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(edit: comment we replied to said something like "opium was just a painkiller, people in Marx time saw opium as good actually")

haha opium war doesn't real

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/09/20.htm

Karl Marx quoting Montgomery Martin:

"Why, the 'slave trade' was merciful compared with the 'opium trade'. We did not destroy the bodies of the Africans, for it was our immediate interest to keep them alive; we did not debase their natures, corrupt their minds, nor destroy their souls. But the opium seller slays the body after he has corrupted, degraded and annihilated the moral being of unhappy sinners, while, every hour is bringing new victims to a Moloch which knows no satiety, and where the English murderer and Chinese suicide vie with each other in offerings at his shrine."

Karl Marx now:

the Chinese Emperor, in order to check the suicide of his people, prohibited at once the import of the poison by the foreigner, and its consumption by the natives,

This is exactly how Marx feels about religion when he writes that passage about the opium of the people.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm

Here bold emphasis is mine, and again quoting Karl Marx:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. 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.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

That living flower could, among other things, include spirituality and ritual, if those are defined in sensible materialist terms.
Karl Marx draws clear distinction between illusions (bad, opium, poison) and fantasy or consolations (good, living flower).

Earlier from that same text; where '—' is my own insertion to clarify grammatical parsing:

The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis has been refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a superman, will no longer feel disposed to find the mere appearance of himself, the non-man, where he seeks — and must seek his true reality.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again.

That is to say, the illusory Sun that revolves around religious people is the reflection, or mere appearance of themselves.
Marx certainly appreciated this basic egoistic nature of religion; that it allows people believe whatever they want, and imagine their own will, as the will of God.

All religion, much like liberalism, is at its core a moral nihilism.
It is the claim I, having the true belief, deciding it, am the arbiter of morality; thus there is no morality external to myself.
How many times have you heard a religious person say: without religion or God then why not murder people or whatever?

But the opium seller slays the body after he has corrupted, degraded and annihilated the moral being of unhappy sinners,

When man will move around himself as his own true Sun this does not imply egoism, it means assuming control of your own fantasy and consolation.
Again:

The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

You're gonna need a fucking embryo if you want to criticize that vale of tears.
Finally, from the first line of that essay:

the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.

Stop cherry-picking Marx, this is not a religion, you do not get to do that anymore.
You have to face reality. Marx is not your God, he does not share your debased opinions about morality.

Why, the 'slave trade' was merciful compared with the 'opium trade'.

Religion is evil.

— and must seek his true reality.

It is not your own personal reality, it is your reality.
The reality of you as a physical being. That is what Marx says people must seek.

:vegan-edge:

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Would you care to expand?

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