But wouldn’t the same argument hold just as true for non-religious ethical systems? If you persuade people that we all ought to behave this way, rather than that way, then those who insist on behaving that way are transgressors, and a threat, and must be dealt with. Hence kings, courts, law, punishment.
What this comes down to is the assertion that ethics was invented to control the masses, since any claim that we ought to behave in one way raises the question of how we deal with people who don’t behave that way. On this view, both religious and non-religious ethical systems would have the same tendency to engender authoritarian enforcement mechanisms.
Sure. There are plenty of ways to control people, but they all take advantage of human weaknesses. There isn’t any real difference between a code of ethics that blames the transgressors directly for society’s problems, and one that does it with a god as an intermediary.
I suspect that this is in part through a popular misunderstanding of Karl Marx’s famous phrase religion is the opium of the masses.
I have heard people say that this means the working classes are kept quiet with religion as a means to pacify them to the injustices they endure at the hands of the rich; when in fact he meant that religion is created by the masses themselves to deal with the difficulties of daily life, and that when communism arises and the workers rule the roost, religion would die off of its own accord.
I suspect the OP’s cliché is indeed a strawman based on that phrase.
I have never heard the claim as the OP states it.
It is a setup question where the answer then would be “AHA! So religion doesn’t oppress the people!” “Eat that you socialists!”
Therefore, Bryan’s second part ,or something to that effect, should be included in answering this question.
I would think the hydraulic civilization of Egypt under the Pharoahs is a better example of religion being used or invented to control the masses. The priests, being able to tell the date, could predict when the Nile would flood and when to plant crops, and it was obviously the will of the gods that the peasants would be there to work the fields when that happened. Otherwise everyone would starve. So serve your masters and know your place.
Humans obeyed their parents (or chiefs); then, through superego (or even auditory hallucinations) obeyed their dead ancestors, or dead chiefs, or statues or other icons representing such honored dead authority figures; this developed into religions. To obey such authorities is to be “controlled.” Since chieftains and priests encouraged and exploited such religion, Yes: religion was “invented to control.” To add “the masses” is misleading since, at the time of the initial invention, only villages or bands would be controlled.
Marx was just as much wrong about religion as he was about economics, sociology, and nearly everything else. If we look at the actual facts concerning the origins and practice of religion, we do not see that it was created by the oppressors to pacify the masses or that it is relegated strictly to the oppressed masses and created by themselves. There have certainly been examples of oppressed people who were highly religious. However, religious fervor is certainly not limited to oppressed people. Overall, some religions seem to thrive quite well among free people, most notably Christianity. Therefore Marx’s characterization of religion is wrong.
Appearances can be deceiving. It is easy to believe that spirituality is built into our wiring but it is nearly impossible to prove or disprove, because clean samples are hard to come by, as well as unbiased researchers.
Ah, but a god can be everywhere and anywhere, meaning he can ‘enforce’ the code even when you think nobody’s looking. Sure that’s less effective for the smarter ones who can see thru the bullshit, but there are far more who will believe it even if only subconsciously. Plus–if a few smart ones get too vocal in calling out the game–you can just condemn them for heresy and turn the crowd against them. Or (if they’re useful) just let them in on the action and ordain them as priests.
I’m not a big fan of Marx, but this doesn’t follow. The definition of “free people” you are applying does not match Marx’ idealsociety by any means: inequality in wealth, unequal access to services, class tratification, etc. More to the point, Mar does not argue that religion will magically disappear if the causes of suffering were removed, only that it would no longer be necessary and thus could/should be removed. Abolition of religion, for Marx, is something that needs to be asked (encouraged, demanded, . . .) of the people. Not something that follow necessarily from the creation of a Marxist economy.
I agree there are circumstances where religion has an advantage. But it’s not every circumstance. It’s much more difficult in much of the modern world to use religion to control people because they aren’t believers, or they have a diversity of beliefs. You can still see religious fervor in the establishment of non-religious movements though, usually through the use of fear. Fear of real things like death and torture are as good or better than fear of a god in many circumstances.