God is the way in which the dominant conception of knowledge and ethics in a given society are made to seem objective, sanctified and unchanging. But man is no abstract being encamped outside the world.
Man is the world of man , the state, society.
This state, this society, produce religion, an inverted world-consciousness , because they are an inverted world . Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point d'honneur , its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its universal source of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly a fight against the world of which religion is the spiritual aroma . Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress.