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| - Anatoly Lunacharsky, one of the pre-revolution members of Lenin's party and the Commissar of Enlightenment after the revolution. He proposed a new accommodating religious sentiments to the world-view of Communism by creating a new religion that was compatible with science and not based on any supernatural beliefs. He called it 'bogostroitel'stvo' (God-Building). Lunacharsky claimed that while traditional religion was false and was used for the purposes of exploitation, it still cultivated emotion, moral values, desires and other aspects of life that were important to human society. He believed that these aspects should be transformed into positive humanistic values of a new communist morality, instead of destroying religion outright when it served as the psychological and moral basis for millions of people. In his idea, God would gradually be replaced with a new vision of humanity, and through doing so socialism would achieve great success. He and his supporters argued that marxism was too mechanically deterministic with regard to human beings and that it alone would not be able to inspire masses of people. They considered that religion was needed by people to function. Feuerbach's religion of humanity, on which this was inspired, held that God would be replaced by man as an object of worship. It did not mean that single individuals would be worshipped, but rather the entire potential of the human race and all its achievements would be the object of worship. Instead of projecting human values onto the heavens and submitting people to their own illusory creation, these values would be worshipped in humanity as a whole, which possessed them collectively. This religion would bring people to value themselves and to find common purpose, community and universal meaning in themselves as a collective. Along with Feuerbach, they also received inspiration from Richard Avenarius' 'Naturfilisof', Ernst Mach's 'Empiriocriticism' as well as from Nietzsche. They understood the term 'religion' to mean a link between human beings as individuals, as a link people between human beings and nations, and as a link between human beings and societies in the past as well as future. Lunacharsky wrote, 'For the sake of the great struggle for life... it is necessary for humanity to almost organically merge into an integreal unity. Not a mechanical or chemical... but a psychic, consciously emotional linking-together... is in fact a religious emotion.' He argued that atheism in itself is pessimistic, because life becomes meaningless, and that in order to solve this one needed to turn to the pleasure of a religion to give meaning. Atheism didn't provide people with the meaning in their lives that religion did and once religion was taken away, people would feel empty unless something was put in its place. In its place, Lunacharsky proposed they should place humanity as a transcendent entity. Lunacharsky wished to change the commandment to love God above everything into, 'You must love and deify matter above everything else, [love and deify] the corporal nature or the life of your body as the primary cause of things, as existence without a beginning or end, which has been and forever will be.' He wrote, 'God is humanity in its highest potential. But there is no humanity in the highest potential... Let us then love the potentials of mankind, our potentials, and represent them in a garland of glory in order to love them ever more. Lunacharsky saw Marxism as having religious components, including its faith in the inevitable victory of socialism, as well as its belief in science and material existence as producing all human relations. These elements could assist in the God-Building. Lunacharsky interpreted the events of the 1905 revolution as an expression of religious forces in the nation. The religion to be created would worship the social ideal of socialism in its deification of humanity. Lunacharsky and his supporters rejected the divinity of Christ, but they deeply respect Him and re-interpreted Him as a revolutionary leader and the world's first Communist. The new religion would have prayer that would be addressed to progress, humanity, the nation and human genius. Collective, rather than individual, prayer was stressed due to the wish to use the cult to support a common revolutionary action. This new religion would have temples and rituals, and theatre with symbolic plays to induce religious feelings.
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