Ding Qiang and Mou Degang: An Exploration of Atheist Thought in Engels' "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State"
Atheist thought is the soul of the Marxist view of religion and an important premise of the Marxist theoretical system. Due to the limitations of historical conditions, the formation of Marx and Engels's view of religion, centered on atheism, underwent two leaps. The first leap was their transition from a historical idealist view of religion to a historical materialist view, marked by the writing of The German Ideology (1845–1846). The second leap was the transition from a blurred to a clear understanding of the nature of primitive society, which produced a leap in the understanding of the origins, historical development, and social functions of religion. This leap was marked by Marx and Engels's research into "cultural anthropology." During this period, Engels published many works to propagate, explain, and systematically expound the Marxist view of religion: in Anti-Dühring, Engels focused on the essence, roots, and laws of development of religion; in Dialectics of Nature, he conducted a profound analysis of the relationship between modern social changes, the development of modern natural sciences, and religion; in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, he offered a profound discourse on the role of Christianity in the European bourgeois revolutions; and in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (hereafter Feuerbach), Engels clarified the natural and social causes of the origin of religion by way of a discussion on the fundamental question of the world's origin.
In order to expound new insights into primitive society and primitive religion, and to "quietly compensate for my late friend's unfinished work," [1] Engels combined Marx's research notes on "cultural anthropology" with a vast amount of historical data. Utilizing the perspectives of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, he authored The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (hereafter The Origin). Although The Origin does not discuss religious issues in a centralized manner or at great length, in the process of revealing the laws of development from primitive to civilized society, it fully employs scientific atheist thought to explain the emergence and development of religion upon the economic base of primitive society, as well as the role of religion in primitive and class societies. Using extensive and detailed historical data, The Origin corroborates the religious nature of the ages of barbarism and civilization, explains the conditions of the emergence and development of religion in primitive society, and its role in the formation of primitive society and the state. It reveals the law that religion, as a historical category, must be verified within the historical process, and that the answer to its social role must be sought within social life. The publication of The Origin was both a further development of historical materialism and a classic work in the scientific application of Marxist atheist thought to analyze social, historical, and cultural phenomena such as the origin of the state.
Engels states in Dialectics of Nature: "The whole of the infinite realm of nature is conquered by science, and no place is left for the Creator." Similarly, no stage of social development leaves any place for a Creator. In studying the social responsibility of scientific atheism, Du Jiwen [2] also pointed out: "What are the characteristics of Marx’s atheism? First, starting from the materialist conception of history, one must use history to explain religion, and not use religion to explain history. In this way, the social basis for the emergence of religion is identified, and the foundations of theism are dug up." In this sense, interpreting the religion of different historical periods starting from historical materialism is an intrinsic theoretical requirement of Marxist religious studies and the cause for which Engels struggled unremittingly. The publication of The Origin was thus both Engels's fulfillment of his regret that Marx could not personally explain these new insights into primitive society and religion, and an important link in Engels's completion of the theoretical map of Marxism's view of religion. Existing specialized research on The Origin in academic circles mostly unfolds from the perspectives of women's liberation, marriage and the family, and the nation-state; few interpret it from the perspective of religion and atheism. Works involving Marx and Engels's research on primitive religion are few—such as those by Wang Xiaochao, Hu Xiao, and Jiang Feng—and while their discussions of The Origin are limited, their views on primitive religion share a common characteristic: they primarily cite the conclusions of Feuerbach. However, the premise for the conclusions in Feuerbach is precisely the interpretation of historical and cultural phenomena such as primitive society and primitive religion found in The Origin.
I. Religion as a Historical Category Must Be Verified Within the Historical Process
Lewis H. Morgan [3] said: "In the Lower Status of barbarism the higher attributes of humanity already began to manifest themselves. Personal dignity, eloquence into speech, religious sentiment, rectitude, fortitude and courage were now common traits of character." Religion was already one of the indispensable ideational forms in lower barbarian society. Although Engels does not directly discuss the origin of religion in The Origin, he provides a clear positioning of the developmental stage of the religion practiced by members of gentile society. [4] He states:
"The Indians are a people who believe in religion after the manner of barbarians."
"Their mythology has so far not been studied at all critically. They had already endowed their religious ideas—spirits of all kinds—with human shapes, but as they were still in the lower stage of barbarism, they were as yet ignorant of plastic representation, i.e., of so-called idols. This is a nature-worship and a worship of natural forces that is in the process of developing into polytheism."
Anti-Dühring expounded several stages of the birth and development of religion: from nature-gods to social-gods, and from polytheism to monotheism. Thus, the gods believed in by the Indians were the personification of natural forces, situated at the stage of the worship of nature-gods and natural forces. Moreover, it explicitly states that it was not the gods who created the gens, but the gens that created the gods. Engels quotes Marx: "... although the Greeks derived their gentes from mythology, these gentes were older than the mythology which they themselves had created with its gods and demi-gods."
The gens, as a social system (organization), has not existed forever; it is the product of human society reaching a certain stage of development. From the perspective of prehistoric periodization, "the gens arises in the middle stage of savagery, continues to develop in the upper stage... and reaches its prime in the lower stage of barbarism." The emergence of the gentile system is directly related to the development of marriage systems. In terms of origin, marriage systems predated the gentile system. When human marriage relations reached the upper stage of savagery, the level of productive forces increased; production tools evolved from chipped Paleolithic tools to polished Neolithic tools. Collecting and fishing-hunting economies transitioned to primitive agriculture and animal husbandry. Nomadic life began to transition toward settled village life, thus marriage relations could become relatively more stable, giving rise to the Punaluan family and the gentile system. In other words, the gentile system only began to emerge when marriage relations developed to the stage of the Punaluan family. This judgment of Engels's scientifically identifies the basis for the emergence of religion. Historically, marriage, the gens, and religion all correspond to the stage of human civilization, primarily the state of economic development.
Primitive religion and the gens grew together from the beginning. "Ancestor worship is the product of the further development of matrilineal gentile society into patrilineal gentile society." In discussing the matrilineal gens of the Iroquois, Engels repeatedly emphasized that in the "Punalua," a high form of group marriage, a matrilineal household consisted of a female ancestor and several generations of her descendants, forming a group—the matrilineal gens. Worship of this female ancestor was the faith of the Iroquois. The matrilineal gens was based on the primitive society's system of public ownership; means of production, including land, houses, and tools, were owned by the gens; labor was conducted collectively within the gens, and means of subsistence were distributed equally. In the later period of matrilineal society, the development of productive forces and the appearance of private wealth caused the family marriage system to transition from pairing marriage to monogamy. Engels said: "The mother-right was overthrown, and in its place came the father-right; at the same time, the private wealth now arising dealt the gentile system its first blow." The patriarchal family consisted of several generations descended from one father and their individual families, living together under the dominance of a male head. Regarding the religious beliefs accompanying the gens, the female ancestor became a male ancestor. When the patrilineal gens developed further into the nation-state stage, worship of the male ancestor was transformed into hero worship. Engels takes the Athenian gens as an example: "Common religious ceremonies and the right of the priesthood to serve a specific god. This god was supposed to be the male ancestor of the gens, and was marked as such by a special name." In Greek and Latin tribes, "the gens became the natural core of religious development and the birthplace of religious ceremonies."
Therefore, when discussing how one should understand the various customs within the gens, Engels emphasized: "This compels us to study the economic basis of this state of society." Only by clarifying the state of the economic base can one explain the state of the superstructure built upon it. Many customs within the gens, including the changes and development of religion, morality, traditions, and various habits and institutions, are reflections of the economic relations of the gens. This is precisely why Engels emphasized economic arguments in The Origin.
Engels also explained the necessary connection between the formation of certain characteristics of primitive religion and economic life from another perspective. He believed that some religious phenomena evolved from even earlier customs of primitive people. For example, in the middle stage of savagery, productive forces were extremely low: "Since the food supply was often precarious, anthropophagy [cannibalism] probably broke out at this stage and was maintained for a long time." Given the state of productive forces at the time, this was considered natural and was not condemned. By the middle stage of barbarism, the food supply had greatly improved: "Anthropophagy is gradually disappearing, and survives only as a religious or magical act (here almost the same thing)." Thus, it can be seen that with the improvement of productive forces, some early "cannibalistic" practices of extreme savagery could be transformed into sorcery.
In short, religion is a historical category that continuously changes and develops along with the development of human society. The objects of worship, religious concepts, and sacrificial activities of primitive religion originate from the socio-economic conditions of primitive society, rather than from some divine, rational, or human-nature product. In his notes on Morgan’s Ancient Society, Marx attached great importance to examining the foundational social relations of production; under the influence of Ancient Society, he began to examine the kinship system as an important active element. Morgan believed: "The kinship system is passive; it merely records the progress made by the family over a long period, and only undergoes fundamental change when the family has already fundamentally changed." Marx annotated: "The same applies to political, religious, legal, and general philosophical systems." This indicates that religion, as an ideology, must be examined alongside the economic base. Whether the economic base determines religion and religious concepts, or religion determines social development, is the fundamental difference between the materialist and idealist conceptions of history. When explaining the history of family studies, Engels praised J.J. Bachofen’s pioneering significance, considering it one of his great merits that Bachofen sought traces of this primitive state in historical and religious traditions. However, when Bachofen analyzed the overthrow of mother-right by the patriarchy in the Greek heroic age, he believed it was a miracle created by the gods. Engels said: "Clearly, such a view, which regards religion as the decisive lever of world history, must lead in the last resort to pure mysticism."
II. The Role of Religion Must Be Sought in Social Life
Primitive religion was inextricably linked to gentile society [5]; one must not ignore or underestimate its role simply because religion is determined by the economic base. In the "Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," Marx spoke of two kinds of transformation in the process of social development: "the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out." In "The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx" [6], while Marx extensively discussed the decisive role of economic factors such as technology and private property, he simultaneously paid attention to religion, morality, art, and the issues of the state and law after the transition into civilized society. Similarly, when discussing the driving factors behind the development of gentile society in The Origin, Engels proposed the role of natural selection, the factor of population growth, the demands of women, and the requirements of economic development; there were also trade, warfare, and interaction between gentes and tribes, as well as the stabilizing effect of religion on society. In this sense, the development process of primitive society is manifested as a dialectical process of development in which social contradictions—formed by the combined force of various factors—continuously take shape, concentrate, erupt, and resolve, leading to the generation of new contradictions.
When discussing the specific role of religion in gentile society, Engels believed that religion during this period emerged naturally from the daily social life of gentile members; it was a product of the direct perception of people’s specific circumstances. It had not yet formed into theories or doctrines but existed naturally in a simple form. The roles and functions of this natural religion in primitive society were manifested primarily in two aspects:
First, it resolved contradictions among gentile members. Religion overlapped with the customs of the gens, the phratry, and the tribe; they were different aspects of the same social norms of life. Primitive customs generally manifested as religious rituals and taboos, functionally serving to adjust relationships between individuals and between the individual and society (the gens), helping the gens coalesce into a whole, and serving to stabilize and maintain that whole. In The Origin, Engels said: "As soon as the prohibition of sexual intercourse between all brothers and sisters, and even between the most remote collateral relatives on the mother’s side, was established, the above-mentioned group was transformed into a gens; in other words, it constituted a definite circle of blood relatives in the female line who were not allowed to marry one another; from this time on, this circle increasingly consolidated itself through other common social and religious institutions and distinguished itself from the other gentes in the same tribe."
Explaining the origin of a gens through a female ancestor reinforced the sense of sanctity and primacy of the gens in the minds of its members, enhancing their psychological reverence for and sense of dependence on the gens, causing them to view it as the only realistic form for their own individual survival and development. "The tribe, the gens, and their institutions were sacred and inviolable, powers instituted by nature, to which the individual remained unconditionally subordinate in feelings, thoughts, and actions."
Religion not only provided a basis of common purpose and belief for maintaining the gens, unifying people’s concepts and emotions and achieving a basic consensus of gentile group consciousness, but also—through participation in common religious ceremonies and the execution of common behavioral norms—unified people’s behavior and achieved basic consistency in gentile group activities. This consolidated and deepened the sense of identity and intimacy among group members and enhanced communication and solidarity among them. In addition to religious sacrifices, the Iroquois gentes had a special religious mystery rite organized by the phratry, which Morgan called "medicine lodges" [7] in Ancient Society. The "medicine lodges" played a major role in their religious worship and were their highest religious ceremony and highest mystic sacrifice. Among the Seneca tribe, there were two such religious organizations, one for each phratry. This kind of religious society was a brotherhood, and new members were admitted through a formal initiation ceremony. All gentile members, linked by ties of blood, believed in common deities and engaged in religious activities with collective participation. This gradually formed standardized religious rituals that all gentile members had to follow, incorporating all members of the gens into a universal behavioral pattern and a unified religious system.
Engels also mentioned in The Origin that Iroquois customs allowed for the adoption of outsiders into the gens. Captives who were not killed could be adopted into a gens and thus become members of the Seneca tribe. Individual gentes that were underpopulated due to special circumstances could also adopt members of other gentes. The method of adoption was: "Among the Iroquois, the ceremony of adoption took place at a public meeting of the tribal council, and in practice, it had already turned into a religious ceremony." Standardized religious rituals possessed supra-individual authority and exerted social coercion over the behavior and activities of every person in the gentile group. By acknowledging the common ancestor of the gens he joined and accepting the common faith of the gens through religious ritual, the outsider maintained, to some extent, the solidarity of the gens based on blood ties.
Second, it resolved the contradiction between the gens and nature. The main problem facing gentile society was the relationship between humans and nature. One of the purposes of early primitive religion was to serve the production and life of all gentile members, ensuring that all members received protection and obtained sufficient food. Engels wrote in The Origin: "The gentile constitution in its best days, as we find it in America, presupposed an extremely undeveloped state of production and therefore an extremely sparse population over a wide area; man’s mastery over nature was therefore almost non-existent; nature, as an alien, incomprehensible power, confronted him, which is reflected in his childish religious ideas."
The religious concepts of the Iroquois were basically at the stage of nature worship. At that time, people did not understand the harm caused by natural objects and forces and conjectured that all things were dominated by a spirit. In addition to worshipping female ancestors, the Iroquois also worshipped and sacrificed to the "Three Sisters"—the spirits of the bean, the squash, and the maize. It is difficult to determine whether the Iroquois gentes had specific religious festivals; however, Iroquois religious ceremonies were more or less linked to the production and life of the gens. For example, the Iroquois tribes had six religious festivals annually: the Maple Festival, the Planting Festival, the Berry Festival, the Green Corn Festival (also called the Green Grain Festival), the Harvest Festival, and the New Year Festival. These festivals were shared by all gentes making up the same tribe and were "held at a certain time of year." These religious concepts and sacrifices, except for the New Year Festival, were beliefs related to agriculture, which clearly reflected that religious concepts were closely related to the main economic life of the time. Marx said: "Iroquois worship is a form of thanksgiving for divine favor, praying to the Great Spirit and the lesser spirits to continue to bestow happiness upon them."
The religious ceremonies of the Iroquois were aimed only at satisfying utilitarian, practical needs, and the objects of religious sacrifice were closely related to the real life of primitive people. These objects could be roughly divided into two categories: beneficial and harmful, though many were both. Primitive people hoped that through religious sacrificial activities, the objects of sacrifice would provide more benefits and bring no more harm.
Due to the underdeveloped productive forces of primitive society and the simplification of gentile social structure, primitive religion, customs, morality, and various other concepts and behavioral norms formed a mixed unity that became the institutional form of social life, permeating all aspects of social existence. It was thus able to regulate contradictions between people and between humans and nature. However, this role was not absolute; especially toward the end of the development of gentile society, primitive religion gradually lost its binding force. Engels mentioned in The Origin that the Iroquois gentile chiefs generally also served as priests and played an important role in religious activities. By the time of patriarchal gentile society, in order to enhance the glory of external wars, military leaders such as the Greek basileus [8] were embellished with myths of being "born of Zeus" or "nurtured by Zeus," indicating they were the offspring of deities. The basileus held not only military power but also the authority over religious sacrifices and adjudication. However, "As for the actual disciplinary power in the army, Tacitus states definitively that it was in the hands of the priests. The real power was concentrated in the assembly of the people." The basileus held religious rights but could not act as he pleased; even when distributing booty, "Achilles, when speaking of the gift, that is, the distribution of booty, never allows Agamemnon or any other basileus to divide it, but leaves it to the 'sons of the Archaeans,' that is, the people." This "assembly of the people" did not represent the interests of all tribal members completely, but rather the interests of every adult male in the tribe—all the warriors participating in the war. Even if the basileus was "born of a deity" and held the power of sacrifice, this religiously tinged power would be greatly restricted when facing the interests of all warriors. Engels also described the situation of the Germans, who were in transition from matrilineal to patrilineal society, when they faced the prosperous world of the Roman Empire: "If the Germans, in their forests, had been such knights of virtue as is rarely seen on earth, then even a slight contact with the outside world was enough to bring them down to the level of the rest of the ordinary Europeans..." After entering the Roman world, the traditional religion and customs of the Germans no longer exerted a binding effect. As a custom of gentile society and its related functions, primitive religion inevitably had to change along with changes in the social way of life.
III. The Nature of Religion Received Different Verifications in the Stages of Barbarism and Civilization
Transitioning from the stage of barbarism into the stage of civilization, the economic base, social relations, and the superstructure all underwent fundamental changes. Analyzing the collapse of the gentile system caused by economic development and change, Engels pointed out: "But it was broken by influences which from the very beginning appear to us as a degradation, a fall from the simple moral grandeur of the old gentile society. The lowest interests—base greed, brutal sensuality, sordid avarice, selfish plunder of common property—usher in the new, civilized, class society; the most despicable means—theft, violence, fraud, treachery—undermine the old classless gentile system and bring about its downfall." Private property replaced communal property, society split into opposing classes, and the state replaced the gens. Primitive relations of equality and freedom were replaced by class oppression, coercion, and slavery. This series of fundamental changes also caused fundamental changes in religion.
Engels' description of primitive religion as "spontaneous religion" [9] is very apt; it was a spontaneous reflection by primitive people of the natural forces that dominated them. it showed that mankind, in terms of productive forces and cognitive ability, remained at a primitive and low stage, not yet polluted by class society, containing no element of deception, and possessing the simple nature of human religion. However, when "spontaneous religion" transitioned into "artificial religion" upon entering the stage of civilization, the characteristics, functions, and social status of religion all changed. Engels said: "It is quite clear that spontaneous religion, such as the fetish worship of Negroes or the primitive religion common to the Aryans, contained no element of deception at its birth, but in its subsequent development, the fraud of the priests soon became inevitable. As for artificial religion, though full of pious fanaticism, at its founding it cannot do without deception and the falsification of history..."
Religious power was stripped away. In "The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx," when analyzing the privatization of land during Solon’s time, Marx pointed out that in the gentile era, the communal ownership of land and other property prevented the mobility of social members. Because the property of social members was tied together, in the process of migration, one person's desire to transfer property might not coincide with that of others. However, once land and other property became private, individual property could be disposed of more freely, thereby achieving greater liberation from previous personal bonds. Social members could "acquire property elsewhere, and it became increasingly difficult for the members of a gens to continue living together. The units of their social system became unstable in terms of both territory and nature." "Regardless of territory: differences in property among members of the same gens changed the community of interests into antagonism between them." Finally, "Since the gentile system could not adapt to the complex needs of a changing society, all civil administrative powers of the gentes, phratries, and tribes were gradually stripped away and transferred to new electoral bodies." The religion of gentile society also belonged to civil administrative power, and its significance ceased to exist. Engels discussed how, after the Roman gentes entered the state, "the curiae and the gentes which composed them, as in Athens, were reduced to mere private and religious associations, and as such they lingered on for a long time..."
Religious customs underwent a process of desecration. Engels cited as an example the practice of public prostitution, which has prevailed in various forms throughout the period of civilization, a phenomenon Lewis H. Morgan termed "hetaerism." [10] "This hetaerism derives directly from group marriage, from the sacrificial offering through which women purchased their right to chastity." This act was originally a religious rite, where a woman, in order to belong exclusively to one man, surrendered herself in a temple according to religious custom. Upon entering the age of civilization, and under the influence of private property, women became temple slaves in the Temple of Anaitis in Armenia or the Temple of Aphrodite in Corinth, as well as religious dancers in Indian temples. In effect, they became prostitutes, surrendering themselves for money. These acts were performed in the temples of the goddesses of love, and the proceeds originally flowed into the temple treasuries. As Marx pointed out: "Private property has exerted a massive influence on the human mind and caused the emergence of new traits in people's character; it became a powerful passion among the heroic barbarians. Neither the oldest nor the relatively old customs could withstand it." [11]
The purpose of religion underwent a metamorphosis. After the transition into civilized society, class contradictions and systems of exploitation became the deepest social roots upon which religion relied for its existence and development. On one hand, the supplications made to the gods by the ruling class and the subaltern classes differed. Certain contents of primitive religion could be utilized by the ruling class. In the Völuspa ("The Prophecy of the Seeress"), an ancient Scandinavian legend of the gods, Christian elements are already present, describing a general degeneration and moral decay preceding a great catastrophe. On the other hand, because people of different classes in a class society possess different class interests, their perceptions of the value of religion also differ. Regarding the Roman Empire’s adoption of Christianity, Engels states in The Origin: "For centuries it went hand in hand with slavery in the Roman Empire, and later it never prevented Christians from trading in slaves—neither the Germans in the North, nor the Venetians in the Mediterranean, nor the later trade in Black slaves."
In short, after entering the era of civilization, the mutual aid and assistance maintained by religious customs and the absolute loyalty to the gens [12] were transformed into the gap between rich and poor and even brutal slaughter for the sake of interest... Primitive religion lost its original character of simplicity and became deeply stamped with the mark of "civilization."
The primitive religions of the Iroquois, Greeks, and Romans discussed in The Origin possessed a natural connection with the life and production of primitive society. The mode of life in gentile society determined that primitive religion was the common faith of all social members of the clan or tribe; every member of society was a natural religious believer, and collective religious affairs were naturally the obligation of every social member. The religious activities of each member were simultaneously a part of the social religious activity. With the disintegration of the gentile system, the chieftains of clans and tribes were transformed into a gentile aristocracy. They seized the power of religious sacrifice, while some members became wealthy through engagement in trade. Because of their craving for private desire and their pursuit of the continuous accumulation of wealth and the expansion of commercial capital, these wealthy merchants and aristocrats no longer valued ancient customs such as "common ownership of the means of production, collective labor, and equal distribution" within the gens. They began to practice usury, ignored the impoverished members of the gens, and even embezzled the property of orphans. The ruling class, however, sought every possible means to cover up these phenomena. Engels said: "Whatever is good for the ruling class is meant to be good for the whole of society with which the ruling class identifies itself. Therefore, the more civilization advances, the more it is compelled to cover the ills it necessarily creates with the cloak of love, to palliate them, or to deny them—in short, to introduce conventional hypocrisy."
This "cloak of love" and hypocrisy include the actions of religion in class society.
IV. Conclusion
Throughout his life, Engels made enormous contributions to the formation, enrichment, and perfection of Marxist religious theory. Engels's research and interpretation of religious issues unfolded primarily within "historical categories," [13] yet the problems and content he targeted varied. For instance, in The German Ideology, Engels discussed the evolutionary process of religion from the perspective of macro-level laws of social development, revealing that to eliminate the alienation of human essence by religion, one must transform the social system and economic base upon which it relies. In Anti-Dühring, Engels focused more on explaining the essence of religion from an epistemological standpoint. In On the History of Early Christianity, he emphasized the historical role of religion. Most of these studies by Engels were presented against a backdrop of historical grand narratives.
In The Origin, however, Engels began with a micro-level approach, focusing on explaining the formation and development of primitive religion from the perspective of changes in material production and social organization. This supplemented the deficiencies of prior research and completely demonstrated that religion is a historical category—this is where the power of atheist thought lies. In The Origin, Engels also profoundly revealed the changes in the role, purpose, and nature of primitive religion following the improvement of productive forces and the emergence of private property: primitive religion transformed from a force for maintaining the entire gens in its struggle against nature into a tool for safeguarding the privileges of the few—that is, a means for the few to rule the many. He thus proved the law of transformation from the "naturalness" of primitive religion to the "class nature" of manufactured religion. This was absent from Engels's previous discourses.
Although Engels did not further explain the characteristics, functions, and roles of manufactured religion in civilized society within The Origin, nor did he specify the final destiny of religion, it was precisely because of the research on primitive religion in The Origin that Engels was able to comprehensively expound upon the birth, development, and withering away of religion in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Through this, he proved that the long-term existence of religion is likewise a historical category. It was on the foundation of The Origin that Engels ultimately revealed the law of transformation from natural religion to manufactured religion, revealing the natural law that religion is a product of human social productive forces and human thinking abilities having reached a certain stage, and that it will naturally wither away upon reaching a certain further stage.
Author Profiles: Ding Qiang is an Associate Professor at the Wenzhou University Research Base of the Zhejiang Provincial Center for the Study of the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Mou Degang is a Professor at the Wenzhou University Research Base of the Zhejiang Provincial Center for the Study of the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.
Online Editor: Tong Xin Source: Science and Atheism, Issue 6, 2023