The 1st temptation of Jesus as used to defend the inquisitor's argument in Dostoevsky.Freedom vs bread supported by marxism the institutional church the grand inquisitor and the church

Essay by sbfly87 December 2003

download word file, 7 pages 4.3

Downloaded 68 times

Throughout the ages man has given up freedom for the earthly and essential bread of life. Man is given freedom through grace but this does not fulfill their hunger and thus they will gladly give it up for bread. This is clearly evident in people's following of Marxism, Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, and even the institutional church itself.

Marxism began as a philosophy called dialectal materialism .This philosophy is based among other things on philosophical materialism which states that nature is all there is and all that is needed. There is no supernatural or higher being because nature provides us with all the answers. Through science we can understand how we came to be (Darwinism), and what we are made of (atom discovery). So people turned to this philosophy that denies God's very existence. Marxism says that religion is the "opiate of the masses" because it appeases them and makes them live with hunger and injustice, and thus keeps them from revolting.

Trotsky also states this in Brailsford and Marxism, "Religious, as indeed any other, ideas being born out of the soil of the material conditions of life and above all the soil of class contradictions, only gradually clear themselves away and then live on by the force of conservatism longer than the needs that gave birth to them and disappear completely only after the effects of serious social shocks and crises." It offers excuses for their suffering such as it is the will of God, God is punishing you, make sacrifices for God, and the poor shall see the kingdom. Marx and Engels state in On Religion "Does not every minute of your practical life give the lie to your theory? Do you consider it wrong to appeal to the courts when you are cheated? But the apostle...