sensible world to which we ourselves belong is the only reality." Here, he changed Hegel's "topsy-turvy" situation, broke through the idealistic system of Hegelian philosophy, accelerated the dissolution of the Young Hegelians, restored the authority of materialism, and realized a revolutionary transformation in philosophy.
The depth and contradictoriness of Hegelian philosophy attracted subsequent philosophers to critique and interpret it. Strauss and Bauer were representatives of the Young Hegelians in the anti-religious struggle of the time, but the debate between the two was conducted under the philosophical guise of the struggle between "self-consciousness" and "substance." Their successors, such as Stirner and Bakunin, continued to spin around this concept. Although their debates reached no consensus, they were merely "running in circles" within the Hegelian philosophical system; Engels believed they were "wandering in this contradiction, albeit to different degrees." The resolution of this contradiction came after the publication of Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity. It refreshed people’s senses and opened a new perspective for understanding religion and God.
God is the core category of religion; the explanation of religion must be built upon the explanation of God. In The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach, based on a humanist standpoint, correctly elucidated the true relationship between God and man. This properly placed man and God, realized the shift from theocentrism to humanism, and dealt a fatal blow to Christianity. He clearly pointed out that God is the product of man’s own alienation [3], and that man established God in his own image: "The Christian God is only a fantastic reflection, an image of man." Of course, this God is the product of a long process of abstraction, the essence of many real people, because God itself is an illusory image. Feuerbach reversed the past view that God is a real existence who created nature and exerted influence on man. Instead, he clarified that nature exists independently of any spirit and is the basis upon which we humans survive and develop: "Nothing exists outside of nature and man, and those highest beings created by our religious imagination are only the fantastic reflections of our own essence." This pulled the world of the heavenly kingdom down into the real world. He further pointed out, "The secret of theology is anthropology; the secret of the divine essence is the human essence," and that "The power that the object exerts over him is actually the power of his own essence." That is to say, theology is anthropology, and the essence of religion is the alienation of the human essence. To find the mystery of religion, one must ultimately land on finding the mystery of man himself. This stripped away the mystical cloak of religion—namely, that they are all reflections of real life and the alienation of man himself. People should value earthly life rather than longing for a phantom heaven.
Engels affirmed Feuerbach’s important contribution to defending materialist principles, which placed him above the old understanding of 18th-century French materialist philosophy that simply viewed religion as human ignorance. In his early work, "The Condition of England — Review of Thomas Carlyle’s 'Past and Present'," Engels gave an initial definition of the essence of religion: "Religion by its essence is the draining of man and nature of all substance, the transferring of this substance to the phantom of a God-beyond, who then out of his bounty lets man and nature receive a little of its surplus." One can still see the shadow of Feuerbach’s humanism here, but in Engels’s later understanding, he had attained a mature grasp of religion. In his late work Anti-Dühring, he wrote: "All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men’s minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces."
At the same time, however, we see that Feuerbach did not thoroughly adhere to his materialist view of religion, thereby falling into the quagmire of idealism regarding the conception of history. Engels criticized him for being a "materialist below and an idealist above." Although Feuerbach affirmed that the materialist view of nature is the foundation of the "edifice of human knowledge," it is not the "edifice itself." A materialist view of nature alone is far from sufficient; materialism should also be pushed into the realm of social history to establish a materialist conception of history—that is, to explain all ideological concepts and religion based on the material economic conditions of a given period. "For we live not only in nature, but also in human society." Religion is an ideology formed within human society, and opposing religious theology is a key step for the people to obtain real happiness. If one does not use thorough materialism to explain religion itself, the goal of thoroughly critiquing religion cannot be achieved, and sometimes it will even be counterproductive, as was the case with Feuerbach’s religious outlook. Of course, Feuerbach’s stalling philosophical thought had its temporal and personal causes. Engels analyzed this dialectically, pointing out: first, the development of materialism itself requires a process, and at that time natural science had not yet developed to the level of a "systematizing" science; second, Feuerbach suffered persecution by the German authorities and was forced to live a peasant-like, isolated life in the countryside.
Consequently, influenced by the above factors, Feuerbach did not participate in the real struggle against reality and social practice, and thus failed to truly implement his materialist ideas in the historical field. The thorough implementation and full understanding of this thought required the resolution of practical materialist thinkers like Marx and Engels, who were full of passion for the real struggle and actively summarized the scientific developments of the era.
II. Critiquing Feuerbach’s "New Religion of Love": From Abstract Man to Real Man
After Feuerbach revealed the essence of religion and its deceptive and hypocritical nature, his idealism became clearly exposed: "The cult of abstract man, which formed the kernel of Feuerbach's new religion." Although Feuerbach advocated studying man within real society, the "man" he spoke of was a man transcending any era or any class—that is, "man in general." He attributed the essence of man to man’s natural and biological character, which ignored man’s sociality and fell into the mud of vulgar materialism and anthropological materialism. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels pointed out that the "man" identified by Feuerbach is "confined to the realm of feeling, recognizing 'real, individual, corporeal man' only in terms of feeling... he knows no other 'human relations' of 'man to man' than love and friendship, and even then, idealized." Here, Marx and Engels denied the isolation of the human essence; they believed that practice produces the human essence, and the essence of man is not an abstraction inherent in each single individual, but in its reality, it is the ensemble of all social relations. Engels also pointed out: "To get from Feuerbach’s abstract man to real, living people, one must consider them as people acting in history." By examining the existential dilemmas faced by people in different eras, the deep-seated reasons for the emergence and development of religion are revealed, because we cannot derive more certain and profound things about religion from "abstract man."
The abstract man conceived by Feuerbach mainly focuses on the pure emotional relationship between people, which he attributed to religious relationships. Clearly, Feuerbach did not wish to abolish religion, but rather to perfect it; or rather, he hoped to abolish theistic religion to establish a godless "new religion of love" in his heart. Therefore, Feuerbach highly praised the important status of love in human interaction and religion. Engels pointed out, "According to Feuerbach, religion is the relation of affection, the relation of the heart, between man and man, which until now has sought its realization in the fantastic reflection of reality." That is to say, Feuerbach believed that past emotional relationships between people—such as love, friendship, and sympathy—were distortedly expressed through the love of man for God and God for man. He thus exposed the illusory emotional love between man and God and re-attributed these noble qualities to the innate emotional interaction between people, thereby establishing the foundation of the "religion of love" he so praised.
Among various emotions, Feuerbach particularly focused on sexual love between the sexes. Religion exists directly in the "love" between "I and Thou"; rather, sexual love became one of the highest forms through which Feuerbach’s new religion was realized. To this, Engels said quite ironically: "With Feuerbach, love is at all times and at all places a wonder-working god who helps to surmount all the difficulties of practical life." Feuerbach clearly linked religion with the emotions between people chronologically, thereby proving the eternity and indestructibility of religion. In response, Engels pointed out: "The relations of affection between man and man, and particularly between the two sexes, have existed as long as mankind has existed. Sexual love in the last 800 years has achieved such a development and position." Here, Engels exposed Feuerbach's lie of trying to prove the immortality of religion by looking at the history of the development of gender relations, and pointed out that religion is characterized by its specific era and historicity.
In Feuerbach's view, relations between people based on mutual affection—such as sexual love, friendship, and sympathy—must be highly sanctified to attain their most complete meaning; this inevitably entails linking these emotions to his new religion. By examining the etymology of the word "religion," he arrived at the conclusion that "any bond between two people is a religion." It must be observed that Feuerbach's attempt to explain a concept through other concepts cannot yield a correct conclusion. To this, Engels argued that Feuerbach’s etymological trick was the "last resort of idealist philosophy." As an indirect reflection of social life and the direct reality of thought, language evolves continuously alongside historical development; while religion may have meant "bond" in its original sense, its meaning now has evolved into humanity’s belief in and worship of gods. Feuerbach’s refusal to face this historical fact, his insistence on reducing "religion" to its primitive meaning, and his absurd veneration of sexual love and sexual relations as "religion" was truly an "unskillful idealist maneuver." Engels noted that to the followers of Louis Blanc [4] in Paris at that time, a person who did not believe in religion was a monster—a view identical to Feuerbach's preaching of the eternity of religion. Feuerbach’s adherence to a religion without a god thus became an argument for the Louis Blanc faction to affirm religion as an eternal phenomenon. This unrealistic idea is impossible and anti-scientific; it is equivalent to treating "modern chemistry as true alchemy." Feuerbach so lauded the noble feelings between people, but do human beings truly possess these pure emotional relations? When love becomes the connecting point for human relations in Feuerbach’s religious view, the conservative nature of his thought is fully exposed, and the last shred of revolutionary character in his philosophy vanishes, leaving only the old refrain of "Love one another! Embrace each other without distinction of sex or rank!" This is a meaningless piece of deception because it erases the class origins of religion and dissolves the proactivity of people in carrying out real-world struggles. Engels believed that in the capitalist social reality of the time, "the possibility of displaying pure human feelings in our intercourse with other people has today been as good as destroyed by the society in which we are compelled to live, which is based on class antagonism and class rule." Certainly, sincere feelings between people can only exist within a certain scope, but looking at the social situation of that time, fraud and mockery between people were everywhere in life; thus, there is no need to beautify such pure interpersonal relations.
In reality, relations between people are a reflection of actual material relations of production; they are closely linked to people's practice of survival and real life, and they indirectly reflect the unequal status of people in reality. Since humanity entered class society, relations between people have undoubtedly been stamped with the brand of class. Pure emotional relations exist only in idle imaginings; fundamentally, there was no common sentiment between slave owners and slaves, landlords and peasants, or capitalists and workers in history. Marx and Engels stated without concealment in the Manifesto of the Communist Party: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Therefore, the possibility of people possessing pure love is almost non-existent; or rather, this "love" also carries class attributes. Unlike Feuerbach, who used abstract man to explain religion, Marxism advocates using historical materialism to recognize and understand religion, and the premise and starting point of historical materialism is real individuals. Real individuals are "their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they found already existing and those produced by their activity"; they are a unity of natural and social attributes—that is, vital, empirical individuals engaged in productive practical activities. Using real people as the starting point for investigating religion, people's attitudes toward religion and God are reflections of their relations in reality, and their religious consciousness is determined by specific social relations, especially relations of production. Engels broke through and transcended Feuerbach’s humanistic religious view, using real people and productive practice to unlock the Marxist view of religion. He replaced "the worship of abstract man"—the "core of the new religion" for Feuerbach—with the "science of real men and of their historical development," thereby consolidating and fortifying the ideological foundation of the Marxist religious view. When Marx and Engels explained social history using historical materialism, Feuerbach’s theory became a thing of the past. As Engels pointed out, "now that we are quite a distance from Feuerbach, his 'most beautiful passages' praising his new religion of love have become unreadable."
III. A Critique of Feuerbach's "Religious Change Determines the Development of Human History": From the "Critique of Heaven" to the "Critique of Earth"
Feuerbach believed that "periods of humanity are distinguished only by religious changes." He viewed religion as the key factor in historical development and held that the movement of human history could only be observed using religious change as a yardstick. This essentially exaggerated the role of social consciousness, thereby denying the decisive role of social existence. To this, Engels pointed out that changes in human history are not necessarily accompanied by changes in religion. Only the three world religions—Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam—have played a significant role in human history; the influence of other religions on historical development has been relatively much smaller. At the same time, although the three major world religions played a significant role in history, this was only an influential role, not a decisive one. Facts prove that it is not religious change that determines social history, but rather social history that determines religious change. Engels believed that to investigate the essence of religion, one should look for it not in "the essence of man" nor in "the attributes of God," but in the "ready-made material world of each developmental stage of religion." One must find the real basis at each stage of religious development, examine the state of the development of productive forces and the struggles of the ruling class at the time, and see the essence of exploitation and oppression between people hidden beneath the guise of "things." One must see how the ruling class elevates these to the status of their own class ideology to safeguard their interests—that is, moving from a "critique of heaven" at the level of consciousness to a "critique of earth" that confronts reality, and from a "theological critique" to a "political critique." Engels examined the relationship between religion and human history using historical materialism. As an ideology further removed from the economic base and furthest from material life, religion is often perceived by people as unrelated to real life; it is frequently made complex and blurred by many intermediate links. Clarifying the developmental course of religion and purging the relationship between religion, the economic base, and real interests is of profound significance for people to recognize religion with a rational and scientific attitude.
Regarding the relationship between religion and the development of human history, Engels took the general history of religion and the history of Christianity as examples to present us with a magnificent blueprint of religious development as it actually happened, explaining how social conditions influenced the development of religion, including Christianity. From the general history of religion, humanity initially had no religion. Religion arose from "the most primitive era, from the erroneous, most primitive conceptions of people concerning their own nature and the external nature surrounding them." Nature initially confronted people as something completely alien, infinitely powerful, and unmasterable. When humans began to struggle against nature to obtain survival and means of life, and when the power of nature was clearly stronger than human transformative power, alienation occurred between man and nature. Man prostrated himself before the power of nature in awe, fear, and worship; nature was consequently personified, and the first gods were produced. This was the "natural religion" formed spontaneously in primitive society. Religion was closely linked to the survival of tribes and nations; once the independence of a tribe or nation was destroyed, these tribal and national religions "lost all power of resistance" and subsequently disappeared. When the scale of war expanded and the contested territories widened, "artificially constructed world religions" were created to meet the developmental needs of world-spanning empires—such as Christianity becoming a world religion adapted to rule under the Roman Empire. However, with the emergence of private property and surplus products, humanity entered class society, alienation occurred between people, and the population was divided and classified into different classes and ranks. Natural religion then developed into conscious "artificial religion." For rulers to mentally oppress, enslave, and exploit the ruled to satisfy the interests of the ruling group, religion became the "opium of the people." Looking at the history of Christianity, it did not emerge out of thin air. From its inception, Christianity absorbed Jewish theology and late Greek philosophy, especially the Stoic school; through the continuous resistance and compromise between the lower classes and the ruling class of the Roman Empire, Christianity was eventually transformed from a pagan cult into the state religion via the Council of Nicaea. In the Middle Ages, Christianity adapted to the times and combined with the feudal system, forming a religion with a corresponding feudal hierarchy. With the budding and development of capitalism and the rise of the burgher class, the masses influenced by religion—in order to safeguard the interests of the nascent bourgeoisie—had to carry out their struggles and resistance movements under a religious cloak. Consequently, several major Reformation movements broke out in Western European society. The religious reforms of Martin Luther and John Calvin promoted differentiation within Christianity and gave the resulting Protestantism a bourgeois character; these movements were in essence bourgeois revolutions carried out under the cover of a religious cloak. By the 17th and 18th centuries, with the continued development of capitalism, people increasingly felt the constraints of religious obscurantism on the spirit of individual reason and the deprivation of political power from the common people. Enlightenment thinkers launched activities to critique religious theology one after another because, by this time, the bourgeoisie was strong enough that they no longer needed to fight against the old ideology under a religious cloak but could openly conduct anti-feudal political struggles, directly appealing to the law and political concepts such as "human rights," "freedom," and "equality." Subsquently, Christianity entered its final stage: "it could no longer serve as the ideological cloak for the aspirations of any progressive class; it became more and more the exclusive possession of the ruling classes, who use it merely as a means of government to keep the lower classes in bounds." We see that with the flourishing development of natural science, religion ought to have continuously retreated, yet the majority of people in Western countries remain Christian believers. Engels explained this by saying: "Once a religion has been formed, it always contains certain traditional material, for in all ideological fields tradition is a great conservative force." Given the level of development of productive forces and the relative independence of ideology, Christianity has not yet reached its end.
Through the developmental history of religion and the historical trajectory of Christianity, we can know that religion is not an eternally unchanging category but is in a state of constant development, where the fundamental driving force is the economic base. The process by which the ruling class transformed "religious packaging" was also the process by which the lower people and the ruled classes carried out struggles under a religious cloak. It can be said that a magnificent history of religious change is a history of class struggle written in blood and tears. Among these, some political struggles carry a religious color while others do not, which further demonstrates that the development and changes of human history determine the historical transitions of religion. Feuerbach’s attempt to explain the changes in human history through religious change is untenable. A "critique of heaven" confined within the realm of ideas and consciousness cannot solve the problem. Since the real world is the soil in which the heavenly world exists, one should launch a "critique of earth" within the field of social history and establish the truth of the "this-worldly world," shifting from the critique of heaven and religion to the critique of the earth and politics.
IV. Pointing out Feuerbach's Impossibility of Finding a Method to Eliminate the "Inverted Worldview" of Religion: From "Sensuous Objects" to "Sensuous Activity"
Although Feuerbach perceived that God is the alienation of the human essence and that religion is an inversion of reality, his desire to replace the old religion with a new one caused this incomplete materialism to sink back into the mire of idealism. Consequently, he was unable to find a path to abolish religion or a method to eliminate religion’s "inverted worldview." He located the human essence in the abstract, intuitive individual and in sensible objects, reducing it to an internal, mute generality that links many individuals in a purely natural way. By viewing man only as a "sensible object" rather than "sensible activity," he remained within the realm of theory. In contrast, the practical materialists Marx and Engels understood the world and objects as practice, intending to transform irrational social reality through human sensible activity. As an inverted worldview, religion is an illusory and distorted reflection of reality, and it must necessarily be rooted in an inverted world. Precisely because of the inverted relationship between man and the world in reality, an inverted relationship between man and God is formed when reflected in religion. Thus, only by eliminating the inverted relations in reality—such as the abolition of private property and systems of exploitation—can we eliminate the illusory elements and the phantoms of the "beyond" [10] at their source, thereby establishing the subjectivity of man.
The alienation of man from reality and from objects is essentially the alienation of man from man. "Natural religion," which forms spontaneously, will disappear as humanity’s capacity to understand nature improves. However, "artificial religions" since the advent of class society have been stamped with the brand of class from beginning to end; they are spiritual tools used by man to rule and oppress man. Within the "illusory happiness" of religion, the ruling class uses religion as a tool to numb the fighting spirit of the masses. Only by abolishing religion can we enable people to experience "real happiness," a historical mission that falls upon the shoulders of the proletariat. "As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy." The broad masses of the people can only find the path to "real happiness" through the material practice of transforming the world.
According to the principles of dialectical materialism, the world is interconnected, developing, and changing. Engels noted: "The world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in which the things apparently stable no less than their mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away." Thus, religion is not an eternally existing category; it is merely a product of a certain stage of development in human history. Religion was not always there, and it will inevitably move toward extinction alongside the different historical stages of humanity. However, the demise of religion is a long-term and complex process that cannot be suppressed simply through administrative decrees. While religion must inevitably vanish, this does not mean it can disappear at will; its demise requires certain objective conditions. Regarding these conditions, Marx argued: "The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of everyday life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen and to Nature." These "perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations" refer to the dissolution of alienated relations between man and man, or man and nature.
In Anti-Dühring, Engels further pointed out: "When society, by taking possession of all means of production and using them on a planned basis, has freed itself and all its members from the bondage in which they are now held by these very means of production which they have produced but which confront them as an irresistible alien force; when therefore man no longer merely proposes, but also disposes [11]—only then will the last alien force which is still reflected in religion vanish; and with it will also vanish the religious reflection itself, for the simple reason that then there will be nothing left to reflect." This means that only when society abolishes private property and exploitation, eliminates classes and the concept of private ownership, achieves a great abundance of social products, greatly raises the level of people's political and ideological consciousness, and achieves highly developed science and technology—so that society and nature no longer act as oppressive alien forces standing in opposition to man—and when humanity moves from the "realm of necessity" into the "realm of freedom" [12], will religion cease to exist. In capitalist society, people are dominated by certain alien forces—namely, the capitalist mode of production as an alien power over man. When people are dominated by the economic relations they themselves created and the means of production they themselves produced, the factual basis for religious reflection exists, and thus the religious reflection itself will continue to exist; we will only believe that "man proposes, but God disposes." But when society, through the possession and planned use of all means of production, frees itself and all its members from bondage—that is, "man proposes, and man disposes"—the alien forces reflected in religion will vanish.
Christianity, born in feudal society, is destined for extinction. Current capitalist society is the "last stage that must be passed through before the autonomous association of humanity toward freedom." The continuously evolving social formations will surely bury the foundations and roots of religion’s existence. In this regard, Engels, proceeding from the development of the economic base and productive forces in accordance with historical materialism, proposed a scientific path to facilitate the demise of religion. Specifically: first, establishing the public ownership of the means of production at the institutional level. As long as people are "dominated by the economic relations they themselves created and the means of production they themselves produced... the factual basis for religious reflection will continue to exist, and religious reflection will continue to exist along with this basis." When the institutional foundation of the private ownership economy is abolished, the exploitation and oppression of man by man lose their economic basis. Man is no longer commanded by economic relations and the means of production; man recovers freedom to a certain extent, the polarization between the rich and the poor narrows, and the situation of the alienation of objects over man or man over man is reversed. With the elimination of alienated relations in reality, the alienated relations reflected in religion will naturally disappear, and religion will perish along with them.
Second, achieving a massive development of social productive forces from the perspective of economic development. "This requires a certain social material basis or a series of material conditions of existence, which are themselves the natural product of a long and painful history of development." In the view of Marx and Engels, the massive development of productive forces is capable of solving many social problems at their root. The primary condition for the communist society they envisioned is the realization of a massive development of productive forces. By then, people will have completely escaped the state of being enslaved by man or by objects in their struggle for survival and development; alienated labor will be transformed into free labor, and the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all.
Third, raising the ideological and cultural quality of the masses at the ideological level. The masses are the creators of history, and religion is also a great creation of the masses at a certain historical stage. It is not, as religious propaganda claims, that a certain historical figure created the religion—Shakyamuni for Buddhism, Jesus Christ for Christianity, and Muhammad for Islam all appeared at a certain stage through a specific individual based on certain conditions. When the ideological state and the scientific and cultural levels of the masses are significantly improved, people gain a conscious and clear understanding of the "specters" of religion haunting their minds, and the ideological basis of religion ceases to exist. "The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan." Individual freedom and human liberation are the value goals tirelessly pursued by Marxism. When people gradually shake off the oppression and alienation caused by nature and other men, and are able to act freely and consciously—achieving the free and comprehensive development of the individual—the "pursuit of illusory happiness" in religion will naturally turn toward "real happiness."
V. CONCLUDING REMARKS
As an important component of the Marxist view of religion, Engels’s view of religion recognizes and understands religion from the standpoint, viewpoint, and method of historical materialism and dialectical materialism. Engels first affirmed that Feuerbach reversed the situation of religion’s "inverted worldview," correctly positioning the relationship between man and God, thereby lifting the mystical veil of religion and restoring the authority of materialism. However, Engels also criticized Feuerbach’s unrealistic view of a "new religion of love" and his view that "religious changes determine the development of human history." Guided by a mistaken methodology, Feuerbach was unable to find a method to eliminate the "inverted worldview" of religion. Problems that could not be solved in theory could only be solved in practical, sensible activity. Engels ultimately achieved the Aufheben [13] and transcendence of Feuerbach’s view of religion.
In the New Era, correctly understanding the contemporary value of Engels’s view of religion is of great significance for our country’s handling of religious issues. The basic national condition that our country is in, and will long remain in, the primary stage of socialism [14] determines that religion in our country will exist for a long time. We must vigorously develop the productive forces and persist in taking economic construction as the center, continuously enhancing the people's sense of happiness and gain in real life. We must persist in grasping both material and spiritual civilization [15] simultaneously, carrying out diverse mass spiritual civilization creation activities, and constantly improving the ideological and cultural levels of the people, thereby enhancing their capacity for scientific and rational understanding of religion. The management of religion should not rely on excessive administrative interference; rather, it should be brought into the basic norms of socialist law and the rule of law, protecting the masses’ freedom of religious belief according to the law and managing religious affairs according to the law. We must crack down on various illegal religious activities or activities that undermine our country’s socialist construction under various "religious guises" or "religious cloaks," and solidify the security line of ideology in the New Era from the perspective of religious security. We must adhere to the direction of the Sinicization of religion in our country and actively guide religion to adapt to socialist society.