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Article
Publication date: 1 January 1989
Religion and religious people have been viewed as detrimental to human and social progress. In a now classic case, Edward Gibbon's The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire held the…
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Abstract
Religion and religious people have been viewed as detrimental to human and social progress. In a now classic case, Edward Gibbon's The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire held the blame for the decline of the Roman Empire squarely upon Christianity. But, among the great variety of denunciations of religion, perhaps the most acerbic criticism came from the pen of Karl Marx. He wrote: