I think that most religions do not believe in what is written in their scriptures, but rather in what has been added to them. All religions advocate some form of charity, but in practice we fight against what is foreign to us because it is foreign to us. Religion is dominated by institutions that abuse the power of faith for the purpose of controlling people by not dealing with actual human emotional nature, but rather with a distorted version of it that serves mainly to justify hatred rather than love. As long as institutions have the material resources necessary to spread manipulative messages (propaganda), this cycle will probably not end. It makes no difference whether one is Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, because all these religions, and probably others as well, have been twisted by influential people to portray territorial expansion, ethnic exclusion, and material exploitation as something good that makes individual believers feel superior. Although this actually contradicts the logic of peaceful coexistence. However, I cannot yet fully answer the question of how to break this cycle, because history has shown that violent attempts often lead to an even more determined reaction from the other side. Perhaps it would simply help to take away the institutions’ material influence so that people would start thinking for themselves again and no longer need instruction from outside. I don’t know.
Sorry if this text sounds strange, I used machine translation, I wrote it in German.
Religion reflects material conditions. Hence why the Catholicism of US/France/Germany differs from that of say Cuba or Liberation Theology of South America (or you could make comparisons between feudal/slavery vs capitalism such as the differences in Christianity on either side of the US civil war but the similarities of persistant anti-black racism reflecting capitalist values in developing the bourgoisie proleteriat as a means of stablity to maintain growth).
The apparent purging in the very early stage of socialism in USSR and PRC was partly due to religious holdouts that reflected feudal/bourgoisie values and therefore effectively sided with foreign powers against the new proleteriat state.
Vanguard parties tend to be secular in order to especially cut through these reactionary tendancies. Purging religion completely prematurely will bring up its own contradictions that may slow the progression of socialism. I suspect organised institutional religion will wither away similar to the state over longer periods of time.
If one wanted to consider a more decisive take on where religion should be guided towards currently is the encouragement of breaking of religious “homegenity” so that you have multiple localised folk versions of any given religion otherwise you will just get religion developing further fascist ethnonationalism (take your pick of examples such as Christianity/Hinduism/Judaism as opposed to say Taoism in China - consider how the latter could even be disputed whether it is an actual single religion in the 21st century given the wide range of folk localisation ie people may say its a “philosophy” rather than relgion. The same would likely have happened to Hinduism if India became socialist instead of capitalist following nominal indepenence from Britain).
Furthermore, atheism, especially in the west did not reverse imperialism - it doubled down on the exploitative relationship with the Global South ie it was defined by its material conditions. (Went from let’s bomb those brown folks because they are the wrong relgion to let’s bomb those brown folks because they are religious). Compare that to the atheism of socialist countries and their strong anti-imperialist stances, again defined by their local material conditions (one could even argue the atheism of socialist states reflects lack of religion rather than a new religion in itself like in the West).
Dialectical materialism means the material always comes before the idea.
Yes, I was mainly talking about the 3 major Abrahamic religions here. You are completely correct on the matter of material condition affecting the nees for religious beliefs, I think so too.
It is interesting that fascism never ever really took off in Islam as opposed to Christianity/Judaism - in fact the usual US empire of supporting fascists (eg Americas / Europe etc) didn’t really work with Islam so they supported salafist/takfiri off-shoots instead.
I think the biggest mistake people trying to understand religion often make is they keep trying to look at it as an ideology or philosophy which is just a gross oversimplification.
Religion is a faucet of human culture that reflects our desire for community, inherent curiosity for the world around us, tendency toward ritualism/routine to bring order to our disordered existence, and of course the want for a good life that all people have.
It serves as a kind of food for the soul and faith can have a demonstrably positive effect on people.
For much of human history culture, government, and religion were all one and the same - each one interconnected to give a society its identity. What went wrong was the development of hierarchy that enabled the rise of a wealthy, privileged priestly class whose interests aligned with those of the ruling class. This led to the development of dogma that allowed priests to abuse their power. As our hierarchies evolved in new and more grotesque ways the clergy became further removed from the laity - who are the real soul of a religion and ultimately reflect what it truly is about - and thus became further removed from the very faith they claimed to be guardians of.
Religion was never the problem; the problem was allowing certain people to wield power they didn’t earn over communities and dictate who and how people could worship. The solution to modern organized religion and the abuses it inflicts on the public are to dismantle these conduits of authority. Not only are they unnecessary but they inflict harm on their communities - as well as those of others - while serving the interests of the bourgeoisie.
Once the charlatans are removed faith will return to its roots of organic development and will start reflecting the values of its community instead of trying to define those values in a way that benefits those at the top at the expense of those at the bottom.
I dont know, I despise the church so much that I dont even want to marry in a church. I think most if not all of the original Bolsheviki also didnt marry in a church for that exact reason. If organised religion always ends up in the same patterns of oppression, I am happy to live completely without it, since we have psychology now to deal with psychological problems. But at the same time, I think that at the current time we live in, it would almost be impossible to truly convince most people to give up their religion. It is more of a material condition thing that will only go away if the construct for eliminating poverty is laid out.
What I am trying to say is that religion is more like a drug used for political control rather than as a basis for peaceful coexistence. That is why I don’t like it.
I get your take, but it’d be good to recognize your biases as well, I think this is a very eurocentric view of religion.
There’s this youtube channel “Religion for breakfast” with many interesting video essaya about different religious practices around the world from an academic and antropologic perspective.
And to complement your point, I don’t think it stops at religion. Culture in general could be used by institutions to excert their power over people, by influencing it or even controlling it. As humans we are social creatures, culture binds us and gives some meaning to our existence. Religiosity or even lack of religiosity, is part of the culture.
Yes I realized that it is eurocentric, I forgot to mention that. I mean there were things like state Shintoism in Japan for example too, but it was historically much less than in Europe or west Asia. Maybe also India, idk much about Hinduism and if the caste system is connected to the religion.
You should look into the various African diaspora religions, particularly those of West African origin.
Religion is a tool. A tool can be used for good or for ill. In the past, it was a tool of legitimacy and governance. In the modern day, it’s still used. Reactionaries use this tool to hinder progress and sabotage socialist states. Socialist states manage and monitor religions, to make sure they are compatible with the socialist culture, co-existing harmoniously, and positively contributing to society.
It’s part of our super structure that forms our current material conditions. More specifically, it’s seen as a panacea to dull the contradictions from every-day life, but it blinds us to further questioning and analysis that would lead us to the formation of antithesis.
As it is, we cannot simply ban religion. One of the basic human rights is to have freedom of religion. But ultimately we need freedom from religion.
Post-modernism should serve as a pretty good example to why getting rid of Theism won’t save the world. So why worry about breaking the cycle of faith?
It can feel good to discuss what is to be done about problems, but at the end of the day it’s important to be aware at some point we’re just playing with a fidget spinner.
I think it’s important to remember that religion can hold a super pivotal place in people’s lives (like on the level of importance some of us here get into politics, if not more intensely and far-reaching). And although there are religious people who maybe haven’t thought it through all that much and are mostly going along to get along, there are also religious people who have very deep faith and beliefs. Sometimes this is rooted in reasoning about the nature of the universe in addition to faith and sometimes it’s just faith in unfalsifiable claims about the afterlife and the origins of the universe, which makes it a non-starter to try to “argue” those people out of it.
The other thing is, and this touches on similar to what a couple others have said, is what are you going to replace religion with? I will use my experience with the US context as an example because it’s what I’m most familiar with. In the US, religious life can mean having some kind of sense of community, a means of connecting to like-minded people, a means of getting support in various ways. It can also have a darker side to it, like controlling patriarchal and reactionary politics that disproportionately harms women. But for the aspects of it that pertain to basic social needs people have, what do you get in the US if you remove religion from your life? Nothing. No atheistic replacement for community, now you’re more so trying to connect on politics (which can be extremely divisive and illiterate in views) or connecting on hobbies (which can feel very shallow), and support is something you more have to seek out and create on your own. You can now more easily reject the darker side of religion, but nihilism is also waiting in the wings with open arms to say that life is about maximizing dopamine levels and having a good time and that it doesn’t really matter otherwise (and you can see how some newly atheistic people espouse views like this). This nihilism helps validate imperialism and all of its dehumanizing projects.
This is not to say that religion is inherently good at humanizing. It has been a vehicle for helping to dehumanize plenty of times. Just to say that going in an atheistic direction does not inherently humanize either. Its associations with such historically make sense when we’re talking about revolutionary projects that needed to reject the current dominant religion to some degree because of its ties to the oppressor, but that doesn’t on its own mean atheism is intrinsically more humanizing than religion.
I just think it’s a lot more complicated than it can look.
As an aside:
Perhaps it would simply help to take away the institutions’ material influence so that people would start thinking for themselves again and no longer need instruction from outside.
I would caution against this kind of viewpoint. If it’s not religion, people will have other institutions influencing them. If it’s not institutions, it will be communities influencing them. There is no such thing as a free thinker just as there is no such thing as a free market or free speech. We are all awash in the world around us from day one and what we develop comes from inside and outside. The outside world isn’t a cage locking us in, it’s an inextricable part of us, and we become part of its shape too. Some aspects of the world can be like cages or powers can literally put us in one, but liberating from that doesn’t liberate us from “instruction from outside”. It changes the form of it to be more win-win cooperative and more of a mutual exchange.
You should read what Gramsci had to say on the Italian Catholic church - he believed communists should learn from the organization and emulate what it does for community outreach and the role it occupies within society.
If you want a practical example of people doing this in praxis, black panthers community outreach and literacy programs is quite literally this in action.
Remember the church was one of the first institutions to encourage people to learn how to read - there is a reason we also want people to do this as it turns them into communists.
Religion is basically fanfiction for reality.
I’d be very careful when saying “all religions” when you’re obviously talking about abrahamic religions, specially the dominant branches that survived, and glossing over all the variance between them and internally. Not all religions have institutions, hierarchies, scriptures or even moral guidance or justifications for the way of the world. And there have been multiple religious fractions even from Abrahamic religions who reframed it for opposition to oppression.
I’d recommend looking into how religions played a role in resistance all around the world against European colonisers, like Haiti, Peru, China. But it’s also a fun experience to read about random religions and legends from before that, get really confused, and fight the comfortable urge to understand it from a Latin-Christian perspective.
