I know that the remark Marx made about the opiate of the masses bothers a lot of people because they don't see themselves as a member of the masses but rather as something special.
This is often as a result of a superficial reading of Marx from say a Sunday supplement article written by someone who has a similar objection to belonging to such a thing as "the masses".
This is worth bearing in mind though-
Quote:Is Religion the Opiate of the Masses?
This quote is reproduced a great deal and is probably the only Marx quote that most people are familiar with. Unfortunately, if someone is familiar with it they are likely only familiar with a small portion that, taken by itself, tends to give a distorted impression of what Marx had to say about religion.
Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.
Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
Usually all one gets from the above is "Religion is the opium of the people" (with no ellipses to indicate that something has been removed). Sometimes "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature" is included. If you compare these with the full quotation, it's clear that a great deal more is being said than what most people are aware of.
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Actually, the idea first appeared in de Sade's Juliette book which predated Marx by a considerable number of years.
It is in the scene where Juliette is having a dust up with Pope Pius V1.
She says, if I may quote-
"You keep the people in ignorance and superstition....because you fear them if they are enlightened; you drug them with opium....so that they shall not realize the way you oppress them."
I'm not sure where Lenin took it from.
What anti-IDers need to do is explain how to prevent people oppressing other people and if they can't and thus accept that oppression is always going to take place due to variations in intelligence and force ask them would they rather be oppressed by the religious mind or the scientific mind.
I'll take the former.
The reason for the success of The Church is that they discovered the trick of levying taxes, or fines, on animality and the inhibition of animality is exactly what has led to our economic and political hegemony.
The success of Science depends, to keep it simple, on reading the 10 commandments in reverse. That "thou shalt" means "thou shalt not, and "thou shalt not means" "get on with it".
Hell and purgatory were invented, like WMDs, to try to make sure they paid up.
Had they not believed they wouldn't have paid and The Church would have failed as a business proposition and animality, where one's sensual desires are the only measure of truth, would bestride the field victorious.
In which case you could forget all about internal combustion engines and flush bogs and chocolate sundies and said Hello to loincloths, poisoned arrows and Venus and Circe. With no salt and pepper.
Can you anti-IDers not see that it is a hypocrisy that works like the hypocrisy that one's boozing companions are not insane works or the one that the chick you chased and caught in your youth is the exciting little raver she was many years ago after all this time. (2 years).
This debate might be between those who think it's working and those who think it isn't.
I think it is not so bad and when the hail is beating on the French windows and I'm lounging on the couch reading a nice book at 76 degrees F with waitress service I think it's phew! kin' brilliant.
Perhaps Eorl's-
Quote:Even better delusions than Jesus can be induced with enough valium.
is better than this opium. I wouldn't know. I have never tried Vallium.
