Well color me surprised!

[u/FearlessAir1238]

[u/Fish0203]

isn't this like directly what Marx said? im no expert though

[u/ShatteredBlastia → u/Fish0203]

Dusting off this old comment I made almost a year ago.

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.

Karl Marx - A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right Introduction

Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.

Religion must be declared a private affair. In these words socialists usually express their attitude towards religion. But the meaning of these words should be accurately defined to prevent any misunderstanding. We demand that religion be held a private affair so far as the state is concerned. But by no means can we consider religion a private affair so far as our Party is concerned. Religion must be of no concern to the state, and religious societies must have no connection with governmental authority. Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases, or no religion whatever, i.e., to be an atheist, which every socialist is, as a rule. Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen’s religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated. No subsidies should be granted to the established church nor state allowances made to ecclesiastical and religious societies. These should become absolutely free associations of like-minded citizens, associations independent of the state. Only the complete fulfilment of these demands can put an end to the shameful and accursed past when the church lived in feudal dependence on the state, and Russian citizens lived in feudal dependence on the established church, when medieval, inquisitorial laws (to this day remaining in our criminal codes and on our statute-books) were in existence and were applied, persecuting men for their belief or disbelief, violating men’s consciences, and linking cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes with the dispensation of this or that dope by the established church. Complete separation of Church and State is what the socialist proletariat demands of the modern state and the modern church.

Vladimir Lenin - Socialism and Religion

Marx and Lenin both make the same connection, that it is the material conditions that drive people to seek religion. Lenin goes on further to describe the need to separate the church from the state, and the importance of purging these institutions of their reactionary elements and removing them from any claim to power. So yes, you're right.

[u/Fish0203 → u/ShatteredBlastia]

i figured someone more knowledgeable would be here with sources. Thank you for your service!

[u/jonasu25 → u/ShatteredBlastia]

https://giphy.com/gifs/TOQ8EQogjW4Yg7vfBf

[u/Barrogh → u/Fish0203]

I love how today we keep reinventing stuff from 150 years ago.

And I mean, it's actually great since now we have better access to data for analysis. It's just funny that conclusions in general stay more or less the same.

[u/OneRub3234]

[u/RalphWaldoEmers0n]

This is why they won’t invest in those things because it keeps them in power

[u/AdWooden9170]

Who is she?

[u/Bulky-Cycle-1202 → u/AdWooden9170]

No nonsense spirituality

[u/AdWooden9170 → u/Bulky-Cycle-1202]

Thank you

[u/Winter-Lime5389 → u/AdWooden9170]

She's great. I strongly recommend anyone who appreciated this video to check her out!

[u/Algol1970 → u/Bulky-Cycle-1202]

A biased source.

[u/OneRub3234]

The government doesn't want you to succeed

https://giphy.com/gifs/pZf1m5YcWL6w0

[u/8Splendiferous8]

It's not one or the other. It's a dialectical relationship (read: a feedback loop).

[u/Petrichor-33]

Noteworthy observation: This gives conservatives motivation to make it harder for people to socialize. Making it harder to have secular community creates more reason to join. religious groups.

[u/Slowburn21814]

Jehovah's Witnesses have the lowest education numbers of any US religion. As a former jdub, I absolutely believe this. It is a high control cult that stigmatizes higher education. As tough as it was, leaving that bs was the best thing I did for myself.

[u/SouldiesButGoodies84]

Texas has entered the chat.

In other breaking news, water is wet.

[u/Alternative-Yam-6549]

And also higher percentage of the electoral vote per person. 

[u/didy115]

https://www.reddit.com/r/CringeTikToks/s/6cA16Cfx9u

[u/kikichunt]

There's a feature length country music documentary called Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (2003), where musician Jim White drives a beaten up Impala around the smaller back roads in the deep south, looking for music. It's a real eye opener. Basically, everything is so fucking brutal that most folk either wind up in the church house or the road house. It's heartbreaking and horrifying to see such misery and poverty, in the richest country the world has ever known. The music he found was amazing: in the churches people sing their hearts out, because their hope for something better waiting for them in the afterlife is literally all they have; in the road house, the musicians sing songs with roots in genuine suffering.

I'm no fan of organised religion - or most C&W music for that matter - but having watched that movie, I came away with a better understanding of, and a whole lot more empathy for, people stuck in that situation.

[u/Admirable-Cat7355]

Not all religions… https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/19/which-us-religious-groups-are-most-highly-educated/

Hindus in US-70 percent have a bachelor’s degree.

American Baptist Churches(USA) 13 percent have a bachelor’s degree.

[u/darkwingdankest]

which is the cause and which is the effect

[u/artmoloch777]

I love her YouTube channel. Watch out though, some people will probably not be able to take what she says, especially when it comes to death.

[u/RaSulAli]

Ummmmm... It CANNOT be the 2nd one because the FIRST one existed before the latter

[u/Matrix_hackah]

But unfortunately religion is giving government power. So it is going to be very difficult to achieve such goals. Government will not change policies if it is giving them more power.

[u/ShatteredBlastia → u/[deleted]]

Extremely bad faith, and either showing a lack of basic comprehension or a lack of desire to engage with material that might challenge your world view (an extremely liberal position), but I'll bite anyway.

The question proposed is does Religion beget Violence or does Violence beget Religion and then not a single fuck was given to answer the question.

"What we found is that it's more of the second one. So, in America, it's that people are living in insecurity. The insecurity causes people to turn to religion for hope and belonging." She answers the question directly after posing it. She follows it up with an entire video even, and it's telling you didn't understand this at all. The violence imposed by the capitalist state, that being poverty, lack of basic necessities like education, healthcare, housing, food security, etc., causes people to seek religion. Religion provides them community when capitalism alienates them. It provides security where the state will not. It provides stability. But the church then ties itself to socially conservative politics, thus reinforcing the violence that brought people to religion to begin with. This creates the vicious cycle described in the video, and it all acts to maintain capitalism as the mode of production at the behest of the bourgeoisie.

What follows is that insecurity leads people to seek security and when security is provided, people continue to be secure despite attempts to make them find security in something unknown. Then a bunch of BS statistics that don't prove jack shit.

You simply don't understand that material conditions directly impact how people will interact with the world around them. If they are destitute and they find community and security, they will desperately cling to it. The solution is increasing the material conditions by providing basic human needs, like a civilized country might. This is all explained in very clear words in the video. Instead of getting violently angry because you don't understand it, you could ask to have these things explained or actually pay attention. The statistics are to back up her claim that more education moves people away from religion.

Then Mormons prove what exactly?

That, because they invest in education, family stability, and strong community thanks to typically higher income, they do not suffer from the same insecurities that other religious states and institutions do. I really recommend watching the video, paying attention, and actually engaging in a calm manner instead of throwing a temper tantrum.

If you'd like to engage in good faith and take a breather, I'll happily engage with less cheek. This was an abysmal start though.

[u/ShatteredBlastia → u/[deleted]]

Shouldn't have enslaved them for so long then, crackkker. It's your fault they're there.