Is religion the "opium of the masses" as Marx said?

uh oh , your using logic and reason!

Religious people don't like that!

 

rb...


I am not at all anti-religion, nor even anti-Catholic. In fact I admire and respect many aspects of both, and am ( at least in theory) on a continual but as yet fruitless search for spiritual meaning. I am also not completely sold on the absolute value of logic or reason when it comes to spiritual matters. My intent, as I'm sure thwhy knows, was not to insult religion or Catholicism, but express a sincere problem I have which gets in the way of my ability to find peace in their message as a whole.


I respect the fact that to many religion has no place, and to others it has been so misudes that they would rather thrown out the whole thing than try to seperate the wheat from the chaffe, but I am, I think, not among them.

 

Back to this though, my point was that there's an effort made to explain rationale more in line with using scientific method than with blind faith. You can get into what aspects of capitalism or even science are debated and disagreed about however there's an effort being made to come to conclusions based on empirical methods such as observation, investigation, testing, etc. Astronomists have been wrong many times regarding the age of the universe and their methods require some small leaps in faith however there is an honest effort going on there.

 

What makes you think there isn't the same thing going on in religion? With Vatican II came a lot of meaningful changes for the Catholic Church.

 

Conceded, but many people of faith would claim that they are only making similarly small leaps to conclude that there is a God, etc. What do you say to someone who believes that he/she has witnessed a miracle? How do you use logic to explain thousands of Portugese seeing the Virgin Mary? The scientific explanations ( mass hysteria leading to sympathetic communal dellusion, for ex.) often require a bigger leap than the simpler explanation...

There are more things under heaven...

 

C.S. Lewis was a gift to all hummanity....not just the inquiring Christian. My faith, being brought-up in the Episcopal Church(i.e. Church of England or the "Anglican Community") was tempered by questioning my faith and examing it with a logical eye as much as with my spiritual one. I've never found it difficult to reconcile religion and science or with politics. I wish I knew what work you're referring to. I, for one, am addicted to the stories of Narnia--The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, Voyage of The Dawntreadder....etc That entire collection is one allegory for Christianity.

 

Grizzled,

I don't really have the time to explain fully right now and I apologize for that. However, you are a bit off - it was more a self-imposed opium. The line of discourse ran back a while before Marx (starting with Hegel) and it all essentially had to do with personalism and God. I can direct you to some of the wonderful works that trace it all if you wish, but it will have to wait until Sunday.

Regardless, I think this thread was started with an incorrect understanding of Marx and was just trying to point that out.

 

Religion ascribes magical powers to what it can't explain therefore theoretically making anything possible at all. It's part of the humor of it. Thousands of kids every year probably see cartoon characters in the clouds or in the condensation of windows but they don't ascribe magical powers to Walt Disney so it doesn't mean anything.

 

If 30, 000 children all saw Goofy in the sky at the same time, and repeatedly, I would honestly have to reconsider Disney's role in the universe...

 

30,000 people saw the Virgin Mary in the sky on multiple occasions? Was this on the Greatful Dead tour?

 

This statement has the feeling of really stale bread. I mean, I think I first heard this idea in the '80's, and people may have been outraged by it. But now it just sounds like dumb rhetoric.

 

Once you take the gigantic leap of faith to believe there is an all powerful being controlling the universe then you can believe anything at all. It's like when your father told you as a kid not do something and you asked him why and he responded because he said so. That's about what religion is really. Once you accept "because he said so" you're able to accept anything as true.

 

so what would you consider the Crusades?

or the Spanish Inquisition?

how bout witch trials?

ALL were done in the name ofChristianity.

 

Easy now Mr. Clutch. I think McBeth’s points are much more compelling. I remember the time before I became a Christian and I would have said things not dissimilar to what Timing is saying. But the purely logical view of the world almost inevitably comes up flat in so many places. And in some critical times it can come up quite dramatically flat. But that’s all part of a process, IMO, a process of coming to the understanding that logic doesn’t adequately explain our lives. And then the question becomes, if logic isn’t the whole story, what’s the rest of the story?

 

In that respect religion was the tool, not the cause. I don't think we blame science for Nagasaki, or Wagner for the Holocaust.

 

yeah but the nature of religion, the intolorance of the unknown...the intolorance of what is different is what was the driving force behind those events

 

Definitely, I agree. Nice way of stating it.

 

An important distinction to make is that religion is not inherently intolerent. Monotheistic faiths might be so construed, but not religion as a whole.

Secondly, it is important to distinguish between the present version of a religious faith and the religion itself.

For example, when it first came into being, Christianity was very rebellious, and the nature of much of it's rebllion was it's excessive tolerence. At a time when the local cultural structure, the hebrews, had rigid and 'intolerent' class, gender, and racial distinctions and acceptable roles and behaviours of and towards each, Chrisianity challenged that idea and preacehd tolerence and acceptance. Remember who Christ is supposed to have assoasciated himself with; fishermen, prostitutes, tax collectors, and others of 'lower' classes. He preached forgiveness and love at a time when punishment and conflict were the norms.

Also in relation to Rome, Jesus preached an early version of passive resistence when those around him wanted violent rebellion. Also, pre-Constantine, the greatest demographic for the underground support for Christianity were those oppressed by Roman society; women, slaves, etc.

The fact that Christianity became a tool for power players over time, and once in that position became intolerent out of political necessity does not really apply to the religion itslef, merely the application of it by those in power.


The same could be said of Islam, Buddhism, and many other religions.

 

What's important is the attempt to explain things logically and not rely on riddles and myths to explain things. There are certainly many things that we will not be able to explain in our lifetimes however we don't just give up and put it in the God column until we figure it out like so many have done for thousands of years.

 

thats what I was saying before

there is a huge creditbility gap between the "foundation of belief" for lack of better word of Christianity and Islam, and the real life practice of those religions...


and since there is that gap, why should I embrace/believe/practice a religion that says it has the absolute answers, but in reality can't stay true to those beliefs?