I thought it was Charles Kingsley, the minister and author of Water Babies, who originally said that religion was the opiate of the people but I may be mistaken. Cheers, Ken Hanly Jim Devine wrote: > I wrote: > > >As Hitler allegedly asked (or was it Stalin?), how > > >many battalions does the Pope have? > > > > > >Fight the power, not the people's faith. > > Yoshie writes: > >It is hoped that, in the process of fighting the power, people will also > >drop any religious faith. > > I agree that the abolition of religious faith -- including atheism -- would > be a good thing, but it's more of a symptom than a cause. (Some of the > worst folk have been secular or nonreligious. For example, Jabotinsky, a > leader of "revisionist" Zionism -- i.e., right-wing Zionism -- and quite a > terrorist, was secular. A lot of tyrants profess religion but are > irreligious in practice.) > > Some hairy old German guy said that religion was the opiate of the masses > (quoting others, including Kant, I believe). But he broke with the > hard-core atheism of the Young Hegelians (who seem to have viewed religion > as a basic cause of the world's manifest imperfection) to point to the > societal basis of religious faith. He then argued the need to change that > society rather than to try to convert the world to atheism. > > I guess that all this fits with what Yoshie says, but it's good to clarify > the Left's attitude toward religion. After all, much of the Left has > religion of one sort or another. > > Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & > http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
