As the power of the Church and religious faith gradually declined, many thinkers since the Enlightenment Age have been writing against religious institutions such as the Church. According to many philosophers and thinkers, powerful institutions do no good, but instead much harm to their defenseless subjects. Support for this can be found in works of Voltaire, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Dostoyevsky. Voltaire in Candide, satirizes organized religion by means of a series of corrupt, …showed first 75 words of 456 total…

…showed last 75 words of 456 total…to embrace religious faith can only be made at great philosophical risk, and for reasons that defy a fully logical explanation. When he says: "For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for" he indicates that the human kind needs someone to worship. Although many learned men have written against the Institution of Church, people turn to her simply because the humankind needs someone to worship.