Karl Marx famously described religion as a serotonin high, relying upon the analogy of drug addiction - that "
opiate of the masses" line.
I often find myself unsatisfied when I see people referencing his statement - willy-nilly - without providing the surrounding context of his broader argument, as it actually wasn't as "
scornful" of religion as it may appear from a cursory appraisal.
The complete sentence reads as follows: "
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".
Now, that makes for a far more nuanced verdict on religion than you'd find - say - from the New Atheists of the noughties.
Back in 2012, the atheist philosopher Alain de Botton penned a controversial book titled,
Religion for Atheists.
In it, he argued that rather than mocking religions as 'juvenile' irrationalities from a moribund past that we should be ashamed of, atheists and agnostics should instead
plunder rituals from them - because these time-honoured practices and spiritualities actually have some meaningful things to teach our contemporary secular world. He wrote on page one:
"...No religions are true in any God-given sense. This is a book for people who are unable to believe in miracles, spirits or tales of burning shrubbery...The premise of this book is that it must be possible to remain a committed atheist and nevertheless find religions sporadically useful, interesting and consoling - and be curious as to the possibilities of importing certain of their ideas and practices into the secular realm..."
Believe it or not, I think this is what Karl Marx actually did. He founded an atheistic religion, infused - whether he consciously knew it or not - with presupposed principles about human dignity, equality and social justice originally derived from religion. Where Christians sung hymns to the risen Christ, Communists sang the 'Internationale'. Where Christians preached a gospel of spiritual equality between men and women, freemen and slaves, Jews and Greeks within the universal community of the body of Christ; Marx preached the gospel of worldwide working class solidarity. Where Christians had the cross, Communists had the hammer-and-sickle. Where Christians had a predetermined utopian vision of a future day of judgement in which God would right all wrongs and found his perfect kingdom of justice, Communists had a predetermined future world of plenty and classlessness on this earth. Marx's works -
The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital - even became a kind of indisputable scriptural authority in Communist countries.
Marx's close associate - and co-author of the 1848
Communist Manifesto - Friedriech Engels, derived explicit inspiration for modelling the early Socialist movement from that of the early Christian church in the Roman Empire. As he wrote at length in an essay in 1894:
On the History of Early Christianity
First Published: In Die Neue Zeit, 1894-95;
Translated: by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism
The history of early Christianity has notable points of resemblance with the modern working-class movement. Like the latter, Christianity was originally a movement of oppressed people: it first appeared as the religion of slaves and emancipated slaves, of poor people deprived of all rights, of peoples subjugated or dispersed by Rome. Both Christianity and the workers' socialism preach forthcoming salvation from bondage and misery...
Both are persecuted and baited, their adherents are despised and made the objects of exclusive laws, the former as enemies of the human race, the latter as enemies of the state, enemies of religion, the family, social order. And in spite of all persecution, nay, even spurred on by it, they forge victoriously, irresistibly ahead. Three hundred years after its appearance Christianity was the recognized state religion in the Roman World Empire, and in barely sixty years socialism has won itself a position which makes its victory absolutely certain....
In fact, the struggle against a world that at the beginning was superior in force, and at the same time against the novators themselves, is common to the early Christians and the Socialists. Neither of these two great movements were made by leaders or prophets — although there are prophets enough among both of them — they are mass movements...
Look at my signature - a quotation from the Gospel of Luke. Can one deny its affinity with the very same guiding ideals that inspired atheistic Socialist revolutionaries?
In a sense, Marx had a point in saying that religion functions a bit like opium. Spiritual experiences, which religions exist to impart and concretize in the ritualistic and moral life of a bounded community, are phenomena that can bring intense happiness, meaning and richness to the lives of their faithful adherents.
Given the prevalence of religious thinking and practise in
every extant human culture through history, we can be sure that "religion" is an evolved trait of the human psyche, something that has contributed to our evolutionary fitness and survival as a species.
In the modern secular world, I would argue that we haven't abandoned religion. We just have new "rationalised" religions but the foundations of them aren't any more objectively based than the old ones. My friend
@Augustus is a bit of an authority on that.
What is religion? A complex, symbolic belief system which seems to originate from the homo sapien ability to think abstractly (usually grounded in some kind of fundamental 'mythology') and thus providing an outlet for this. It satisfies the individual and community's yearning for a sense of personal fulfilment, transcendence and shared purpose. Religion often postulates that "
meta-laws" are not socially constructed but rather derive from pre-existant superhuman forces that humans cannot simply change at will (or indeed, if the 'contract' with the gods/God is broken, may provide justification for regime change).
Communism, liberalism, fascism - these can all be understood as species of political religion.
Thus, to a Marxist we cannot change the mechanistic laws of history that will ultimately result in a "classless" egalitarian society without the evil of private ownership of property, nor for a Catholic can natural law be overridden by positive legislation that conflicts (i.e, St. Thomas Aquinas, "
an unjust law is not a law, does not bind in conscience"), nor for a liberal progressive will the march of societal reform oriented towards a more equal society in which no minorty group is discriminated against by the privileged and powerful fail to succeed, nor for the ancient Sumerians was the Me ("divine ordinance" or "divine power", dictating rules for behaviour) any more dispensable or indeed the Dharmic belief in karma for Hindus and Buddhists.
Religions merely differ in the details of their myths, meta-commandments, and the rewards and punishments they promise.
But humans are, in my judgement, innately 'religious' at least to some degree by evolutionary adaption. Most of us believe in something greater than ourselves etc. - God, justice, equality, class struggle - even if we aren't consciously aware of it.
if anything spiritual practice fully open the brains capacity to realize the true nature of our world.