Marx was wrong

[eridani]

He said that religion was the opium of the people. Given the gleeful enjoyment on the part of Rapture freaks of the suffering of people they don't like at the hands of God, and the recent Great Cartoon Riots, I'd say that religion is more like the methamphetamine of the people.


http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2005/12/what_the_left_b.html

"The best thing about the Left Behind books is the way the non-Christians get their guts pulled out by God."
-- 15-year old fundamentalist fan of the Left Behind series

[Heidi]

1. Nah, I think he was right.

Long-term use abuse of religion (and that's what we're seeing from the right) is as spiritually damaging as long-term abuse of opiates and/or methamphetamine can be to the body, mind and soul. Sadly, the widespread abuse of religion that we're seeing in our country affects not only the abuser, but all of us whose constitutional rights and livelihoods have been eroded by abuse of religion.

In my estimation, it doesn't matter exactly what is abused (drugs, religion, power), abuse is the issue. And our country's religious extremists are no less extremists than the Muslim extremists Bush has used as convenient cover for his land grab. :grr: <--- that's for religious abuse, not for you, eridani.

:hi: Excellent topic. Nominated.

[mrbill]

2. wasn't it "opiate of the masses"?

Cut Uncle Karl some slack, if he were alive today he would be laughing his ass off at your post.

Karl didn't know about meth, it wasn't invented yet. But if he had a meth 101 class, i'm sure he would agree with you on your update of his quote.

These religious people are crazier than he thought.

[izzie]

4. Yar but they always have been crazy but just did not hear of it

or so soon. Since man has been noting down things people like this have been at it. It is when they have power plus the crazy thinking that we all are in trouble.Marx was right. I think.

[awoke_in_2003]

3. I agree

that religion hypes people up to do crazy things, but it is calming to the sheep because they can have that feeling that they are right and will be saved. All those other religions are wrong.
They can go through life never questioning the things around them.
They live in a black and white world, us vs. them.
They tend to have little intellectual cursiosity. "Why study the earth, we know where it came from. God created it".
Sorry to rant and stereotype. But it just seems that I am constantly running into these fundies, whether at work or elsewhere. Everything is about god, god, god. "Have you found Jesus?" I use the Forrest Gump reply- I didn't know I was supposed to be looking for him. Usually sets em off.

On edit: sounds a bit harsh, not trying to be hateful. Whatever gets you through life, I guess (meditation works for me). I just wish they weren't so "in your face" about it. That is why I like Buddhists- quiet, peaceful people only looking for enlightenment and awakening of the mind. Those are my type of people.

[midnight]

5. Christians will have to pay dearly for these people hiding behind Jesus,

I never saw it coming when I would have to feel afraid to be a christian. Some people are just manipulating hate,and framing it to fit a convoluted stamp of religious approval. I think I saw this when so called religious people tell you that the flooding in NOLA was because these were sinful people. Well maybe someone was sinful, but I don't think it was the people of NOLA.

[acmejack]

6. He didn't have Falwell & Dobson & Co for comparison purposes

He had to labor with Rasputin, Torquemada and relatively benign characters like that. If he could have foretold the evil it would have evolved (there's that word again) into he would have probably have opted for stronger terminology.

[pretzel4gore]

7. our society is based upon lies

the idea is, the 'lies' are self serving to the powerful...i always thought marx mistook the capacity of the 'few' to manage the opinion of the 'many' and by doing so get the entire society committed to a course of action that, examined honestly, redefines the villains as not such villains and 'the heroes' as the most hideous villains immaginable....blah blah blah. Marx seems to assume that humanity in its organized form knows the facts, when it's obvious the 'facts' have been doctored for generations, and thus a geebush (brother of the john ellis bush character, aka 'jeb') criminal could gain power, much less a rogue like hitler or blair or regan or ghenhis khan or caligula.....after all, if the busheviks blew up the battleship 'maine' by lighting a 10 minute fuse in the munitions hold then what does that say about cuba's treaty concerning gitmo bay? If churchill set up the 'lusitania' to be sunk by a known german u boat patrolling enroute, then what does that say about hitler's lawlessness revealed after the germans were defeated in ww2? Can our rulers ever just say 'look, we're really the bad guys in this mess; so let's factor that in when we settle accounts' etc? 911 was staged, by our side, for our benefit (supposedly) but can this society ever except than, even if its own life is the price of failing to do so?
klol....
:)
:hide:
i hate us

[MindPilot]

8. You got that right!!

The first thing I thought of reading your post was that krazy kristian kook on Trading Spouses. Save for her rather substantial girth, she looked and sounded like some one who'd done a bit too much crystal.

[madrchsod]

9. marx was wrong

religion has nothing to do in repressing the human spirit. it`s war,poverty,and ingorance that destroys humanity and the state that marx said was going to free us from religion drives many to it. should we govern ourselves with out the human spirit or should we live in the spirit of the state?

[DefenseLawyer]

10. History disagrees with you

If your position is that religion has never been used for as a tool of repression, might I point you toward the Spanish Inquisition, just to name one of literally thousands of examples. However, Marx's position on religion in that famous line was not really talking about repressing the masses so much as placating them. Leaders have used organized religion as the ultimate carrot and stick to keep their people "in line", so to speak. If you are a serf or a peasant or an unskilled laborer, your life may stink. It will probably be a constant struggle, where you are cheated and lied to and exploited. Now if you complain, God will punish you, so don't even think about complaining. And of course, behind Door Number 2, if you do as you are told and suffer through life it will all be worth it because you will get the big payoff at the end. And the beauty of the system for the leader is that God covers the cost of Heaven and it only happens when you die, so there are is no one to ask for a refund. That is not to say that believers are wrong, but right or wrong, leaders have certainly used the religious convictions of the masses as a means of control in many societies.

[devinsgram]

12. I disagree,

With religion you are trading one dependency for another. I can personally account for a couple of incidences where the person went from using drugs to becoming ultra religious because they found Jesus. One day drugs, the next day Jesus. Now, you might say that is good, but they are harder to be around then before. They are constantly trying to ram religion down others throats and it has gotten to the point when you see them coming, you run the other way, just not to be confronted by them.


Personally, I believe everyone has the right to believe what they want, everyone needs to have something to believe in, just do not push it on me. In that respect they are exactly like drug pushers, which brings to mind those like Falwell and Robertson with their large TV audiences always trying to get you to send them money, to push their particular belief. Drug pushers we put in jail, while these guys are glorified and sell to the masses.

[alcibiades_mystery]

16. Marx wasn't a big fan of the State

Marx thought that the seizing hold of the power-functions of the State apparatus was a necessary step in the transformation of society to a stateless form, but he had no great love for the State apparatus as such. That his various adherents and pseudo-adherents grew to so love State power is only one of the more obvious perversions of Marx's analyses.

[BiggJawn]

11. If Karl could have envisioned Teeeeee-Veeeeee....

He would have cut Religion some slack.

[Cerridwen]

13. The correct quote - in context

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm

What Marx was saying, which most people miss since the quote is 1) misquoted and 2) taken out of context, is that the more oppressed a people become, the more they look for something, anything which may alleviate some of their suffering, or at the very least, make some sense of their suffering. In his treatise he notes that some turn to drink, others to opium (the "popular" drug of the day) and some turn to religion. He was NOT, as many try to say, slamming religion as religion; he was attacking a system in which people were oppressed and felt the need to turn to something to alleviate their pain rather than recognizing the true source of their oppression, and perhaps use that knowledge to remove the system in question.

Though I understand your point, I hate when this quote is taken out of context.

Cerridwen (who's being picky today)

[eridani]

14. Yeah, I know the whole quote

But even with the whole quote, Marx was talking about a soothing anodyne. Not at all like the totally hopped up on rage thing you see with fundies of all stripes.

[norml]

15. Which one, Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo, or Zeppo?