Religion is the soul of soulless conditions, the heart of a heartless world
Karl Marx (1818 - 1883)

Religion has acted as a tool in the hands of subjugators in oppressing the people, it has played roles in controlling the population and also in keeping them in line, while this is hard to fault. A question we must also ask is, what has not worked as a tool to achieve human ends?

Ethnicity has played a role in the protection of thieves in the modern society, kinsmen will say he is a thief but he is our thief do not persecute him.

Education has been used to control and psychologically keep the people in line, communist states selectively educated their citizens, teaching and inculcating into
them themes that will ensure their perpetual domination.

The role of the media as a veritable tool in propaganda and keeping the people in line is well elucidated.
So is religion THE enemy?

Someone once remarked that humans will always find a reason to kill each other, World War 1 and 2 wasted millions of lives but it had nothing to do with religion. Communist leaders took over China and Russia, they successfully put a leash on religion, but their tenures witnessed some of the largest scale of mass murders known to man.
So is religion THE enemy?


A lot has been said about how religion prevents nations and peoples from achieving their potentials, but at the height of its powers the United Kingdom was a dominantly religious country, the USA is still one of the countries with the largest number of religious people. India is making progress despite its religious nature, Singapore with one of the highest HDI is dominantly religious. A lot of us have dreams of the UAE, it also is a highly religious country. So is religion truly a stumbling block to progress?
Were all the great inventors atheists?


It is true that a lot of evil has been committed in the name of religion today, but also a lot of good can be attributed to religion too. Examples lie around us here in Nigeria some of our forebears early access to education were through missionary schools, some of the earliest health institutions that catered for ordinary members of the community were missionary health centers. So is religion THE enemy?

The real enemy is us, ourselves. A man once remarked that the weakest part of any system is the human element. Today we have people who claim a religion but do not fulfil and live the rules that it prescribes, we have humans who only imbibe the tenets of their faith when it only serves their selfish end. People who see religion as a way to milk others and enrich their pockets. Religion is not the enemy, we are.
The act of the followers doesn’t invalidate a movement, the question you should ask is if the followers are sticking to the core tenets of what they claim. Does their religion encourage this evil we detest.
There are good atheists and there are bad theists.Humans will naturally exploit the other, our tools just differ, and our methods vary from time to time.


So who is the real enemy? You are and I am.

The superior man is aware of righteousness, the inferior man is aware of advantage ~ Confucius

Cc
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@tonyebarcanista