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Knol

11  Revelation

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages:
infant, school-boy, lover, soldier, justice, old-age, senility and death

William Shakespeare
from As You Like It

Sigh of the Oppressed

Karl Marx remarked in a manner seemingly pejorative that “Religion … is the opium of the people.” In the fullness of his complete observation, extracted from his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, the comment is perhaps less than pejorative and, in fact, offers a prescient interpretation on many levels. At a basic physiological level, the state of ecstasy that is foundational to the formation and continuance of religious social structures is comparable to the state induced by a variety of opiates, including those used for medical treatment, specifically the treatment of severe pain. Conversely, religion itself is often viewed as a treatment for both psychological as well as physical pain; a point that would seem to be more in line with Marx’ full meaning. Consider some of the additional context regarding his oft repeated quote noted above: “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.” Clearly, he recognized that religion is a force to be reckoned with. However, from his perspective the benefits of religion were illusory and hence detracted from the “real” solution to the problems faced by “the workers” in existent social settings. To Marx, religion was the drug that soothes the symptomatic pain, but it did not address the underlying disease. This perception of the illusory nature of religious manifestations is rather typical of scientific discourse. It is perhaps also illuminating that with this seeming denigration of the effectiveness of religion, Marx, and his associate Friedrich Engels, laid the groundwork for a social framework to be pursued through essentially religious means. Perhaps therein lay the greater truth in Marx’ observations on religion. Religion presented a powerful competitive social ecosystem to communism; and vice-versa.

We observe that the mechanisms inherent in religions’ apparent effectiveness, witnessing its ubiquity, seem to be consistently ignored within the scientific community. Certainly, there is a perception that one’s personal religious preferences are not a subject of polite, scientific conversation; rather like having a painfully obvious deformity of one’s person. This detachment is understandable when the intent is to distance the seemingly subjective aspects of religious endeavors from the equally seemingly objective consideration of natural effects. However, one can entertain the possibility that in the United States we have elevated the concept of separation of church and state to one of also separation of church and science. Indeed, the current discourse

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