User talk:Melor Amaran

Marxism and Religion

"Religion is the opium of the masses" - Karl Marx

The above given phrase maybe a deal breaker for most of my theist comrades who aspire to become a Marxist or a Communist, if they fail to understand the phrase in the right manner. The Marxist idea doesn't demand you to be an atheist, it just simply asks you to conceal your religious beliefs from the public space, religious beliefs and practices must be solely a personal affair and must never indulge in politics or any such social affairs.

"Secularism in no way means that government will lend it's support equally to all religious faiths but to credit of the Congress and the Pseudo-Communists and Socialists a perticular concept of secularism has developed in our country which implies equal encouragement for all religious faiths. Under such circumstances, what else can we expect except whipping up of religious fanaticism" - Comrade Shibdas Ghosh

Marxism does argue that religion has become an institution of exploitation and discrimination which of course can be reformed by appropriating and removing the ideas which are primitive in the religion. I do agree that this may sound as blasphemy to my comrades who are religious but I would argue it is not, for instance let's take Islam. The idea of Islam that Muhammad created and propagated was very much different from the Islam that the later dynastic caliphs followed, propagated and patronised, their understanding of Islam was considerably different from the understanding of Muhammad and in later period Islam was enriched with various sects within itself like Sunni Islam, Shia Islam, Ismaili Islam, Ahmediyya Islam and Sufi Islam which are usually accused as distortions and so called "not the true Islam" by one sect of Muslims over the other but what they fail to understand is that even the very standard of so called "True Islam" is an evolving idea and also a historically evolved idea. If my religious friends really care about spreading their religion, they must be open to new ideas from within or outside the religion, which apparently had been happening historically with every ideology or religion. The sub-sects or sub-divisions of a religion is often seen as a kind of blasphemy by one sect of people over other but I see them as the resultants of evolution of the concern religion. Marxists too must very much consider reforming their past religion rather than exciting them so that they can be relevant to the masses as once Mao Zedong said

"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought content in the policy for promoting the progress of arts and the science and a flourishing culture in our land"

Why do we need Religion ? Even the worst kind of religion inspite of having it's own flaws and issues still exists because people are oppressed by their material conditions. Religions act as the painkillers for the masses who suffer from unimaginable conditions and unconscionable exploitation may be that's why religion is a opium. Abolishment of religion is impossible without abolishment of the condition and circumstances that demands or calls for such beliefs. You can't expect a drug addict/alcoholic to turn clean overnight, results of such actions will only create more chaos and unbearable pain. A sense of security and belongingness needs to be developed in a well articulated manner among the masses to make them shift from their belief in God or in any such supernatural entity towards atheism or agnosticism which is of course again a very slow and long process. Religion and culture are two interlinked and interdependent bodies, non existence of one with of course gravely affect the other but withing off religion is elimination of dogmatism and superstitious beliefs not the socio-cultural history and practices associated with it. Evolution of religion or any ideology in that case is very much inevitable but the only question is that are we going to create a bridge between spirituality and the pursuit of common good with establishment of a system that truly believes in shared prosperity by creating a society with no discrimination, oppression or greed.

December 2020
Hello, I'm Materialscientist. I wanted to let you know that I reverted one of your recent contributions—specifically this edit to Robert Hardy (American football)—because it did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the Help desk. Thanks. Materialscientist (talk) 12:45, 8 December 2020 (UTC)