Religious Conflict and the Economy

Religious Conflict and the Economy

Question A: What does Karl Marx mean by religion being an opiate to oppressed people? According to Karl Marx in what ways can religion be an opiate to oppressed people?

Karl Marx lived in a time that was characterized by economic, social, political, and intellectual upheavals. Karl Marx believes that religion is an effect of the unfair social structure. As opium of the people, religion numbs the people. Channeling their energies toward a nonexistent past, it is impossible to transform reality, which is only possible if the oppressed people are joining forces and are organized to revolutionize the social structure of the real world. Revolutionary Marxists maintain that it is necessary to fight against a social system that produces only misery and oppression for millions of people. He does not reject the willingness to fight to end this system of anyone, even when adhering to any religion.

For Marxism, the universe is matter in motion and ideas are determined by the movement of matter. In the words of Marx, all social and political relations and all the theoretical concepts that appear in the story are only explained by the existence conditions materials of the time in question. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary their social conditions of existence determine their consciousness. Thus, for Marxists, religions are the product of certain social conditions of existence. God created man in his image and likeness. Rather, we hold that it was men who created God in the image of their social relations (Elster, 1986).

Karl Marx perceives that the society is divided into oppressors and oppressed in which few possess the means of production and others are forced to sell their labor power which makes them human. Marx's thought on religion is a deep subject and it is not easy to understand, because many of his followers interpret his views in their own way. According to Karl the religion is a great realization of human essences as there is not true reality of human essence. The criticism of religion is a way of defending the world's opinion about the concepts of religion.



Question B: What kinds of evidence can you use to support this view of religion?

In my view, poverty is also a form of religious expression that forms real distress and it is continuously highlighted in ...