ChatterBank0 min ago
Quote Re Religion
30 Answers
Was it Karl Marx who said "Religion is the opium of the masses" ? I absolutely agree, (even though "once a Catholic " etc )
Answers
Essential to our survival as rational beings is a set of guiding principles that enable us to efficiently and effectively confront the realities we face as individuals as well as to engage with each other to initiate and maintain mutually agreed mutually beneficial relationship
18:07 Mon 31st Mar 2014
That is only a very small sentence in the quote. The full thing is:
"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions."
Karl Marx - Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions."
Karl Marx - Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Essential to our survival as rational beings is a set of guiding principles that enable us to efficiently and effectively confront the realities we face as individuals as well as to engage with each other to initiate and maintain mutually agreed mutually beneficial relationships. Throughout much of our history and evolution as a potentially rational species, religion has been the predominant source of those guiding principles. Unfortunately religions are based on world views that do not properly reflect human nature nor the world we have painstakingly come to better understand in spite of the crippling domination religion has had over the development of a rational view of existence. I believe we are likely to continue to be held back by religious doctrine until a critical mass has come to understand, appreciate and address this need to establish a more relevant set of guiding principles that take into consideration our rational nature and the needs imposed upon us by the reality we face can be agreed upon by an overwhelming majority. The solution is not to steal the crutches from under those who see no option but to rely on religion but rather to teach them and provide them with the necessary tools to be able to stand on their own two feet.
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Thinking about mibn2cweus’ post at 19.07 yesterday, because the Bible and the Koran are considered by the faithful to be the irrefutable word of God, no matter how highly educated they are in other areas, they refuse to acknowledge that their religious books are demonstrably in error. Why is that – and how can society begin to teach the already well-educated to abandon irrationality and stand on their own two feet, as Mibs suggests?
