Parenting & Family Quote by Mikhail Bakunin

Bakunin doesn’t argue against God with calm philosophy; he throws a political punch disguised as a spiritual warning. The line is engineered to scandalize believers by yoking worship to self-mutilation: not just the loss of freedom, but the renunciation of “humanity” itself. That’s deliberate overreach. He’s not making a fine distinction between private faith and public life; he’s insisting that the posture of worship trains you to kneel everywhere.

The subtext is about authority, not metaphysics. For Bakunin, God is the ultimate landlord: an absolute, invisible sovereign whose existence makes every earthly hierarchy feel natural. If you accept an all-knowing master, you’ve already accepted the logic that someone else should rule, define morality, and demand obedience. “Childish illusions” does double work. It insults the comforting, fairy-tale version of religion, but it also frames faith as a refusal to grow up politically - a retreat from the messy burden of self-governance into paternal supervision.

Context matters: Bakunin is a 19th-century revolutionary watching church and state operate as a single machinery of discipline, with priests and monarchs trading legitimacy. His atheism is tactical as much as existential. “Bravely” is the twist of the knife: he recasts the believer’s courage as cowardice, suggesting the real bravery is not surrendering to a cosmic police force but facing freedom without supernatural guarantees. It’s an argument meant to recruit, not reconcile - a manifesto sentence, sharpened to cut through piety and make obedience look embarrassing.