i’d like to know exactly how atheism functions like an Opiate.
Marx criticism wasn’t so much of the moral guidelines that people adhere to, but that people get locked into a belief and can’t see outside of it. The context of his remarks are inside his belief that people, at the turn of the 19th century, were in a class stupor. He advocated revolution by the lower classes in order to improve their lives. He saw religion as a factor in people’s lives that was keeping them complacent, trudging in poor conditions and circumstances and not working at change. He believed religion had them in a God will take care of me stupor. And probably, some people were.
He was not entirely incorrect in his philosophies, he has some class and labor philosophies that are used today. The other thing is that people take the ideas of Marx and twist them to their own purposes. Marx himself once said that the way in which people were using his philosophies…that he was not Marxist himself.
Taking his comment, that religion is the opiate of the masses, and using that as a reason for religion not existing, or for criticizing religious belief in general…is completely outside of the context in which Marx said it. And, I think when people use it in that fashion it shows more their own prejudices than any sort of intellectual understanding of Marxist philosophy.
I do understand the idea that the author is trying to put across. Religious people believe that God gives us humans moral guidelines. It takes personal discipline to live within these guidelines. Do religious people fail at this discipline? Sure. Have people used religion to justify less than moral behavior? Yes they have. But that doesn’t change the fact that religious people believe they are called by God to live moral lives.
Atheism has no such moral call. Each person is free to choose their own moral guidelines. Most atheists believe that the guidelines they have chosen for themselves (and families) are good, and just. Non harmful, in a physical sense, to others. But that is not the whole equation of morality, not in a religious definition.
Where atheists see non-harm, religious people see great harm. To society and to the soul of individuals and humanity as a whole. Marx described religion as an opiate, because it kept people in a stupor of “God will provide”, and they wouldn’t or couldn’t see a need for change. Atheism is an opiate, because it keeps people in a stupor that doesn’t allow them to see the need for God defined morals.
