1. The problem with liberation theology is that religion is necessarily an oppressive force, even the most progressive churches can never be ethical because what religion is is the manipulation of people’s emotions and spirituality.

2. I’m not an anarchist, but something I respect in them is this focus on pre-configurative politics. They believe the state is impossible to use as an ethical tool and we can’t kick that can down the road, we just can’t use it.

3. It’s problematic to compare religion with the state bc religions existed before class society and some people think religion will never wither away because it isn’t an oppressive force (lol) but this simply isn’t true. . .

4. If religion wasn’t an oppressive force it wouldn’t have been able to act as anti-imperialist projects that anti-atheists are so eager to bring up. It’s way easier and faster to convince the masses that imperialism is bad if you can trick them into thinking that secretly. . .

5. . . . Their religion was progressive this whole time than it is to build up enormous educational programs in Marxist theory. The reason for this is because it’s faster and easier to manipulate people than to teach them critical thinking and hope they figure it out.

6. Religion, just like the state, has class character. But I think what makes using the state ok but not religion is that the state is at least honest about what it is, the bodies of armed men with a monopoly on the use of violence.

7. Religion not only manipulates the spirituality of its members against them to control them, it also pretends that it’s a good thing, even a soothing thing. This is just so incredibly reprehensible.

8. The best analogy I can think of is that the state as a tool is like a jail sentence, but religion as a tool is like an abusive relationship.

9. I’m not sure how we could abolish the material conditions that give rise to religion tbh, it doesn’t seem possible for thousands of years after communism, which is incredibly depressing.

10. Anyways the Cultural Revolution was good and the CPC is correct to require members to be atheists end of thread