The Christian Religion is Bad Drugs

2015-5-7 Drug img01“Religion is the opiate of the masses.”

I don’t recall in exact detail where or when I first heard this quote used. I know that I was in high school, that I was working on a community theatre production, and that I was arguing with another high-school-aged cast member about life, the universe, and everything—the way intellectually-inclined adolescents sometimes do. My intellectual sparring partner, who held by far the most “radical” ideologies of our rag-tag group of Midwestern theatre kids, insisted to myself and the rest of our small group that humans create their religious beliefs to keep them from having to confront the more difficult elements of their reality. For example, belief in a personal creator keeps people from worrying that no one cares for them, or that their life has no greater purpose. Belief in the afterlife prevents people from having to fully deal with loss.

My 16-year-old self, a lifelong Christian, found this notion utterly bewildering. Continue reading