Karl Marx was wrong on Religion That a statement is made by a Karl Marx or an Albert Einstein does not mean a seal has been placed on it, especially when it is not one provable in a lab. Religion is opium of the people, so says Karl Marx, but my understanding of that statement leaves me with the conclusion that Marx, in the area of examining the religious, was shallow. The Hebrew, or better Israel, the nation of Marx, throughout its history of servitude first from Babylon to Egypt to Babylon again to Medo-Persia to Greece to Rome, and Western Europe, employed their religion to CONFRONT their enslavers and maintain their identity. Religion too was the inspiration behind the settlement of what is today US when a band of socially-persecuted English folk fitted out craft to the New World and who, after when they were strong enough, FOUGHT OFF the old country to establish modern America. In a manner of speaking, that triumph was religious-biased. Religion again gave direction in the equal right FIGHT in America, which of course was embodied by Martin Luther King Jr, a Baptist pastor. The staying and common strength of that FIGHT was the Christian spiritual people sang holding hands and refusing to leave. The ongoing PROTEST in Egypt, as was the Arab Spring, is being championed by religious people. Marx ideas on religion are cheap. History offers us an observation: The readiest revolutions without any religion colouration are gross tragic businesses. Mao’s peasant revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and the Aryan revolution of Hitler, otherwise called World War II, share unbelievable peculiarity. The senseless waste in human lives that characterised or followed from either of those was far more than any other instance of political questioning in all recorded history. If the very ends of a revolution or change are humanity, why make paltry of it? In comparison, the loss in human lives in communist Russia under Stalin alone is higher than killings associated with all religious wars in modern history. I say nothing of Hitler’s human sacrifice to his agnostic Ego. Marx’s generalization of religion as a placebo is a myopic understanding of the value of religion to humanity. Religion does not in general terms make people easy to lead. Other than on matter of doctrine or particular sub-belief that define a sect, the majority of the followers do not often agree with their leaders – pastors or imams or gurus -- on all other issues of life. When not springing from the scriptures, the views of my pastor in House on the Rock are often across the road from mine. He’s a diehard Chelsea. I see Chelsea as ordinary, lacking in style and grace that is my Arsenal. I concede, readily, that a charismatic pastor or an imam can exercise an unbelievable degree of influence over their flocks, but that reality is no different from what obtains with the absolute control the non-religious Stalin or atheistic Hitler or the astrologist Nancy Reagan exercised over their followers. Following-by-the-nose has nothing to do with religion but in the insecurity that exist among the human mass. It doesn’t matter if a person is religious or not, if they entertain feelings of insecurity, they are prone to being led by their nose. Stop throwing up common sound-bites or quotes to substantiate your opinions all too often. That may be no more than paying worship to the person the quotes are attributed to. Those quotes are made by humans like you, test them against your interpretation of existence -- that’s a reason you have that white gel inside that big thing your neck is carrying.
Posted on: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 08:04:24 +0000
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