God Building was a Russian Marxist school of thought that advocated the construction and organization of a religion of socialist humanity rather than the abolition of religion, as defended by a strictly materialist interpretation of Marxism. Its main proponents among the RSDLP were Anatoly Lunacharsky and Vladimir Bazarov , as well as the writers Maxim Gorky and Alexander Bogdanov .
The idea of a religion of humanity was developed by Ludwig Feuerbach . The idea of a Promethean construction of an individual replacing God is present in Nietzsche .
The superimposition of the plane of ideas and experiences, of idealism and materialism, was one of the fundamental theses of the empiriocriticism of Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach, greatly admired by these Russian thinkers.
The French Revolution and its Cult of Reason and of the Supreme Being provided the example of a religion organized by the State according to the ideals that the latter had set for itself.
Finally, faced with a deeply religious Russian people, the preservation of religion seemed a guarantee of success for a revolution and a new societal project.
In the issue ofMarch 1907In the Mercure de France review , Maxim Gorky defends the position of the God Builders against the atheism of Georgy Plekhanov for whom religions are destined to disappear with the advent of communism.
Anatoly Lunacharsky developed these ideas: already in his first essay, *The Atheist* (1908), he showed that pure materialism inspired a pessimism and passivity that prevented any socialist construction. It was therefore necessary to rouse the people's enthusiasm by emphasizing values of well-being and joy ( naslazhdenie ) and to propose a religion of humanity centered on humankind and progress.
The two volumes of his essay Religion and Socialism (1908) definitively established his doctrine. Religious emotion is paramount and must be redirected to build socialism. People must forge a psychological unity among all individuals, recognizing the sole value of facts and bodies (thus proposing a commandment to love them) and the value of human action. Lunacharsky perceived the religious dimension of the belief in the inevitable advent of the revolution and defined the 1905 revolution itself as the action of the people's religious forces. Christ was not recognized as God, but revered as the foremost of the Communists.
Prayers would be offered to human and national genius, to humanity and progress, and would strengthen the desire to build this future society. The ritual apparatus would be completed by rites, temples and theatres where religious plays would be performed
>already in his first essay, *The Atheist* (1908), he showed that pure materialism inspired a pessimism and passivity that prevented any socialist construction.
Both psychology and sociology were scientifically underdeveloped fields during that time and even today’s research results are dubious and hardly replicable in either field. So no, this random, biased Russian peasant from the early 20th century didn’t prove shit in an essay of all things. Today’s China refutes his claim and any atheist individual who isn’t a pessimist and has aspirations they work towards already refuted his claim as well. We don’t need religion. The problem is primitive people who are very emotionally invested in their Harry Potter tier magic sky entity and make their personal psychosis everyone else’s problem.
It's just ACP guys trying to justify their religiosity through Cosmism, the new replacement paraideology now that Multipolarism hasn't panned out.
>>2698983>So no, this random, biased Russian peasant from the early 20th century didn’t prove shit in an essay of all thingsit's a bad translation of the French wikipedia article on the god builders , not my actual opinion. I was just introducing the subject matter. I do not think they proved anything either. I am sorry for not stating that explicitly earlier.
>>2698994I do not like ACP. And Lenin rejected the God builders.
Religgers should not be given power, but abolishing religion or spirituality as such is as futile as trying to abolish "the value form" directly.
It will be sublated in advanced communism
The whole premise of religion is it must be true and of supernatural origin.
If it's not then it's pointless building one.
Let's just wait until someone breaks the laws of physics.
>>2699963I've seen the slur "religgers" before maybe by you anon and I love how rude and crass it is. Excellent slur. So good that "Igger" is Yiddish for messenger, so it's not really tied so heavily to uiger.
>>2698968yeah i think its super based we need materialist community practices and rituals based on natural cycles for entry into like different stages of life or types of work like secret societies but open instead with like cool lore and costumes and stuff
>The French Revolution and its Cult of Reason and of the Supreme Being provided the example of a religion organized by the State according to the ideals that the latter had set for itself.
That was a complete failure though. I don't think it's really possible to invent a new religion out of whole cloth. They need to develop organically. The most you could do would be to sponsor and support a new interpretation of an existing religion, e.g. a pro-communist orthodox Christianity.
3 things are true about religion:
Firstly, it is a hindrance and curse on humanity, bringing division, repression, superstition, war, violence. It causes far more problems than it solves and has set human progress back to an incalculable degree.
Secondly, you cannot eradicate it. Like it or no the majority of people, billions globally, believe in some form for spirituality or idealism.
Even the most hardened of materialists still jumps at bumps in the night, cowers at the dark, or experiences unexplainable events and hallucinations that leaves them second guessing the nature of our reality. It's genetically hardwired.
Give a Marxist-Leninist LSD or DMT then ask them to explain his experience immediately after the fact.
And thirdly, it is a thing that cannot be proved or disproved. It seems impossible to know for certain the nature of this reality from within.
>>2698968Do you know anything about marxist humanism?
What I see of marxism in the west currently is more or less arguments of economic self-interest devoid of morality. At the same time there's a parallel current taken up by many on the left at the same time as marxism of reflexive anti-oppression morality. But this morality is often steered by liberal ultra-left positions in what seems like an attempt as sabotage. I have a vision of a future marxist morality based on a universal principle of solidarity people oppressed in all ways, the right of oppressed people to violence self-defense, and the goal of combination of all oppressed people (within the working classes) against oppression. Why does this not already exist? It seems to be a shared implicit moral baseline but it's not taken as an explicit moral framework that guides communists. I think it absolutely should be made explicit, and this should replace religious or conservative morality for people. (and conservative morality is the most heinous immorality which says that all violence and depravity unleashed is okay so long as it's done by the right person and against the right person, and that not even the smallest trespass can go unpunished so long as it's done by the wrong person against the wrong person)
I see that conservative morality is sometimes not challenged in people on the left, and anyways I think this is the god building task of our day
>>2700225>Give a Marxist-Leninist LSD or DMT then ask them to explain his experience immediately after the fact.I took shrooms once and my reaction was "wow whoop te do, my perception and consciousness are altered, this is boring af, can't wait to get back to concrete reality and continue painting my warhammer minis"
>And thirdly, it is a thing that cannot be proved or disproved. It seems impossible to know for certain the nature of this reality from within.Wrong, read materialism and empiro-criticism by lenin, read theses on feuerbach, read anti dhuring
>>2700284Opposite is the case, only morons experience something as banal as an altered state of consciousness and think that god is talking to them.
I experience hallucinations every night, they're called dreams, and I don't then start belirving that I have decyphered the mind of the universe
>>2700291Really uninteresting take, I think you should be a bit more openminded instead of trolling threads you are evidently uninterested in
Crazy how on one moment you say you can't wait to get back to playing with mass produced fascist toy soldiers, and soon after you tell people to read Lenin Marx and Engels, while attacking others in a thread you evidently have no interest in
>>2700225>>2700278I've also done shrooms, only shrooms though, and I think they might just not be as "profound" as LSD. I never had a sense of "one with everything". I wonder if that's just hippy thought priming. It's primarily an enhancer, you feel and experience everything more, even the hallucinations follow this. Tons of symmetry, seeing things in random patterns, stationary cars seem to lurch, melting textures, etc. And as far as epiphanies it only ever helped me understand what I already knew.
>>2700294>Crazy how on one moment you say you can't wait to get back to playing with mass produced fascist toy soldiersI play tau tho
>>2700276My hot take is that marxism is unextricable from humanism and teleology without making the whole endeavor pointless.
If religion is humanity's ideological cope for its own alienation, marxism gives us a conscious scientific method for overcoming the alienation.
That does mean though that concrete religious practice is obsolete, just like philosophy
>>2700295>>2700278>I took shrooms once and my reaction was "wow whoop te do, my perception and consciousness are altered, this is boring af, can't wait to get back to concrete reality and continue painting my warhammer minis"The ironing. The reason people turn to drugs instead of just straight meditation is to aid them out of their robotic consciousness like you display. Lol. You are so strongly attached it I think you need a much higher dose.
>Whoah I can't wait til I can do rote mechanical tasks again to kill the hours until my deathLiterally a machine.
>>2700340>le attachment to material things, just disconnect bro, find the Truth in the Eternal bro, experience ego death broPure idealism.
Marx started his analysis of capitalism by looking at commodities, because truth is found in the concretely mundane and mundanely concrete.
Seeking truth in purely mental and perceptual phenomena is for retards
>>2699972>The whole premise of religion is it must be truenot really, plenty of religions lack truth.
>and of supernatural originnot really, civic religions are lacking the supernatural element
>Let's just wait until someone breaks the laws of physics.Whenever it appears that someone "breaks" the laws of physics, historically, it led neither to proof of the supernatural, nor to a total abandonment of science, but instead led to a re-evalutation and re-writing of the particular laws of physics which were "broken", and the development of a new scientific paradigm in physics. Same with other fields of study. Thomas Khun's book
Structure of a Scientific Revolution goes into depth about this. There are long periods of "normal science" where scientists refine or add nuance to existing theories, and then scientific revolutions where old theories are modified or thrown out, new theories are embraced, and there is a "paradigm shift." Science is a self-correcting enterprise that undergoes evolution.
>>2700350I'm saying you lack the higher powers of analysis like self-reflection, that is why you turn to monoteny to keep your mind in a neat little circuit of nothing. I just thought that was funny.
>I couldn't get into psychedelics because all I could think about was about how I forgot to check all the locks in my house a 5th time tonightIt's funny
>>2700350You really think this kind of talk is going to be useful and bring about better knowledge for yourself or those reading your posts? The narcissism you display and the tilting at windmills is embarrassing
Have a but more humility and realize other people see things differently from you. Your straw-manning of anyone who disagrees with you makes you a waste of time to engage with. I'm just telling you this to illuminate you on why your interactions with others are probably regularly hostile and unproductive.
>>2700350>Seeking truth in purely mental and perceptual phenomena is for retardsI've been trying to figure out why I find your view so distasteful and I figured it out now. It's anti-human and anti-life. Spending time within your own mind is all we ever get to do. Alienating yourself from your mind by immersing in repetitive wage labor and commodity based hobbies is what we are compelled to do. Stepping back not just for a break from work, but stepping back from all your preconceptions about not just society but also your self, and taking psychedelics, is not just a human birthright, but one that is near universal among animals. From deer eating urinated-upon snow containing kidney-filtered amanita muscaria, to dolphins ingesting puffer fish venom, all animals of higher intelligence naturally seek mind altering experiences, whether they be chemically induced through psychedelics, or ritualistically induced through religion. Because you personally don't find this worthwhile means it's for "r
**" apparently. I think you're not contributing anything with your negativity.
>>2700746That is a good point about animals. Even simple animals, evolution ony ever cane about because an animal tried something different. We as humans have the ability to evolve the power to "evolve" our methods of survival and understanding of the world purely through the realm of thought.
A lot of scientific discoveries started as visions or epiphanies that came first in altered states or dreams.
>Scientific discoveries and breakthroughs have famously emerged from dreams, where the subconscious mind synthesizes complex information, resulting in structural, chemical, and mathematical insights. Key examples include the benzene ring structure, the periodic table, and atomic structure models. These moments often happen when the brain is free to make lateral connections that the waking mind struggles to find. >>2700295>I've also done shrooms, only shrooms though, and I think they might just not be as "profound" as LSD.it's hard to know whether a given batch of psilocybin is potent or not. there's too much variation in the level of potency. That said my experiences (a long time ago now) on shrooms were "profound" but also I was looking for a profound experience. I wasn't going in with a dismissive attitude. I also made sure to have actual profound experiences not just by myself but with others. We partied, we went into the woods, that sort of thing. I was with other people having the same alteration and speaking with them on those terms. If you do it by yourself in your bedroom and don't go outside, it's easy to be dismissive. Same if you're one of those corporate psychos who "microdose" in order to "innovate" at work.
I don't believe in the supernatural, but I do believe altered states of consciousness give you a temporary state of increased neuroplasticity which allows you to experience childlike wonder and gives a sense of novelty to the world that you may have lost through the ossifying processes of socialization and indoctrination.
>>2700776"It's fun with friends" but for drugs
>>2701544Wow look, 4 paragraphs of text of unknown origins without a single citation
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