UGN Security Forums UGN Security: Underground Off Topic opium of the masses

Karl Marx once said that "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." Most people here seem really smart (well, at least smarter than I) and i was wondering on your interpratations on that. I can understnad the first sentece. Religion gives people hope where they might not have had nay before, but the bit about opium kinda loses me. Opiums a narcotic... and that means it messes with your mind and makes you stupider and sleepy, right? Maybe he compares it to religion meaning that religion is offered so that you can just accept somebody else's way of thinking as right instead of having to think your way is rihgt, dulling your senses to truth and blindly accepting faith? I don't really know, just wondering your opinions.

Opiate of the masses.

I think he means it more of scale of denial. It isn't so much of blind faith as the fact that it gives ppl something to believe. Something to make everything seem good, no matter how bad things in real life get. No matter what heppens, god has a plan and after we die we WILL be repayed for everything. All we have to do is believe. So yeah, it relaxes you and dulls senses, but I think largely he means it is a artificial escape into a peacefulness that some ppl need to escape reality and the possible futility of life just ceasing upon death w/o any reparations or 2nd chances