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Materialism and Atheism
Community for discussion for all aspects of materialism: materialist philosophy, theory, history, dialectical materialism, critiques of philosophical idealism, religion and so on.
Community is not only about philosophy. Memes, dunks, rants and shitposting are welcomed, as long as they are broadly relevant.
MATERIALISM:
Philosophical trend which emphasise the material world (the world outside of consciousness) as the foundation and determinant of thinking, especially in relation to the question of the origin of knowledge. For materialism, thoughts are “reflections” of matter, outside of Mind, which existed before and independently of thought.
IDEALISM:
Idealism is a thought process (ex. rationalism) of how the material world adheres to ideas. Idealists follow a certain ideal concept (ex. faith) and understand everything from its adherence to that concept.
Idealism can also be understood as the practice of understanding abstractions through other abstractions; where an abstraction is something that does not necessarily have basis nor relation to reality, but only exists in relation to other abstractions. The primary concern for the idealist is to create concepts that adequately explain (and change of viewpoint of) the world as we know it.
Idealism may reject the existence of the external world all altogether (the world beyond thought, beyond sensation) or assert that while a world beyond sensation may exist, it is unknowable. These trends are known as Subjective Idealism. On the other hand, idealism may accept the objectivity of nature but regard the material as the expression of ideal forces such as the Will of God, the absolute Idea, etc whose nature is accessible to the Mind directly. These trends are known as Objective Idealism.
Some basic reading:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
A comrade on Hexbear posted this quote from the Central Committee of the CPC which i think is very appropriate:
"We Communists are atheists and must unremittingly propagate atheism. Yet at the same time we must understand that it will be fruitless and extremely harmful to use simple coercion in dealing with the people’s ideological and spiritual questions–and this includes religious questions. We must further understand that at the present historical stage the difference that exists between the mass of believers and nonbelievers in matters of ideology and belief is relatively secondary. If we then one-sidedly emphasize this difference, even to the point of giving it primary importance–for example, by discriminating against and attacking the mass of religious believers, while neglecting and denying that the basic political and economic welfare of the mass of both religious believers and nonbelievers is the same–then we forget that the Party’s basic task is to unite all the people (and this includes the broad mass of believers and nonbelievers alike) in order that all may strive to construct a modern, powerful Socialist state. To behave otherwise would only exacerbate the estrangement between the mass of believers and nonbelievers as well as incite and aggravate religious fanaticism, resulting in serious consequences for our Socialist enterprise. Our Party, therefore, bases its policy of freedom of religious belief on the theory formulated by Marxism-Leninism, and it is the only correct policy genuinely consonant with the people’s welfare."
From “The Basic Viewpoint and Policy on the Religious Question during Our Country’s Socialist Period” (1982)