religious westerners of any colour: those other countries deserve to be bombed because they are the wrong religion
athiest westerners of any colour: those other countries deserve to be bombed because they are they are backwards due to religion
western secularism came from Islam (Ibn Rushd) and then re-appropriated by the west as one of its many masks of the dictatorship of capital
religion will sow the seeds of its own destruction and our first global contradiction is imperialism, and it is in anti-imperialism we find solidarity
having said that any communist party cannot be religious but a dictatorship against capital may not necessarily be “athiest”
dialectical materialism will lead towards athiesm but if you are religious it may not be in your lifetime, depending on your material conditions, and that’s OK. Dialectical materialists are a spectrum (see all the folks Marx learned from and criticised to help formulate his DM)
the reaction of religion is a fine needle to thread when attempting to build solidarity and a vanguard when fighting imperialists
It’s complicated, but if I had to boil it down to a few crystals:
Religion makes a good person good and a bad person bad.
*All people have good and bad urges, and most people find themselves wrestling with whatever they view as “bad” sometimes.
*Most people see the “bad” in everyone but ourselves and favorite people.
Believing in a literal deity isn’t necessary to believe in the overarching message, good, bad, or indifference.
I can’t go to any church within a reasonable distance because I’m not into people being unable to abide abortion or political assassination of our own corrupt leaders for any reason, but have no problem with genocide/invasion and regime change for commodities and real estate.
There are two UU churches in two different directions over an hour away. 😕
I became an atheist before but i can see how the primary threat is and will always be imperialism and not religion. It is used by imperialists in all possible directions.
The more sinister point from an on the ground perspective is that religion can help people who struggle to survive but is also stripped of any anti imperialist sentiment, especially in the west.
I would like to learn more about its DM point of view. Do you have a recommendation what to read to get a good entrypoint to analyse the contradictions from a more theoretical point?
Dialectical materialism = a way of analysis that focuses on contradictions as engines driving change in a given direction to produce a deeper science. Dialetics allows us to understand relationships and materialism grounds it in reality. It is teleological, not positivist and is the enemy of idealism.
^That’s the quickest summary of DM I can think of so far and I wonder what I will change from that definition years into the future.
(You highlighted an important need for marxists to deeply understand theory and therefore I am revisiting what I have learned about DM starting with Stalin’s famous essay then dashthered’s essay then Losurdo’s book on Hegel and Freedom of the Moderns. Previously I started with Politzer’s Elementary Principles of Philosophy and then a bunch of Redsails.org articles. The latter two are really good resources but I want to try a fresh approach here)
But to better answer your question the authors/topics that came top of my head was Roland Boer, Samir Amin and liberation theology, so I did mini-research to make a reading list which I will be also adding to my own pile:
Roland Boer - Red Theology, on the Communist Christian Tradition
Samir Amin - A life looking forward
Liberation Theology - Gustavo Gutierrez
Religious Factor - Jose Carlos
(Addendum - I am an athiest myself but wanted to read around the topic you mentioned. I can’t pinpoint sources for the opinions I have so chances it will become hopefully more refined with time)
Crudely:
It’s complicated, but if I had to boil it down to a few crystals:
Religion makes a good person good and a bad person bad.
*All people have good and bad urges, and most people find themselves wrestling with whatever they view as “bad” sometimes. *Most people see the “bad” in everyone but ourselves and favorite people.
Believing in a literal deity isn’t necessary to believe in the overarching message, good, bad, or indifference.
I can’t go to any church within a reasonable distance because I’m not into people being unable to abide abortion or political assassination of our own corrupt leaders for any reason, but have no problem with genocide/invasion and regime change for commodities and real estate.
There are two UU churches in two different directions over an hour away. 😕
Beautifully put imho.
I became an atheist before but i can see how the primary threat is and will always be imperialism and not religion. It is used by imperialists in all possible directions.
The more sinister point from an on the ground perspective is that religion can help people who struggle to survive but is also stripped of any anti imperialist sentiment, especially in the west.
I would like to learn more about its DM point of view. Do you have a recommendation what to read to get a good entrypoint to analyse the contradictions from a more theoretical point?
Thank you, I am “re-learning” DM myself:
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9855623/7353553
But to better answer your question the authors/topics that came top of my head was Roland Boer, Samir Amin and liberation theology, so I did mini-research to make a reading list which I will be also adding to my own pile:
(Addendum - I am an athiest myself but wanted to read around the topic you mentioned. I can’t pinpoint sources for the opinions I have so chances it will become hopefully more refined with time)
An absolute banger of an answer! This goes into my saved posts! Thank you very much, comrade! I always love to get educated by comrades. :)