ARGUMENTS AGAINST GOD AND RELIGION — Part III Argument from History

upheld exploitation. But this theory does not, academically, carry any weight. Nor does experience testify to it. This theory, based on a total denial of the human will, regards man simply as a product of economic conditions. Like the soap-cakes manufactured in a factory, man is moulded in the factory of the environment. He does not act with an independent mind, but simply conforms to whatever conditioning he has been subjected to. If this were an incontrovertible fact, how could it have been possible for Marx, himself the product of a ‘Capitalist society’, to revolt against the economic conditions prevailing in his time? If the contemporary economic system gave birth to religion, why not believe then, according to the same logic, that Marxism too is the product of the same conditions? If the stand taken by Marxism on religion is correct, why should this not be applicable to Marxism itself? It follows that this theory is absurd. There is no scientific and rational proof to support it. Experience too has exposed the false premises of this theory. The example of the erstwhile U.S.S.R., where this ideology had been predominant for sixty-five years, will serve to illustrate our point. Religious thought affords a glowing ray of hope, giving to both life and death a joyous and meaningful radiance. This half-a-century old experience clearly shows that the systems of production and exchange have nothing to do with the shaping of ideas. Had the human mind been subservient to the system of production, and had ideas taken shape in accordance with it, a communist state like the Soviet Union ought, strictly speaking, to have curbed the tendencies to oppress and exploit. Thus the whole argument of the modern age is nothing short of sophistry in the garb of scientific reasoning—a patchwork, a hotchpotch of discordant elements. Of course, the ‘Scientific Method’ has been adopted to study these ‘Facts’, but this, by itself, cannot arrive at the correct results. Other essential factors must be taken into account. That is to say, that, if the scientific method is applied, but applied only to half-truths and one-sided data, in spite of its ostensible bona fides from the intellectual standpoint, it is bound to yield results which are far from being accurate. The picture of life and the universe, which takes shape in our minds upon accepting religion, is a very beautiful and gladdening one. This, in itself, establishes the truth of religion and the falsity of anti-religious theories. It conforms to the noble ideas of man in the very same way, as the material universe is echoed in mathematical formulae. On the