Why do people perceive their situation in distorted and alienated ways?

Feuerbach does not explicitly address this question. He treats the distortions of religious consciousness simply as subjective intellectual errors. As with the Enlightenment materialists, the implication is that these can be overcome by rational argument alone. Marx's critique of this approach is presented in brilliantly clear and concise terms in the fourth Thesis on Feuerbach:

Feuerbach starts off from the fact of religious self–estrangement [Selbstentfremdung], of the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary world, and a secular [weltliche] one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. He overlooks the fact that after completing this work, the chief thing still remains to be done. For the fact that the secular basis lifts off from itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm can only be explained by the inner strife and intrinsic contradiction of this secular basis. The latter must itself be understood in its contradiction and then, by the removal of the contradiction, revolutionised. Thus, for instance, once the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must itself be annihilated [vernichtet] theoretically and practically.

Religion is a product of material conditions. Religious ideas are not purely intellectual phenomena located only in a 'space of reasons'. They are social products. They are objectively rooted, they develop and change only with social and economic conditions. The religious outlook can be overcome, therefore, only when the material and social causes which give rise to it are superseded.

Religious ideas are not susceptible to change by rational argument alone, they involve projections and distortions which have other—social and material—causes. Beliefs persist even in the face of prolonged philosophical criticism and secular influence. They should not be treated only as philosophically mistaken views, they must also be seen as ideological creations, rooted in and reflecting specific social conditions, not only in their content but also in their form.

With economic and social development, human consciousness develops and changes. Marx, in contrast to Hegel, sees these social changes primarily in material and economic terms, and he believes that their ultimate result will be the disappearance of religion altogether. "The religious reflex of the real world can … only … finally vanish, when the practical relations of every–day life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen and to Nature". It should be noted that, according to the materialist view, the genral point here applies to all beliefs not just to religious ones, in that all beliefs are material and social phenomena.