>>21126278I will write you a serious response my friend, hope you are a curious mind like me.
It is not necessary to be an atheist to be a marxist. The existence of God or an entity equivalent to God cannot be metaphysically denied; believing that God does not exist is paradoxically a dogma. The most sensible philosophical conclusion is that it is not possible to know whether God exists or not. Both sides are leaps of faith and philosophical suicides.
As for Marxism, it explains a lot about the world; Marxism's greatest treasure is showing what capitalism is. Marx studied capitalism like no other.
The part where Marx explains what capitalism is works like the laws of physics in the world of social science. However, historical materialism does not explain everything; there are power relations and human motivations that do not come from class struggle, such as culture and psychology.
Marx touches on psychology when he talks about topics such as alienation and the fetish of commodities, but there are relationships such as the desire to be a father, romantic love and the desire to have adventures that do not fit into historical materialism.
Marx was also not a great critic of organized religion; on the contrary, he believed that workers needed religion to endure being brutalized by capital: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
His greatest criticism of religion was that people did not seek to change the world, contenting themselves with enduring its injustices and hoping for a happy life after death. Compared to other philosophers he is very soft on religion. The anti-religious sentiment comes mainly from the leninist interpretation of Marxism; the belief that religion is intrinsically evil is not marxist.
