Drew Gibson writes:
More often not, when one overhears someone expressing the belief that religion is the opiate of the masses, it is accompanied by a certain degree of secular snark. Religion, in this interpretation of Marx’s oft misquoted maxim, is a device that serves only to artificially blunt human suffering in lieu of taking concrete steps to alleviate said suffering in the real world. This line of reasoning usually presents religion as a suppressive tool used by the ruling classes to keep the vast rabble of humanity distracted while they are being systematically oppressed. However, while there is validity to many of these points of view, they often fail to appreciate that religion, like opiates themselves, has a wide array of therapeutic purposes. For a very large portion of the global population, religion is the only thing shielding them from the unassailable reality of their powerlessness in the face of deeply entrenched poverty, oppression and violence, and it is up to the international community as a whole to refrain from addressing issues of conflict and terror by only looking at the thin veneer of religiosity that lies on top and neglecting to examine the stratified layers of socioeconomic, cultural and geopolitical tension that lie beneath...[more]