I always considered myself agnostic leaning atheist. I consider leftism to be antithetical towards religion. All religions have a class structure to them, do priests, rabbis, or imams not exist? And what about marxism, is karl marx not venerated by some leftists in a weird atheist sort of way?
All I know is people misuse “religions is the opium of the masses” quote all the damn time and I am cynical of people who are TOO anti-religious because it can so easily start leaning into islamophobia for a lot of white leftists.
I think i've seen a trend recently towards the other end, of people going "opium wasn't bad in those times it was for coping and handling life", and in the sense that Marx isn't insulting the believer, sure.
But the quote is followed by,
"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."
He still considers religion an inverted consciousness, obviously not the fault of the believer, but its abolition is still part of the demand for genuine happiness, to give up on illusions and reexamine the conditions that gave rise to those illusions, to the world itself.
I meant that people are looking at it through the gaze of a world riddled with the opioid epidemic, which was after Marx’s time.
Yes, but before the opioid epidemic, it wasn't like opium was a cure or medicine-it could only dull or distract from the pain with illusions.
Yes i'd say one of the biggest issue leftist movements get from organised religions is that they have long been used as a mollifier for the working classes, the hope that a persons sacrifices and obedience in this life will be repaid in the next, this leads to obvious problems when agitating for improved conditions if the population has been convinced that their suffering has religious merit. Even though this narrative is less obviously pushed in today's world a lot of that Victorian era moralized work ethic is baked into peoples beliefs today (bootstrapping etc)
Here are two songs I like sung by U. Utah Phillips that were written essentially as a nice simple argument against a reliance on religion to fix our terrestrial issues, a Joe Hill song Preacher and the Slave, and T-Bone Slim's The Lumberjack’s Prayer
The Preacher and the Slave dynamic critique I recall being very present in black communist sharecropper and industrial union organizing in the south in the first half of the 1900s, especially 1930s-1940s, where black workers would hold religious views but had strong criticism of the role middle class preachers had on the communities they worked in. Agreed on aspects of its morality still show up today in people's position, whether it's the moralized work ethic, martyrdom, or a moralist approach to what is best analyzed through the lens of class struggle.
Nice prayer for the second video.
Hot take: abrahamic religions are all fucking nasty. They are nasty towards women and they are nasty towards LGBT people. I grew up in a poor-ish heavily Catholic country, and hoo boy does it do damage to people's lives. I honestly can't imagine Islam being any better in any muslim country. I think a lot of leftists go too far with the tolerance and at some point start romanticizing shitty reactionary belief systems just because they grabbed the shit end of the historical stick.
I obviously have a lot of Catholic people in my life that I respect no matter their religion but I firmly believe all of them would be better off if they would drop those awful old beliefs. I think the same applies to muslim people.
Yes and you can believe all that while not being rude to people of the faith (not BAD people like sexists or racists or etc, but just normal christians or muslims or jewish people). some leftists don’t do that and instead just sound... really racist when they talk about the religions. in your experiences, some leftists go too far in tolerance. but in my experiences i have seen many white leftists say some very vile things in the name of atheism.
also i rather people of the faith or raised in the faith criticize it than other’s, personally. Kind of like how Roma men can be horribly sexist, abusive, homophobic, but I don’t give a fuck what a non-Roma person has to say about us... but I know other people don’t agree with that. just my own thoughts on criticism that tends to come from others about oppressed groups.
Yeah those are all good points. I mostly keep my opinions to myself when talking to religious people, I'm very much over my edgy militant atheist phase.
but in my experiences i have seen many white leftists say some very vile things in the name of atheism.
Yeah that happens too no doubt, I'm probably a bit blind to that since my opinions lean more to that side.
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. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
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.
~ K. MARX
Sounds like it's pain relief considering, "heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions."
No, it won't solve the problems, and is not medicinal. It can only reduce the pain. Look at the next two lines, and the last line most of all-criticism of religion is only the start.
what, it's not normal to sign yourself into a billion years of servitude in the SEA Org aboard L. Ron Hubbard's pleasure yacht?
And what about marxism, is karl marx not venerated by some leftists in a weird atheist sort of way?
Every fortnight I slaughter a black lamb as a burnt offering to the Marxhead and his avatars, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. The odor is pleasing to him and I pray he will smite the bourgeoisie
Switch to tofu, it's funnier and will ammuse your idols.
Alternatively, nazis and the rich aren't technically animals anymore.
I'm atheist but I don't fault anyone for practicing so long as it's not clashing with your leftism. I mean there's a long history of both theists and atheists on the left.
There shouldn’t be an official stance. That’s the official stance
The official stance should be for socialists to stop alienating and being a jerk to people for their religion. They're the type of people who care more about being right or mentally superior correct opinion havers than they care about accomplishing anything. Saying, "but religious people often have regressive social views" is also another deflection because they're talking about the majority of the world. Yes, billions of people have regressive social views. Change their social views, but you're going to be even less successful at that if you're saying "YOU'RE A DUMB IGNORANT PEASANT YOUR CULTURE IS BAD GAZE UPON MY SUPERIORITY".
it's swaggy
the true redditors here are mad at it. everyone else is fine with it. christian socialism is cool. also we're all shi'i of course.
Seriously. Remember when we added an islam comm, the mods banned like three people who rage spammed for a while, and everyone else was like "oh hey welcome"? Yeah, that was dope.
Read Durkheim on religion to understand that the fundamental building block of a religious system is social interaction and to therefore understand that religion under alienating capitalism is hollow because of it. Communism will have religious spirituality from the social interaction when groups become larger than the sum of their parts but the material realities will mean a priest class won’t need to form to distribute the limited resources.
I'm an atheist but I think it's easier to imagine a post-capitalist society than a post-religious one. I also don't see a point in fighting it.
In the US we have the mantra "separation of church and state" baked into our civic religion, but I think a lot of people misinterpret this and reduce it to "the church is a corrupting influence on the state." As creepy as it is for the state to be making decisions based on theocratic doctrine, I think a lot of people miss just how often this works the other way around - where the state is a corrupting influence on religion and state doctrine becomes the "word of God."
Large denominations have been effectively turned into political machines. Instead of being subject to critical analysis, the holy texts become Rorschach inkblots interpreted from on high in whichever way is most expedient to perpetuating the current manifestation of class society. People in more secular fields like academia or science may thumb their noses at religion, but this corruption of religion is clearly systemic and the same systemic forces are working to turn academia and science into bulwarks of class society as well.
It's really weird to see American takes on religion, because in Eastern Europe religion and especially organised religion was always the backbone of reactionary movements. There are nothing even remotely similar to liberation theology, and religious people are extremely susceptible to nationalist, anti-LGBT and pro-capitalist propaganda.
It's the same shit in America and probably worldwide.
Like, the good things that come from religion are always outweighed by the bad, the reactionaries always outnumber the rest. The rhetoric that oppresses everyone but white men is consistently backed up by the bible, especially LGBTQ+ these days. People where I live haven't even moved past the "homosexuality is a sin" phase yet, and they talk about it openly without fear of retaliation or opposition. And, I know some people will disagree with me here, but looking at Islamic traditionalists in the Middle East and Indonesia is like looking in a fucking mirror. All Abrahamic religions should be abolished, at the very least.Liberation theology barely exists here, it seems like more of a project to me.
In America, we don't really have much Christianity - we have several syncretic religions combining white supremacy with Christian imagery. I absolutely guarantee you, if Jesus floated down from the heavens, 20% of the Evangelicals, generously, would stop calling themselves Christian because he would come down with brown skin. Most of the rest just wouldn't acknowledge it.
Catholic Worker organisations have done a lot of good work in the US starting just before the second world war up to modern day. Worth reading up on, i'm agnostic myself but I at least found it cool to see how religion can be used as a force for so many positive things when the people in charge aren't POS.
My problem with this discussion is when were discussing religion, are we really discussing ALL religion or simply abrahamic religions? Because it feels like when people in leftist spaces talk about religion, theyre only really talking about the religions in western culture, not really anything present in the non anglo sphere of the world.
This is true, but it’s probably largely because “religion” as a category of experience and social organization is a modern western concept.
