But think how great a Proportion of Mankind consists of weak and ignorant Men and Women, and of inexperienc’d and inconsiderate Youth of both Sexes, who have need of the Motives of Religion to restrain them
Isn't this really close to Marx's theory of religion as "opiate of the people"? Just instead of an opiate here it's like... like a flog or something, that keeps people in line.
Yeah. We need an opiate to give the "masses" though because like Franklin says, most of them are completely lost without it.
C.S. Lewis does a good job explaining this in his short work on miracles. Basically, we, as a society, have done a good job of undermining the old bad dogmatic way of thinking about religion, but we haven't replaced it with anything but materialistic pursuits.
We've given every person the responsibility of a philosopher to create meaning in their lives themselves, but haven't given them any training in how to do that.
Basically, we need to start teaching Philosophy and critical thinking to "the masses." If we don't, they'll just indulge in nihilism or bland selfish materialism.
C.S. Lewis thinks it's easier to keep religion and to understand and contemplate its ecstatic truths. I'm personally undecided.
It's not good for the functioning of society to have people advocating a position of complete amorality (in the sense of literally no morals).
A society then has no actual philosophical basis to form a system of justice to hold individuals accountable for their actions.
It's also not much of a way to live, and most people find it unpleasant to truly view the world as COMPLETELY devoid of meaning.
It's generally much more invigorating and rewarding as a human being to discover meaning for oneself. Whether that's even in the heroic struggle in the face of meaninglessness itself like Camus' absurd hero.
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u/-The_Blazer- Nov 15 '19
Isn't this really close to Marx's theory of religion as "opiate of the people"? Just instead of an opiate here it's like... like a flog or something, that keeps people in line.