In short, Marx lays the groundwork for some of the most basic of our culture’s contemporary intuitions: Religion is a sign of intellectual weakness in its adherents and a means of social oppression for its proponents. Further, freedom can be achieved only by the abolition of religion. Above all, the idea that human nature is to be morally framed by theological claims such as the notion that men and women are made in the image of God is to be repudiated.
