"Religion was created to control people."

Status
Not open for further replies.
You just need to point out how all real religions are formed. There are some that were made for man’s purpose (control or money…e.g. Scientology). However, most religions are formed by when one person has a mystical experience of God. This is subjective so putting their experience into words doesn’t work, so they might come up with a set of spiritual exercises that if followed, and if those trying to understand react in exactly the same way as the mystic, then they might have the same experience. If it’s an effective set of exercises and other people find it useful, this might form the basis of a new religion, where the spiritual exercises form the canon of the religion. After a while some members will think the exercises are the religion instead of a tool, and these people we call fundamentalists. All real religions contain some spiritual truth…it’s just a matter of recognizing the archetypes and what they represent. I believe that Catholicism is the closest to the definitive truth. So the short answer is that there are some religions that were designed to control, but most are not, but are a means to attain the mystical.
 
I’d say it was more a bait and switch. Communists viewed the writings of Marx, Engels and later Lenin with something approaching a religious zealotry. They replaced Christianity with Marxism, an then battled each other over the orthodoxy with the vehemence of Medieval Popea and Patriarchs.
 
niceatheist said:
I’d say it was more a bait and switch. Communists viewed the writings of Marx, Engels and later Lenin with something approaching a religious zealotry. They replaced Christianity with Marxism, an then battled each other over the orthodoxy with the vehemence of Medieval Popea and Patriarchs.
Click to expand...
Neither the Communists nor the worst Popes were sunk over their orthodoxy to the message of their founder, lol. Let’s not talk about adherence to defending a theory, though. Let’s talk about what people who didn’t come up with the theory are willing to do in order to live it, people who have everything to lose and nothing to gain materially from their adnerence.
The question is whether communism has anything to give the heart. Ask yourself this: Where are the great saints of communism? You may not be impressed by mystics or great thinkers, fine. Where among the communists do you see someone like St. Francis of Assisi or St. John Baptiste de La Salle or St Katherine Drexel, people of wealth who gave not just their money but their lives (their time, the lavishness of their lifestyles) to “live simply so that others may simply live”?
Any human enterprise might attract scoundrels attempting to warp a good name to their own profit. What is to be made of an enterprise that ever convinces wealthy persons to give their lives–not just a small portion of themselves or a chunk of their fortunes, but to give it all up and dedicate their entire lives for the welfare of others?
 
Last edited:
There are still certainly communists who view Marx in almost prophetic terms, and those that view Trotsky in not dissimilar terms.
 
niceatheist said:
There are still certainly communists who view Marx in almost prophetic terms, and those that view Trotsky in not dissimilar terms.
Click to expand...
Let’s forget “view” and talk about “do”–that is, someone who had a lavish lifestyle in the bag for life and yet gave it up in order to work personally for those who were in need of their help and could give nothing to them in return.
 
Can’t say that any leading communists lived in poverty. Trotsky did get an icepick through the head.
 
niceatheist said:
Can’t say that any leading communists lived in poverty. Trotsky did get an icepick through the head.
Click to expand...
Ice axe, but that is no way for anybody to die. And ordered by Stalin, too. Russian communism got very brutal very quickly. I don’t know what Marx was thinking, but the idea that Communism in its actual forms was not all about direct and oppressive control is difficult to support with examples.

The irony, of course, is that Marx was imagining a community in which everything was held in common and there were no class distinctions. I don’t know where that ever happens in reality except in monasteries or religious communities, which are places where people actively come and go through a period of postulency before they’re allowed to freely renounce their recognized right to own private possessions. Christianity recognizes that the selflessness has to arise out of deliberate individual volition to be of value. Taking people’s possessions away by force does not have the same effect on either the one losing or the ones gaining as a free gift from the richer to the poorer.

When it is done by force, both lose. When charity is given freely, both gain.

Here is a contemporary to explain it:
 
Last edited:
Christ came to free us from the bondage of sin. Freedom consists of loving others as Christ loves us. The practice of my belief opens the way to freedom as I learn to love and grow in love of others.
The Catholic faith is about true freedom.

(the reflex objection is to “the rules…” of religion. But you can simply tell the person not to pay their taxes next year and start running red lights regularly, and the gaping hole in the logic should become self evident)
 
But charity has always been insufficient. The reason the Church could afford it in the Middle Ages is because the kingdoms of that time gave them pretty vast grants of land, so monasteries and other Church properties functioned as part of the medieval feudal system. In other words, it was a sort of social safety net.
 
niceatheist said:
But charity has always been insufficient. The reason the Church could afford it in the Middle Ages is because the kingdoms of that time gave them pretty vast grants of land, so monasteries and other Church properties functioned as part of the medieval feudal system. In other words, it was a sort of social safety net.
Click to expand...
Listen to Fr. Boyle’s talk. You’ll get what I mean. This is what ideology alone cannot do.
(Also:
)
Christian charity is not throwing stuff over a fence you have built between yourself and the needy. It is not forcibly tearing down walls between yourself and those who have the things you or others need, though, either.
To a Christian, to encounter the hungry, the stranger, the prisoner, the person in need (a person who might actually have a lot of material wealth, by the way) is to encounter Jesus Christ in person. In person. We don’t always act that way, because it is very hard, but the way we encounter those who need our help is what Christianity says is where the rubber meets the road. We don’t do it as a superior but as someone who needs the person we reach out to at least as much as they need us.
There is nothing in Communism that is either that personal or that intends to be that transformative to either the person in need or the person who has the means to meet the need.
 
Last edited:
The idea that “religion was created to control people” basically assumes that there is no God, or that God has not revealed himself or his will to man, both are premises that Christians reject outright. We believe that there is in fact a God, and that God has revealed himself to his people, and that as part of the revelation of himself and his will, he has given us orderly guides for worship in order for his people to remember what God has done for them.

In the Old Testament for example, we see that God revealed himself to Moses, appearing in the burning bush, and delivered his people from the hand of pharaoh. That after delivering his people from pharaoh he came to the Israelites in person and gave them his law for how they should live and worship. As part of this law he stipulated the proper means of worship, forbid the use of idols, instituted the sacrificial system as a means of grace for demonstrating to his people that he forgives their sin, and giving them a liturgical calendar reminding them of the great acts of deliverance and provision that God granted his people. They celebrated holidays such as Rash Hashanah, and First Fruits to remember that God provides for his people. They celebrated holidays such as the feast of tabernacles, and Passover to demonstrate how God delivered and sustained his people. They received Yom Kippur to remind them of their sin and the atonement that God provides. He gave them the Sabbaths to remember God in creation and to provide for the meditation on his word. He provided a priesthood to minister by word and execution of the sacrificial system to teach, instruct, and remind the people of God’s promises to them.

In the New Testament, God came in the flesh. He instituted baptism and the sacrament of the altar as means of grace to deliver his promises of redemption from sin, death, and the devil. We similarly instituted religious holidays mirroring these Old Testament events of deliverance reminding of the deliverance we have through Christ. We instituted Advent and Christmas to celebrate the incarnation of the Son. We instituted Lent to remind us of our sin, and subsequently of Holy Week and the season of Easter to remind us that Christ has defeated sin and death. We instituted Pentecost as a reminder that the Lord has provided us with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit who brings us to faith, sustains us in the faith, leads, guides, and instructs his people through the faithful ministering of his Word and sacraments. We were provided the office of Holy Ministry to faithfully deliver those means of grace and we celebrate the deliverance each Sunday on the Lord’s day.

These things are not meant to “control” us, but to keep His Word and His Promises ever in our view that we might know the great deliverance we have received through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and that it might form us in faith and guide us in our walk before God. If you think that is controlling then maybe you are doing it wrong, or you are worshipping the wrong god.
 
Last edited:
Some religions do try to control people, and cults. So this statement is correct if the word ‘some’ is prefixed to religion.

The Catholic Church was established by Jesus. We say the One Holy and Apostolic Church. We dont use the word ’ religion’ in the Creed. We use the word ‘Church’
 
Christianity is about God’s love for us because of his death on the cross.

When Jesus told Peter “You are my rock on which I will build my church.” Peter became the first pope.

At the institution of the Eucharist, Jesus said “this bread is my body” and “do this in memory of me”. He also instituted the sacrament of reconciliation, Thus we can say that God intended religion and the sacraments to be organised.

Catholics do not tithe, but we give donations out of our own free will in the collection bags.

Catholicism does not control its members in any way; we do however get a homily about our behavior in relation to the Gospel message.
 
Withholding the Eucharist from errant politicians seems to be a means of religious control.
 
o_mlly said:
The passive voice often hides the subject. Ask for a restatement in the active voice:

Who created religion to control whom?
Click to expand...
Great insight - thanks! That’s worth remembering for other contexts.
 
To the OP,

If you truly believe Religion was created to control people that is totally up to you Sir.

Thankfully millions of people disagree with your statement.
 
Religion - to bind oneself to God is God’s way to promote a virtuous people. Virtuous people have less need (and costs associated with) for government oversight and nuisance laws. A moral religious people is needed for a successful republic and the founders knew it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top