Which Religion is the biggest threat to Communism?

Christianity and Islam, both being essentially heresies of Judaism, retain all the intolerant aspects of the latter. Don't forget the brutal christianisation of Europe - it certainly was designed by the emperors, but it was carried out by murdering monks and priests. Let's not forget the burning of Rome, mistakingly attributed to Nero.
If a Christian should apply all of his/her beliefs to the letter, he/she wouldn't allow any other religion in his/her country, possibly using physical force.
The "desert religions", Christianity-Islam-Judaism, brought religious violence in Europe and the "western" world (something that in the pre-christian years was totally unheard of). In ancient times, Greek visitors in Egypt would pray to Isis as if she was Hera; the Romans saw Mercury in Goth's Woden. The Christians were not only hateful towards other religions; they demanded the destruction of every symbol of the old religion.

Stalinista wrote:

Christianity and Islam, both being essentially heresies of Judaism, retain all the intolerant aspects of the latter. Don't forget the brutal christianisation of Europe - it certainly was designed by the emperors, but it was carried out by murdering monks and priests. Let's not forget the burning of Rome, mistakingly attributed to Nero.
If a Christian should apply all of his/her beliefs to the letter, he/she wouldn't allow any other religion in his/her country, possibly using physical force.
The "desert religions", Christianity-Islam-Judaism, brought religious violence in Europe and the "western" world (something that in the pre-christian years was totally unheard of). In ancient times, Greek visitors in Egypt would pray to Isis as if she was Hera; the Romans saw Mercury in Goth's Woden. The Christians were not only hateful towards other religions; they demanded the destruction of every symbol of the old religion.

It's easy, and a popular choice, to pick on Christianity itself as the reason for the brutal conversion of Europe; which in some respects is true, with the doctrine of "Our God is the only God;" but nobody really seems to want to acknowledge that European culture at the time contained a few key factors:

1. It was deeply religious (even while pagan)
2. It was extremely violent
3. It was extremely uneducated and loyal to the chieftans/kings and their ways of thought.

A lot of anti-Christians, and especially neopagans, nowadays, seem to believe that Europe was some magical utopia where everyone got along just fine with the order of things, until all of a sudden Christianity burst from the ground and Christian armies began marching around forcibly and violently converting everyone. The reality is that these tribes were so diverse and so scattered throughout the continent, and they were constantly bickering, constantly warring, and constantly killing each-other over disputes, and a lot of them were religious. Even Ancient Athens was prone to this conduct, the city-state that most Atheists point to when saying how far along it was before Christianity came about. Socrates was sentenced to death for religious reasons. Even the Romans felt their brand of paganism superior to the barbarians', and enforced it all throughout the existence of the Empire.

This violent and intolerant culture proceeded and took on the face of Christianity. Around this time, we have to also remember that communication and trade channels were far more advanced, Europe was growing smaller, and the various tribes that were once split and numerous, were becoming united. This allowed Christianity to spread like wildfire, and also attributed to unity of the tribes/powers against the former pagan religions. Take that, place it in an institutional position monarchistic position of power, and that resulted in the history that we saw.

Monotheism succeeded because it suited the needs of the later Roman emperors. The chaos and carnage that was caused by the upheaval of constant civil war in the 3rd century resulted in Diocletian adopting a new system upon his accession to the throne. He created the tetrarchy system: 2 co-Emperors in the East and West (both called Augustus), served by two junior Emperors (both called Caesars).

He then altered the character of the Emperor from a reasonably accessible figure (who could be seen regularly by the public at events and even in his palace by upper class citizens) to a much more hidden, shadowy figure called the Dominus. He hid himself away in the middle of a huge palace, behind multiple doors and palace guards. The approach to him was expected to be accompanied by much bowing and groveling.

Diocletian created the figure of the awesome, Godlike, Emperor. Later on, Constantine saw the hierarchy of the Christian religion as a mirror of his own style of rule, and consequently adopted it as the state religion of Rome because the similarities made it easier to control and shape. The political radicalism and anti-Roman undertones of the early religion of Jesus was thus transformed into a tool of the Emperor in collusion with the Orthodox Patriarch (who himself was basically a civil servant).

Anyone who sees anything else in Christianity (or any form of monotheism, especially the last and least, Islam) is simply a fool.

So much prejudice against Christianism...

If christianism was followed to the letter, we could be at the end of history, without even needing marx or whatever other thinker.

But the material conditions dont allow this, and modern scientifical thought adds quite a lot to the set of moral concepts Jesus teached, by showing that man is bound by his material conditions.

If you take Jesus teachings as paul stated, the judaic old testament is to be taken as a simple history of the Jews, and not as a ruling guide of what christans should do. Paul decided to separate christianity from judaism.

Unfortunately some christian churchs still follow the old testament.

I do believe this is because as it served to the pharisees, the old testament serves them as a way to justify their extraction of money from their "victims".

Christ's moral concepts where quite good, and you can argue that from some point of view those ideas reached marxism via common sense. Marx cannot exist in a cultural void.

Even if Christ was not a socialist himself (because this cannot make sense, he lived some 1700 years before a proletariat existed), aceptance, tolerance, love, justice, caring for the poor and those who are in poor conditions, cannot be bad ideas...

Our culture evolved inside christianity, and you cannot deny that, or ignore that, and the consequences of this are present even in places and ideas that you cannot directly connect to christianism.

So christianism has a place in history and served (and can still serve) a porpuse.

But because it is ideology, it can be deformed by class interests, and so it cannot serve itself to decided how to transform society as a whole, from the point of view of politics etc.

But i believe it still can be quite usefull in our personal relationships.

Whatever was "good" in Christianity wasn't an invention of Paul or Jesus. There's plenty of common sense morality and ethics to be found in Epicurus, Epictetus, and even Marcus Aurelius. Jesus himself was a plain and simple nut job who was slowly but surely gearing up for a bid against Rome. How else could his career have ended? How else would he have proven himself to be the son of God? He was just another nutter who was nipped in the bud before he had a chance to get up to serious mischief.

If you really want to know how a case like Jesus plays out in real life, look no farther than the modern day career of Osama bin Laden.

What was truly useful in Christianity was an invention of Paul's. The structure that Paul built up for ultimate deployment against the Roman authorities was craftily appropriated by the Roman emperors themselves. Church and state were inseparable in the later Roman Empire, because the Church was essentially a wing of the State. Any "disagreements" that occurred between the Patriarch and the Emperor were ultimately questions of political, not religious, policy (no matter what amount of abstruse language they were cloaked in).

Since the end of the medieval period, the Reformation, and the 18th century "Enlightenment", what was useful to the Emperors has only periodically been useful to modern heads of state, which is why Christianity is dying out.

Order's rants against Christianity remain as one of the few kinds of gems still to be encountered on this board.

Mabool wrote:

Order's rants against Christianity remain as one of the few kinds of gems still to be encountered on this board.

Who needs Game Of Thrones when you have Byzantium?

None of them and all of them. What does it mean to declare one particular religion as "the biggest threat to communism"? Do we mean to communism as a "state of affairs", an ideal to which the real world will have to adapt itself, or communism as "the real movement which abolishes the present state of things"?

Obviously, in the former case, we can simply look at the theological tenets of this or that religion and judge its compatibility with our abstract ideal of a communist society. Then some of us may be more favourably disposed towards Christianity, because Jesus said so-and-so. But then what does this intellectual exercise accomplish? Not much, except to have a discussion that somehow completely neglects lived reality today in favour of the words ascribed to Jesus two millennia ago.

We could say that Islam is the biggest threat to communism, but what does that mean in Western Europe, where muslims are a demonised minority? What does this add?

First, Castro is by his own admission, an atheist. 2nd, religion has no need to be a threat to Communism at all. I say this as a member of the Communist Party and as an Observant Jew. As far as Judaism being intolerant, perhaps it was in "Old Testament" times. But for the last 1000 years and probably longer, we have been a remarkably tolerant Faith. We have had to be, just to avoid being massacred by the Muslims or Christians under whose political control we have lived. Communism IS a secular form of what religion aims to do. Between the two, there can be no conflict. It is only when there is abuse of one or the other that you find trouble between them.

Religion isn't necessarily threatened by Communism at all, the entire thing about Marx and the "opium of the people" is a simplistic and vulgar "Marxist" narrative that ignores the genuinely humane understanding of the human condition that makes people believe in fairy stories in the first place, although my copy of Bechstein is a simply amazing read, formatting is mine:

Karl Marx himself wrote:

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

He went on, square brackets and formatting are mine:

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Criticism has [only] plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to [i]unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

He is thinking of Kepler, of Copernicus, of Gallileo. There is nothing anti-religious there at all, just that it is a symptom of the disgusting inequalities in potential, in capabilities that could otherwise be allowed to flourish not because religion causes these problems, society causes these problems that until that point could only be addressed with (insert theological argument here). We are humanists after all, the entire point of being a Marxist is to reconcile the social with the spiritual, not through the vestments and routine of any organised religion, but through the criticism of law, the Earth and politics that are the sole reasons why any criticism is necessary in the first place!!! It's blindingly obvious!

Religion offers a crutch to people who are not yet conscious of the actual human potential that is here, for us to really employ our collective powers in a way that doesn't need the thought of an afterlife of eternal bliss. It is no threat. It is only a threat when it is a venal, politicised and corrupt version of the message of the prophets. Strangely, Daniel was never considered a prophet in the bible, and I don't know why -he talks of (verses are numbered):

The Book of Daniel, Chapter 2 wrote:

31 “Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32 The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. 34 While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.

36 “This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. 37 Your Majesty, you are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; 38 in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.

39 “After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. 40 Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. 41 Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. 42 As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. 43 And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.

44 “In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. 45 This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces.

“The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”

46 Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. 47 The king said to Daniel, “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery.”

Is there not a greater part of the bible that explains, albeit naively, the fate of humans meandering between failed states and failed systems??

The point I'm trying to make is that religion isn't an enemy to any progressive goals, religion is just a way to explain an unjust world. I'm not a Christian, by the way, perhaps culturally. These questions need to be answered with understanding, say what you want about corrupt and venal systems - but there was a great tradition in Latin America of the '60s of Liberation Theology, it was essentially an inverse of control through religion, as we might naturally assume, as it was a tool to a social, physical goal mediated through human togetherness, an idea of kindness and social justice. If that's a threat to communism, then bugger me....

FK is the only poster so far to suggest a plausible reason for the spread of Christianity in Europe, warring tribes might as well have allied with the new monotheism to get support from others to indeed gain an upper hand against one another - it worked, but with very obvious pagan traditions continuing as part of the vernacular folklore of pretty much every tribe/nation that arose after. Rome was ubiquitous, but always and forever with a local twinge that was permitted. Christian monarchs fought against one another with the blood of their vassals, using this reason, so what? It would have been some other reason like access to (insert pagan worship site or relevant area to do with mythology here) that Pagans would have killed one another over - Europe was not a pagan wonderland of dancing amidst the trees. What was not permitted, obviously, was to question the authority of Rome itself, as the Hussites discovered. We need to make the distinction between the religion and the organisation, that is paramount.

I am sympathetic with religious people for the reasons Marx explains, Condorcet wrote something about it being a necessary social function, a raison d'etre for a community within a nation and across the continent, which I kinda touched upon, but can't be bothered to find the quotation.

I honestly believe the real problem for socialists like most of us on this board is to accept that we cannot have a pre-conceived idea of the world at any stage, of its functions, what ethics and morality are, how particular economies operate, how people actually are. We know ourselves, we each know that we have fears and aspirations, things we admire and people find admirable in us and also in others - we cannot let a silly thing like not understanding why people might have the ideas they do, as this was pretty much what Marx was going on about. We have to be open-minded and rid ourselves of the idea, organisationally especially (the number of organisations who are cultish on the Left, and moreso than the Catholic Church, I can number on 87 sheets of paper), that there is a supreme authority. There might be politically, but they will have to act with accordance to the idea of this "locally accepted pagan twinge" I mentioned, if at all. Different languages, different approaches to explaining pretty much the same human problems, you cannot expect every single person to come to mine or your conclusions. Religion is at best a vote loser for the left at the minute, just a shame that a number of "Leftists" see it fit to spout pseudo-science and a naive idea of what Buddhism means.

But, so, can a priest be a «real» communist? (Sorry if my question looks stupid)

I don't see why not if they understand the root causes of avoidable human suffering and misery being only solvable by the absolute democratisation and socialisation of capital. I am pretty sure there are bosses who fully understand the logic of capital who feel the same, but are compelled to carry on.

Communist and Peace wrote:

But, so, can a priest be a «real» communist? (Sorry if my question looks stupid)

Sure. Plenty of liberation theology priests in Latin America are, and social gospel pastors/humanist rabbis can be too.

RedGeek wrote:

Fundementalism
Communists are not opposed to Religion. Rather we are opposed to the Capitalist Class using religion as a control mechanism to keep the masses dosile. It is in opposition to radical fundamentalism that seeks to opress Gay, Transgender and Bisexual people and/or of other religions/no religions. It's opposed to people who want to combine Church and State to make a theocracy. There are moderate muslims and moderate christians (who make up the vast majority of the people practicing those religions). Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro were/are very religious Christians for example.

The thing that destroyed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980s was a Fundementalist Christian (Reagan) arming, paying, training and supporting Fundementalist Islamists terrorist (Mujahideen).

I agree with this for the most part. I would not say Fidel was a Christian. Certainly he was interested in the teachings of Jesus as he believed they are similar to communism (which I would agree with to some degree), but I don't think he was religious. He was "Christian" only in the sense of "social gospel." I could be wrong.

Communist and Peace wrote:

But, so, can a priest be a «real» communist? (Sorry if my question looks stupid)

Not a stupid question. Yes, absolutely, a priest can be a real communist! One of most famous communist priests is Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, the father of Liberation Theology. One of the leaders of the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional, the communist party in Nicaragua, during the Nicaraguan Revolution was Fr. Ernesto Cardenal. Many other examples, especially in Latin America.

RedGeek wrote:

Fundementalism
Communists are not opposed to Religion. Rather we are opposed to the Capitalist Class using religion as a control mechanism to keep the masses dosile. It is in opposition to radical fundamentalism that seeks to opress Gay, Transgender and Bisexual people and/or of other religions/no religions. It's opposed to people who want to combine Church and State to make a theocracy. There are moderate muslims and moderate christians (who make up the vast majority of the people practicing those religions). Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro were/are very religious Christians for example.

The thing that destroyed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980s was a Fundementalist Christian (Reagan) arming, paying, training and supporting Fundementalist Islamists terrorist (Mujahideen).

comradeguevara wrote:

I agree with this for the most part. I would not say Fidel was a Christian. Certainly he was interested in the teachings of Jesus as he believed they are similar to communism (which I would agree with to some degree), but I don't think he was religious. He was "Christian" only in the sense of "social gospel." I could be wrong.

RedGeek's analysis is spot on!

It's my impression that the Bolsheviks were fanatical or categorical in their opposition to religion. This, I believe, was one of their worst mistakes. A revolutionary needs to accept people on their own terms. The urge to inflict our ideals on others is an adolescent or even infantile disorder! Lenin, it seems to me, was a sensible pragmatist, but most of the other Bolsheviks were not. Are these impressions at all accurate?

Orthodox Christianity in Russia back then as a whole was really bad. It was also quite discredited by 1917. Even today it's basically an extension of the state, so you have scenes like priests blessing ICBM rockets in Russia. Catholicism in Spain was also horribly reactionary. Nothing comparable to more civilized Protestantism at least of today's in some countries where you have LGBT priests and what not. Hell even Catholicism, at least its boss, became much more progressive recently, at least on paper and if only in several mainly Catholic countries.

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The thing that destroyed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980s was a Fundementalist Christian (Reagan) arming, paying, training and supporting Fundementalist Islamists terrorist (Mujahideen).

Well Afghanistan fell into a civil war long before the US got involved. I don't know why, i guess many people there were already fundamentalist.

Loz wrote:

Well Afghanistan fell into a civil war long before the US got involved. I don't know why, i guess many people there were already fundamentalist.

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Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen prior to and during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, from 1979 to 1989. The program leaned heavily towards supporting militant Islamic groups that were favoured by neighbouring Pakistan, rather than other, less ideological Afghan resistance groups that had also been fighting the Marxist-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan regime since before the Soviet intervention. Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken; funding began with $20–$30 million per year in 1980 and rose to $630 million per year in 1987. Funding continued after 1989 as the mujahideen battled the forces of Mohammad Najibullah's PDPA during the civil war in Afghanistan (1989–1992).

-- "Operation Cyclone", wikipedia

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As the US mobilizes for covert war in Afghanistan (see 1978 and July 3, 1979), a CIA special envoy meets Afghan mujaheddin leaders at Peshawar, Pakistan, near the border to Afghanistan. All of them have been carefully selected by the Pakistani ISI and do not represent a broad spectrum of the resistance movement. One of them is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a drug dealer with little support in Afghanistan, but who is loyal to the ISI. The US will begin working with Hekmatyar and over the next 10 years over half of all US aid to the mujaheddin will go to his faction (see 1983). Hekmatyar is already known as brutal, corrupt, and incompetent. [McCoy, 2003, pp. 475] His extreme ruthlessness, for instance, his reputation for skinning prisoners alive, is considered a plus, as it is thought he will use that ruthlessness to kill Russians."

-- Alfred W.McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, 01 May 2003

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In 1977 Afghanistan had no refugees.

Omar Mateen, the man believed to be solely responsible for the June 14 Orlando shooting massacre, was born in the United States 29 years ago, to Afghan parents who fled to the US as refugees, following the fulfillment of a scheme by President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski to inveigle the Soviets into Afghanistan to saddle Moscow with its own Vietnam.

In 1977 Afghanistan had no refugees and Brzezinski, at the time, set in motion events that have come full circle, to this tragedy, leaving Afghanistan today with the second-largest refugee population in the world.

In 1977 Afghanistan was transforming itself into an enlightened, modern and democratic society. Eyewitness accounts from the 1960s and 1970s document rapid changes embraced by Afghan men and women, across a broad spectrum of society. Despite its poverty, Afghanistan had been independent in its foreign policy and self-sufficient in many areas, including food production, in a vivid illustration of what life is like when Afghans control their own state. It was also the year that Zbigniew Brzezinski stepped into the role as National Security Advisor to US President Jimmy Carter. Brzezinski quickly inaugurated a plan to lure the Soviet Union into an invasion of Afghanistan, a plan that was fulfilled on December 27, 1979. The blowback from Brzezinski’s scheme, even after almost 40 years, has delivered another dagger into the heart of America’s soul as well as the LGBT and Muslim global community. ....

One thing is sure; the time has come for Americans to question whether the legacy of Brzezinski’s obsession with conquering the world at any cost should continue to be an American dream as well.

-- Paul Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Gould, "Brzezinski Vision to Lure Soviets into ‘Afghan Trap’ Is Orlando’s Nightmare", Sputnik News, 16 Jun 2016

Islamism by doctrine. Communism ideology is based that everyone is equal and for Islam that is against the "law of God", because "God will decide who is poor and who is rich". Thats why communism wasnt popular in Islamic population countries with some exceptions only (south yemen)