What is the Marxist view of religion?
Man created god! Edit: At the point in human history when class based societies came about it became necessary for the newly emerging ruling class to have ideological control. Of course, they also had their ‘police force’. When workers reject the ideological controls they tend to revolt so the police are there to physically enforce their rule. Prior to class based societies, people had developed certain spiritual ideas in order to explain the physical world around them. In the absence of a scientific analysis, early human societies adopted an ‘animistic’ explanation. This is the belief that phenomena such as mountains, rivers, the sun, etc, were inhabited with spirits that could control aspects of nature; rainfall, the seasons, earthquakes, etc. The development of class based societies resulted in the new ruling class being released from the everyday drudgery of food production. This enabled them to develop art, literature and science. They were also able to create theology which was u
