[393] cannot be defended at all, namely the dimension of the subject-object structure of reality. If you defend God^a as one existing being, you are not only intellectually but also religiously INFERIOR to the atheist. And so with all the expressions of the religious dimension: when you first bring them down and then try to save them on this level, which is not their level, then you do worse than those who want to push it out of this level completely. Now about this we should be very clear, not only with respect to the religious symbols^b but also with respect to the life of the church^c. If it is another social club, protecting social conventions especially in groups of the society which are inclined to support these conventions--then the churches

are better abolished or transformed completely into social clubs of a moral character, or actually conventional character. But if, on the other hand, you SEE that the church has to say No!-- not only to say Yes but also and first of all to say No to everything which is in the realm of the subject-objectivity--then this world will not tolerate the church but will turn away from it and try to push it away. Now in this situation, we are. And this is a very painful situation, and perhaps nobody feels this pain more than those who are vocationally related to the work of the church^d. But sometimes there are wise laymen who are not prejudiced by his job and who see the situation even clearer than ministers and priests. Religion^e either has adopted itself to the situation of producing a world above the world, a world of objects, and adapting man to this world, making him himself an object; or the churches, did not adapt them but had no weapons of resistance because they resisted on the level which was