The opium of the people

Scream at them this is democracy, power is accountable, they cannot behave like this.  Vacant smiles.  Sniggering from grotesquely insolent evil vermin.  They know better.  England has been taken over.  Democracy is dead.  No government will oppose them.  Grotesquely insolently evil horrifying creatures who feel completely free to reject the governing system of the country and know that no-one will force it on them. 
 
Oh, such big brave men crawling around in filth and squalor to achieve the crippling and destruction of a medically vulnerable woman.  Oh such fucking heroes.  Contemptible filth.  Lower than  vermin.  Indecent obscene filth. 
 
One of yours, right, Nichols, some evil whining twisted pervert sadist animal in a black dress, dribbling I must not be’ rewarded for my evil’ and everyone goes along with it.
 
What fucking evil, scum? Having a mind of my own and knowing how to use it, insisting I own my body, insisting I live in a free country and democracy, insisting on fact and reason and morality, just what fucking evil, filth?
 
The evil of, the crime of being a woman
 
Oh, look at all their dirty wizened cocks twitching.  Challenged by a woman, dismissed by a woman.
 
Easy enough to destroy a woman.  They’ve been destroying women for 2000 years.  The world is supposed to have changed, Women are considered humans, free and equal.  But of course it only needs the Pope’s slave-boy, agent of a hostile fascist foreign power,  to lie his way into Downing Street to change all that.
 
What other lies  monstrous obscene evil has the ‘Holy Church’ concocted,  that I’ve been helped? That I’m saying I  need money because I’m a Jew and ‘Jews always want money;  ha-ha
Knowing of course that I am not a Jew.
 
Or alternatively people are ‘going to help me.’  Of course, yes, they will have been ‘going to help me’ for 20 years, they just never actually do help me.  Oh, what a pity, I died two weeks ago, so there’s no need now.  Scum vermin.
 
Naturally all the scum vermin cunt offal sickos whine they care.  Oh yes, of course you do.  You care so fucking much.  That’s why you’re all banded together, adamant, unswerving, unyielding in your absolute refusal to help me, your commitment to the destruction of democracy and the destruction of me, the cold brutal ruthless assault on my body matched by the cold brutal ruthless assault on my mind, isolating me, trying to make me think I am mad and unique for insisting I live in a democracy, for insisting I cannot be physically abused, that the many many facts I have produced are all nonsense to which no-one need pay attention.
 
They just can’t stand up straight, say what they have to say to the world without fear or favour.  This is of course because what they have to say is balls.
 
Just laugh at me, don’t you, vermin.  All a huge joke.  Of course I had to be punished.  Of course I had to be beaten.  Disobedient women have to be  beaten.  No-one need bother speak to a woman.  They all understand.  Oh, they are so fucking understanding.  An ‘insolent’ woman feels the back of her master’s hand.  That is normal to these filthy obscene vermin scum.
 
Of course Milburn was understanding.  Oh, how the dirty ape so understood, the filthy animal, the piece of infected shit from the council estate, the slum-boy ape.  Oh, I just had to be made to push notes around.  just had to be put in a space the width of a chair, later two chairs, just had to be subject to constant manual handling hazards, what do I expect.  I upset a piece of criminal vermin, or in other words an animal like him, and only criminal vermin matter.  Good at kidding people, Cameron’s ear, evil piece of slum dirt scum  ape  butcher slum boy vermin.  Wbo cares what they whined  They wouldn’t say it in public where everyone could hear, anyone could challenge, they refused to be accountable, to give rational acceptable justification for their actions, so  the fucking hell with the vermin. Preferred to butcher me, didn’t you, Milburn, filthy traitor ape, don’t expect a fucking Cabinet Minister to uphold democracy. That’s it, just abandon democracy because the criminal vermin it cages and contains don’t like it. 
 
Of course the animal didn’t bother to talk to me, you don’t bother to talk to a woman, you talk about a woman, you decide for a woman, you decide she must remain in conditions injurious to her spinal fusion, you decide no-one may help or support her, you decide it’s OK that she’s being physically abuse, OK that’s she’s been crippled.  No-one needs to talk to a woman. 
 
You don’t need a woman’s opinion of decisions directly affecting her.  That would be silly.  A woman is a child.  Men know what is best for her.
 
And of course all the dirt women, scum women, animal women, slave women, who fancy themselves such important women doctors, they all go along with it.  They understand.  They understand that a woman is subject to her masters.  Of course men are enlightened and let them be doctors, but really  you can’t claim to be independent and equal in rights, that’s just silly.  Everyone knows there are lines you don’t cross.  You may not uphold the governing-system of the country in which you live, not if Master forbids it and as for claiming autonomy, that is gross.  No woman may have sexual intercourse with a man who does not legally own her.
 
What else do the dirty monkeys jabber, that I’m a whore and well, no-one can possibly care what happens to a whore, a slag, can they. Pervert monkey filth.  Come on, how many of these psycho sicko freaks are there from  ‘our wonderful faith communities’ and our magnificent underclass,  psychiatric cases, belong in cages, who think they own women.
 
The Vatican has been kicked out of England, but of course that doesn’t matter to the corrupt fascist whining wheedling perverts, the sly cowardly degenerates who wield unaccountable and so criminal power behind closed doors.
 
So the ineducable unlettered ignorant mongs with cunt-for-brains, a category that includes most doctors, dirty creatures, incapable of independent thought.  Without the ability to analyse ideas, challenge the frame of reference, they think arrant drivel given.  Most of them have the peal in the skull rattling around in which is contained the program that runs the androids, who simply parrot it, regardless of all fact, reason, morality, regardless of the evidence of their own eyes, they’re going to sue me for knowing things they don’t know, and the filth of politicians and clergy want me destroyed for knowing things that they know very well and want suppressed, eliminated from the narrative, to enable their destruction of the free world. 
 
Just got to get rid of all the intelligent, educated rational people capable of independent thought, haven’t we, the people who upset the animals, upset the scum, the mad vicious psychopaths.  Can’t have vicious psychopathic vermin distressed.  Can’t have ignorant animals forced to accept the reality of the society they live in, the plurality.  Oh no, now we all have to run at the level of psychopathic  animals.  Or die. Of course.  If we are obstinate, goverment will be pleased to helo us on your way.
 
You cannot cite Marx,Lenin, Pericles, Voltaire, Paine.  It is forbidden!  It is not permitted! 
Fucking si ko psycho psychopaths who truly believe people are only permitted to say things they don’t object to.
 
Of course the  little zombie creatures can’t create.  All they can do, all fucking animals have ever been able to do throughout history, is desecrate, butcher, murder, destroy.
You come from a long line, Blair, you surely do, all for the best, of course, all for some untenable garbled drivel your sick little brain calls Troof.
 
Why does no one put them down.  Tumour in the University, a filthy cancer eating away at everything it stands for.
 
These are sick people, sickies who think independent thought is evil, questioning Is evil, challenging the drivel fed bhem by their head monkeys is evil, indepenenet activity of heart and mind is evil, sick subhuman, half humans, who have abandoned their humanity to a fetish of mental slavery and obedience, to crawling, to living on their knees and never standing upright, never sayintw hat they think, never even working out what they think, because they have been kept intellectually incapable, intellectually helpless,  just drivelling what has been taught them, unable to analyse their own ideas, never mind anyone else’s.
Well, I mean, you don’t argue, you don’t question Authority, that’s just not right.  You do not question your superiors.  They know best.  Pathetic, repulsive, obscene.  Thus they have the minds of serfs, of slaves, have considered me as the obedient villain might in the C12th have considered the lowly goat-herd who dared challenge the lord of the manor.  Oo, look at ‘er, ‘oo does she think she is.  Snigger, snigger, titter, titter. 
 
An offence to the university. Sick sick sick people who think their thoughts, their entire lives are dictated by others, circumscribed by what others say they may do and be, and of course where applicable wholly mad, thinking their thoughts, their entire lives dictated by what someone says an omnipotent, omnipresent silent and invisible master in the sky says, an entity for whose existence there is no evidence whatever.  They have to be mentally damaged as children to keep them in the fold, keep them dependent on Authority, hanging on the tit.
 
DEPICT THEM IN BONDAGE
 
The chain that runs from their collars to their anklets is too short to let them stand upright. Four chains plaited at the crotch run from the front of the collar between their legs and uo to the back of the collar, so they can rub themselves off on how obedient they are.  Oh, the cuntrol feels so go-oo-ood, oh they are so good to be absolutely obedient and of course oh how powerful and important they are bearing as they delude themselves they do Master’s complete unquestionable authority to carry out his will as a reward for choosing to be a deformed failed human being. Practically see the cum running down the legs of the skull-faces, probably squirted. 
 
The reward for accepting slavery, for falling on their knees and having the slav-collar clamped around their necks,  is of course power, power to control others, to control the environment.  That this power is unaccountable and so criminal is of course lost o the dirty little crawlers, the filthy servile pus-monkeys, skull-faced offal.  Yeah, I gotta do what a smelly animal, a dirty squalid sly cowardly scum bitch tard psycho of a fucking nursey tells me,, a vile, degraded, depraved bag of poison devoid of ethics, integrity, education, intellect, intelligence, reason, a stomach-churning monstrosity.  Oh how precious are vermin.
 
Naturally it is given permission is required to speak from some fucked-up bloody gauleiter. Permission has not been granted, therefore speech is forbidden.  Some gauleiter intones nothing can be done, and all the little zombies repeat nothing can be done.  Absolute control is of course required both to protect them from reality and to conceal their absolute inability to deal with that for which they are unprepared. The right to a mind of one’s own is meaningless to them. Isn’t that just tough shit? I have one anyway.  People do.
 
But they all believe that people are subject to arbitrary, unaccountable power, that some psycho ape, some alpha baboon may (attempt to) control me, brutally bestially.
 
Oh, they all live in the shelter of their mother’s little helper, and it helps them on their way to their busy dying day.
 
A bunch of junkies out of it on the opium of the people, a rather commonplace observation.
 
Yes, I know you are either illiterate peasants who have learned a trade, devoid of any general education let alone any academic or intellectual education, ignorant of the most basic facts of English history and of the history of the free world, dead from the neck up, ineducable, ignorant of the classical work, or else you are creatures of pure cold bestial evil, wishing to eradicate the huge body of considered opinion demolishing religion from public discourse, even from – particularly from – the universities where you want illiterate peasants to recoil in horror and call for its suppression – eradicate it such that it never was and propagate your filthy nonsense that there is something inconceivable and appalling in demolishing that which has no intellectual foundation whatever. 
 
Just eradicate the entire intellectual and moral foundation of the free world, and so make out the free world is a silly aberration. 
 
The free world which knew perfectly well the Vatican is evil, the Vatican which resisted freedom and democracy with every atom of its being,  but the free world has fallen for wolves in Lamb’s clothing.
 
Wherefore, civil society must acknowledge God as its Founder and Parent, and must obey and reverence His power and authority. justice  therefore forbids, and reason itself forbids, the State to be godless; or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness--namely, to treat the  various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them
promiscuously equal rights and privileges. Since, then, the profession of one  religion is necessary in the State, that religion must be professed which alone  is true, and which can be recognized without difficulty, especially in Catholic
States, because the marks of truth are, as it were, engraven upon it. This  religion, therefore, the rulers of the State must preserve and protect, if they  would provide--as they should do--with prudence and usefulness for the good of
the community. For public authority exists for the welfare of those whom it governs; and, although its proximate end is to lead men to the prosperity found  in this life, yet, in so doing, it ought not to diminish, but rather to increase, man's capability of attaining to the supreme good in which his  everlasting happiness consists: which never can be attained if religion be  disregarded.

22. All this, however, We have explained more fully elsewhere. We now only wish to add the remark that liberty of so false a nature is greatly hurtful to the true liberty of both rulers and their subjects. Religion, of its essence, is wonderfully helpful to the State. For, since it derives the prime origin of all  power directly from God Himself, with grave authority it charges rulers to be  mindful of their duty, to govern without injustice or severity, to rule their
people kindly and with almost paternal charity; it admonishes subjects to be  obedient to lawful authority, as to the ministers of God; and it binds them to  their rulers, not merely by obedience, but by reverence and affection,
forbidding all seditions and venturesome enterprises calculated to disturb  public order and tranquillity, and cause greater restrictions to be put upon the  liberty of the people. We need not mention how greatly religion conduces to pure  morals, and pure morals to liberty. Reason shows, and history confirms the fact, that the higher the morality of States, the greater are the liberty and wealth  and power which they enjoy.

 23. We must now consider briefly liberty of speech, and liberty of the press. It is hardly necessary to say that there can be no such right as this, if it be  not used in moderation, and if it pass beyond the bounds and end of all true  liberty. For right is a moral power which--as We have before said and must again  and again repeat--it is absurd to suppose that nature has accorded indifferently  to truth and falsehood, to justice and injustice. Men have a right freely and prudently to propagate throughout the State what things soever are true and honorable, so that as many as possible may possess them; but Iying opinions,  than which no mental plague is greater, and vices which corrupt the heart and  moral life should be diligently repressed by public authority, lest they insidiously work the ruin of the State. The excesses of an unbridled intellect,  which unfailingly end in the oppression of the untutored multitude, are no less
rightly controlled by the authority of the law than are the injuries inflicted by violence upon the weak. And this all the more surely, because by far the  greater part of the community is either absolutely unable, or able only with  great difficulty, to escape from illusions and deceitful subtleties, especially  such as flatter the passions. If unbridled license of speech and of writing be  granted to all, nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and  truest mandates of natures, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of  the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by  darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail. Thus, too, license will gain what liberty loses; for liberty will ever be more free and secure in proportion as license is kept in fuller restraint. In  regard, however, to all matter of opinion which God leaves to man's free  discussion, full liberty of thought and of speech is naturally within the right  of everyone; for such liberty never leads men to suppress the truth, but often  to discover it and make it known.

 Libertas, Leo XIII, 1888

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd  principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best  constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that  human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any  more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made  between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of  Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to
assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is  recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties,  offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to  foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity,"2 viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's  personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every  rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an  absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether  ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to  manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by  the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not  think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;"3 and that "if  human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be  wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of  human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ,  how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."4

Quanta Cura, Pius IX 1864

As the free world fails to heed the naked fascism propagated in the Catholic Catechism:
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2020/05/christianity-is-a-relationship-not-a-set-of-rules-pope-says/
Then he’d better get the Catechism rewritten, fast.
 
Shall we just have all this again? 
CHAPTER THREE
MAN'S RESPONSE TO GOD
142 By his Revelation, "the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company."1 The adequate response to this invitation is faith.
143 By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God.2 With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, "the obedience of faith".3
I. The Obedience of Faith
144 To obey (from the Latin ob-audire, to "hear or listen to") in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. the Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment.
Catechism
 
 
"The Magisterium of the Church
85 "The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ."47 This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.
86 "Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith."48
87 Mindful of Christ's words to his apostles: "He who hears you, hears me",49 the faithful receive with docility the teachings and directives that their pastors give them in different forms.
100 The task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him
Catechism of the Catholic Church

Wounds to unity
817 In fact, "in this one and only Church of God from its very beginnings there arose certain rifts, which the Apostle strongly censures as damnable. But in subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the Catholic Church - for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame."269 The ruptures that wound the unity of Christ's Body - here we must distinguish heresy, apostasy, and schism270 - do not occur without human sin:
Where there are sins, there are also divisions, schisms, heresies, and disputes. Where there is virtue, however, there also are harmony and unity, from which arise the one heart and one soul of all believers.271
What is it, Blair?  Come on, what is it?  Rees-Mogg, Duncan Smith, Fitzalan-Howard, come on, come on, what is it?  It’s a blueprint for fascism.  It is everything at which the free world howled in outrage when represented by Hitler, Stalin, the cadres of North Korea.  Where the fuck do you dirty apes think the Nazis got it from?  This is an insolently fascist, insolently sexist, insolently homophobic institution which is raving mad because it believes it has Truth.  It has no place whatever in modern England. 
Fascism, insolent evident fascism right down to the hive mind called The Good. If you are a secular fascist, you are a pariah.  If you are a religious fascist, it is offence to offend you and an offence to discriminate against you.  Is there any politician so completely stupid that he or she does not think people have noticed that, that there is one law for the ‘devout’ and one for the rest of us, that we’re all supposed to be outraged not at fascism, not at evil, but at the fascist and evil being offended.
 
‘It has been revealed to us.’  What do these fucked-up baboons think we all are, do they really believe we’re all going to submit to the ravings of peasants and savages.
 
They do and all over Europe they have the political classes believing it too – or pretending to as a weapon against freedom. Rational civilized people are to be condemned, prosecuted for being contemptuous of sickness, drivel, madness. 
 
Following seamlessly on from the doctrine of obedience as outlined in the Catholic Encyclopaedia of 1912
 
Obedience
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Obedience (Lat. obêdire, "to hearken to", hence "to obey") is the complying with a command or precept. It is here regarded not as a transitory and isolated act but rather as a virtue or principle of righteous conduct. It is then said to be the moral habit by which one carries out the order of his superior with the precise intent of fulfilling the injunction. St. Thomas Aquinas considers the obligation of obedience as an obvious consequence of the subordination established in the world by natural and positive law. The idea that subjection of any sort of one man to another is incompatible with human freedom — a notion that had vogue in the religious and political teachings of the post-Reformation period — he refutes by showing that it is at variance with the constituted nature of things, and the positive prescriptions of the Almighty God. It is worthy of note that whilst it is possible to discern a general aspect of obedience in some acts of all the virtues, in so far as obedience stands for the execution of anything that is of precept, it is contemplated in this article as a definitely special virtue. The element that differentiates it adequately from other good habits is found in the last part of the definition already given. Stress is put upon the fact that one not only does what is actually enjoined, but does it with a mind to formally fall in with the will of the commander. It is in other words the homage rendered to authority which ranks it as a distinct virtue. Among the virtues obedience holds an exalted place but not the highest. The distinction belongs to the virtues of faith, hope and charity which unite us immediately with Almighty God. Amongst the moral virtues obedience enjoys a primacy of honour. The reason is that the greater or lesser excellence of a moral virtue is determined by the greater or lesser value of the object which it qualifies one to put aside in order to give oneself to God. Now amongst our various possessions, whether goods of the body or goods of the soul, it is clear that the human will is the most intimately personal and most cherished of all. So it happens that obedience, which makes a man yield up the most dearly prized stronghold of the individual soul in order to do the good pleasure of his Creator, is accounted the greatest of the moral virtues. As to whom we are to obey, there can be no doubt that first we are bound to offer an unreserved service to Almighty God in all His commands. No real difficulty against this truth can be gathered from putting in juxtaposition the unchangeableness of the natural law and an order, such as that given to Abraham to slay his son Isaac. The conclusive answer is that the absolute sovereignty of God over life and death made it right in that particular instance to undertake the killing of an innocent human being at His direction. On the other hand the obligation to obedience to superiors under God admits of limitations. We are not bound to obey a superior in a matter which does not fall within the limits of his preceptive power. Thus for instance parents although entitled beyond question of the submission of their children until they become of age, have no right to command them to marry. Neither can a superior claim our obedience in contravention to the dispositions of higher authority. Hence, notably, we cannot heed the behests of any human power no matter how venerable or undisputed as against the ordinances of God. All authority to which we bow has its source in Him and cannot be validly used against Him. It is the recognition of the authority of God vicariously exercised through a human agent that confers upon the act of obedience its special merit. No hard and fast rule can be set down for determining the degree of guilt of the sin of disobedience. Regarded formally as a deliberate scorning of the authority itself, it would involve a divorce between the soul and the supernatural principle of charity which is tantamount to a grievous sin. As a matter of fact many other things have to be taken account of, as the greater or lesser advertence in the act, the relatively important or trifling character of the thing imposed, the manner of enjoining, the right of the person who commands. For such reasons the sin will frequently be esteemed venial.
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11181c.htm
 
Let us turn now to the work of Karl Marx.
 
Marx on religion (from'Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right by Karl Marx,  Deutsch- Französische Jahrbücher, February, 1844):
 
The foundation of irreligious criticism is this:Man makes religion, religion does not make man.
 
If your natural propensity is to be thoroughly unpleasant, you will ascribe to a thoroughly unpleasant version of  religion and have a god who is repulsive, yes.
Religion is indeed man's self-consciousness and self-awareness so long as he has not found himself or has already lost himself again. But, man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, it enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality.
A total but delusional construct of life, the universe and everything, yup.
The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. 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.
 
Indeed
The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Yup
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.
Good grief!
The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.
So long as he keeps out of other people’s airspace.
It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.
One is a little hard-pressed to find a justification here for the drivelling of the fascist Left that whatever garbage is in someone's head, wholly divorced from reality, especially if it is religious garbage, is sacrosanct and must not be disturbed by reality.
 
Once upon a human beings required explanation of the world around them.  Other humans called it as they saw it, or perhaps not exactly as they saw it: in a way they thought would be comprehensible to the mass of the people.  Thus, if you want to make clear your god is accessible to everyone, you might have him born in a stable in poverty surrounded by cattle and  shepherds. We now have something called science, as a result of which we see the facts of the matter more clearly.  We have even become capable of reasoning and learned that argument by authority is a logical fallacy.  Of course you can drink bleach if you have a nasty worrying cough, but I really do not recommend it.  It’s one of the ways people commit suicide.
 
 
If you go on a trip through the universe, and there are many brilliant ones on the Web, you get a glimpse of what might be the Mind of God
Of course mystics knew that yonks ago, ‘no human mind can conceive the entity called God’, can’t remember the exact quotation.
Meanwhile...’Hi, I’m God. No, I don’t know much about the universe I created, I must admit. Thought the earth was its centre. I do get terribly upset about much skin human females sow and whether they’ve had sexual relations with men who don’t own them, and even more upset if anyone doesn’t like the book I wrote. Sloppily researched, they say, no evidence, made it up as he went along. Thought he was supposed to be omniscient. And omnipresent. How can he not know? OK, OK, who am I trying to kid? I’m just a guy, trying to figure things out best I can. I got a lot of things wrong. Lots of politicians fulminate against guys who don’t like the book I wrote. The trouble is, a lot of people are pretty thick and readily manipulated and there are a lot of people ready to manipulate them. I really didn’t see it like that, you know. I mean, what I wrote is genuinely how things seemed to me to be.’
Really, who are they trying to kid? What is wrong with saying how things looked to guys a long time ago is not necessarily how they are?

And the work of Francois-Marie Arouet known as Voltaire:
 
in place of ‘I know that’ and ‘it is good that’ came, ‘you know nothing of the kind’ and ‘it’s a lot of twisted nonsense that’. Thus Voltaire in his article on atheism in the Dictionnaire philosophique:

Men fattened by our wealth shout, "Believe that an ass spoke, believe that a fish swallowed a man and spat him out good as new onto the shore three days later. Do not doubt that the God of the universe commanded a Jewish prophet to eat shit (Ezekiel) and another prophet to buy two sluts and make whores of them (these are the very words they make the God of truth and purity speak), believe a hundred things either evidently repulsive or mathematically impossible. If you don't, the God of mercy will burn you not just for hundreds of thousands of years but for the whole of eternity, whether you have a body or not.

These preposterous imbecilities repel equally the weak-minded and foolhardy and the strong and wise. They say: "Our masters depict God as the most deranged and bar Voltaire (1694-1778)
The Philosophical Dictionary
(1764)
Excerpts from the Original Electronic Text at the web site of the Hanover Historical Texts Project. 

An early champion in France of Newtonian science, Lockean principles of "liberty," and religious toleration, Voltaire criticized European (and especially French) institutions and beliefs with savagely satirical wit and humor. Forced to live in exile in Geneva (after being imprisoned in the Bastille), Voltaire lived by his pen, attacking the injustice of the criminal system, the irrationality of aristocratic privilege, the brutality and senselessness of war, and especially the dogmatic and persecutory mentality that he saw in Christianity as it was believed and practiced by most Christians, especially clerics. Voltaire himself was a deist who, in his writings, often playfully used the figure of Jesus to convey his deist views and to criticize intolerant Christians. The following excerpts are from his essay on "Religion," a dream-like fantasy in which a genie takes him to a "desert" to converse with sages, and from his essay on "Theist" or deist.
Questions
1. In Voltaire's story, who was responsible for killing so many people? Why were they killed?
2. How does Voltaire's character of Jesus describe his religion? What are the implications of his comment that his religion is "as old as the universe"?
3. How does Voltaire define a "theist" (deist)? How would you characterize theist beliefs and ethics?

 
RELIGION


[1] I MEDITATED last night; I was absorbed in the contemplation of nature; I admired the immensity, the course, the harmony of these infinite globes which the vulgar do not know how to admire.
[2] I admired still more the intelligence which directs these vast forces. I said to myself : " One must be blind not to be dazzled by this spectacle; one must be stupid not to recognize the author of it; one must be mad not to worship Him. What tribute of worship should I render Him? Should not this tribute be the same in the whole of space, since it is the same supreme power which reigns equally in all space? Should not a thinking being who dwells in a star in the Milky Way offer Him the same homage as the thinking being on this little globe where we are? Light is uniform for the star Sirius and for us; moral philosophy must be uniform. If a sentient, thinking animal in Sirius is born of a tender father and mother who have been occupied with his happiness, he owes them as much love and care as we owe to our parents. If someone in the Milky Way sees a needy cripple, if he can relieve him and if he does not do it, he is guilty toward all globes. Everywhere the heart has the same duties: on the steps of the throne of God, if He has a throne; and in the depth of the abyss, if He is an abyss."
[3] I was plunged in these ideas when one of those genii who fill the intermundane spaces came down to me. I recognized this same aerial creature who had appeared to me on another occasion to teach me how different God's judgments were from our own, and how a good action is preferable to a controversy.
[4] He transported me into a desert all covered with piled up bones; and between these heaps of dead men there were walks of ever-green trees, and at the end of each walk a tall man of august mien, who regarded these sad remains with pity.
[5] " Alas! my archangel," said I, " where have you brought me? "
[6] " To desolation," he answered.
[7] " And who are these fine patriarchs whom I see sad and motionless at the end of these green walks? they seem to be weeping over this countless crowd of dead."
[8] " You shall know, poor human creature," answered the genius from the intermundane spaces; " but first of all you must weep."
[9] He began with the first pile. " These," he said, " are the twenty-three thousand Jews who danced before a calf, with the twenty-four thousand who were killed while lying with Midianitish women. The number of those massacred for such errors and offences amounts to nearly three hundred thousand.
[10] " In the other walks are the bones of the Christians slaughtered by each other for metaphysical disputes. They are divided into several heaps of four centuries each. One heap would have mounted right to the sky; they had to be divided."
[11] " What! " I cried, " brothers have treated their brothers like this, and I have the misfortune to be of this brotherhood!"
[12] " Here," said the spirit, " are the twelve million Americans killed in their fatherland because they had not been baptized."
[13] " My God! why did you not leave these frightful bones to dry in the hemisphere where their bodies were born, and where they were consigned to so many different deaths? Why assemble here all these abominable monuments to barbarism and fanaticism? "
[14] " To instruct you."
[15] " Since you wish to instruct me," I said to the genius, " tell me if there have been peoples other than the Christians and the Jews in whom zeal and religion wretchedly transformed into fanaticism, have inspired so many horrible cruelties."
[16] " Yes," he said. " The Mohammedans were sullied with the same inhumanities, but rarely; and when one asked amman, pity, of them, and offered them tribute, they pardoned. As for the other nations there has not been one right from the existence of the world which has ever made a purely religious war. Follow me now." I followed him.
[17] A little beyond these piles of dead men we found other piles; they were composed of sacks of gold and silver, and each had its label: Substance of the heretics massacred in the eighteenth century, the seventeenth and the sixteenth. And so on in going back: Gold and silver of Americans slaughtered, etc., etc. And all these piles were surmounted with crosses, mitres, croziers, triple crowns studded with precious stones.
[18] " What, my genius! it was then to have these riches that these dead were piled up? "
[19]" Yes, my son."
[20] I wept; and when by my grief I had merited to be led to the end of the green walks, he led me there.
[21] " Contemplate," he said, " the heroes of humanity who were the world's benefactors, and who were all united in banishing from the world, as far as they were able, violence and rapine. Question them."
[22] I ran to the first of the band; he had a crown on his head, and a little censer in his hand; I humbly asked him his name. " I am Numa Pompilius," he said to me. " I succeeded a brigand, and I had brigands to govern: I taught them virtue and the worship of God; after me they forgot both more than once; I forbade that in the temples there should be any image, because the Deity which animates nature cannot be represented. During my reign the Romans had neither wars nor seditions, and my religion did nothing but good. All the neighbouring peoples came to honour me at my funeral: that happened to no one but me."
[23] I kissed his hand, and I went to the second. He was a fine old man about a hundred years old, clad in a white robe. He put his middle-finger on his mouth, and with the other hand he cast some beans behind him. I recognized Pythagoras. He assured me he had never had a golden thigh, and that he had never been a cock; but that he had governed the Crotoniates with as much justice as Numa governed the Romans, almost at the same time; and that this justice was the rarest and most necessary thing in the world. I learned that the Pythagoreans examined their consciences twice a day. The honest people! how far we are from them! But we who have been nothing but assassins for thirteen hundred years, we say that these wise men were arrogant .
[24] In order to please Pythagoras, I did not say a word to him and I passed to Zarathustra, who was occupied in concentrating the celestial fire in the focus of a concave mirror, in the middle of a hall with a hundred doors which all led to wisdom. (Zarathustra's precepts are called doors, and are a hundred in number.) Over the principal door I read these words which are the precis of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the causists : "When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain."
[25] " Certainly," I said to my genius, "the barbarians who immolated all these victims had never read these beautiful words."
[26] We then saw the Zaleucus, the Thales, the Aniximanders, and all the sages who had sought truth and practised virtue.
[27] When we came to Socrates, I recognized him very quickly by his flat nose. " Well," I said to him, " here you are then among the number of the Almighty's confidants! All the inhabitants of Europe, except the Turks and the Tartars of the Crimea, who know nothing, pronounce your name with respect. It is revered, loved, this great name, to the point that people have wanted to know those of your persecutors. Melitus and Anitus are known because of you, just as Ravaillac is known because of Henry IV.; but I know only this name of Anitus. I do not know precisely who was the scoundrel who calumniated you, and who succeeded in having you condemned to take hemlock."
[28] "Since my adventure," replied Socrates, " I have never thought about that man; but seeing that you make me remember it, I have much pity for him. He was a wicked priest who secretly conducted a business in hides, a trade reputed shameful among us. He sent his two children to my school. The other disciples taunted them with having a father who was a currier; they were obliged to leave. The irritated father had no rest until he had stirred up all the priests and all the sophists against me. They persuaded the counsel of the five hundred that I was an impious fellow who did not believe that the Moon, Mercury and Mars were gods. Indeed, I used to think, as I think now that there is only one God, master of all nature. The judges handed me over to the poisoner of the republic; he cut short my life by a few days: I died peacefully at the age of seventy; and since that time I pass a happy life withh all these great men whom you see, and of whom I am the least."
[29] After enjoying some time in conversation with Socrates, he went forward with my guide into a grove situated above the thickets where all the sages of antiquity seemed to be tasting sweet repose.
[30] I saw a man of gentle, simple countenance, who seemed to me to be about thirty-five years old. From afar he cast compassionate glances on these piles of whitened bones, across which I had had to pass to reach the sages' abode. I was astonished to find his feet swollen and bleeding, his hands likewise, his side pierced, and his ribs flayed with whip cuts. " Good Heavens! " I said to him, " is it possible for a just man, a sage, to be in this state? I have just seen one who was treated in a very hateful way, but there is no comparison between his torture and yours. Wicked priests and wicked judges poisoned him; is it by priests anhd judges that you have been so cruelly assassinated? "
[31] He answered with much courtesy--"Yes."
[32] "And who were these monsters? "
[33] "They were hypocrites."
[34] "Ah! that says everything; I understand by this single word that they must have condemned you to death. Had you then proved to them, as Socrates did, that the Moon was not a goddess, and that Mercury was not a god? "
[35] "No, these planets were not in question. My compatriots did not know at all what a planet is; they were all arrogant ignoramuses. Their superstitions were quite different from those of the Greeks."
[36] "You wanted to teach them a new religion, then? "
[37] "Not at all; I said to them simply--' Love God with all your heart and your fellow-creature as yourself, for that is man's whole duty.' Judge if this precept is not as old as the universe; judge if I brought them a new religion. I did not stop telling them that I had come not to destroy the law butt to fulfill it; I had observed all their rites; circumcised as they all were, baptized as were the most zealous among them, like them I paid the Corban; I observed the Passover as they did, eating standing up a lamb cooked with lettuces. I and my friends went to pray in the temple; my friends even frequented this temple after my death; in a word, I fulfilled all their laws without a single exception."
[38] "What! these wretches could not even reproach you with serving from their laws? "
[39] "No, without a doubt."
[40] "Why then did they put you in the condition in which I now see you? "
[41] "What do you expect me to say! they were very arrogant and selfish. They saw that I knew them; they knew that I was making the citizens acquainted with them; they were the stronger; they took away my life: and people like them will always do as much, if they can, to whoever does them too much justice.'' . . .
[42] " You therefore contributed in no way by your speeches, badly reported, badly interpreted, to these frightful piles of bones which I saw on my road in coming to consult you? "
[43] "It is with horror only that I have seen those who have made themselves guilty of these murders."
[44] " And these monuments of power and wealth, of pride and avarice, these treasures, these ornaments, these signs of grandeur, which I have seen piled up on the road while I was seeking wisdom, do they come from you? "
[45] "That is impossible; I and my people lived in poverty and meanness: my grandeur was in virtue only."
[46] I was about to beg him to be so good as to tell me just who he was. My guide warned me to do nothing of the sort. He told me that I was not made to understand these sublime mysteries. Only did I conjure him to tell me in what true religion consisted. [47] "Have I not already told you? Love God and your fellow-creature as yourself."
[48] " What! if one loves God, one can eat meat on Friday? "
[49] "I always ate what was given me; for I was too poor to give anyone food."
[50] " In loving God, in being just, should one not be rather cautious not to confide all the adventures of one's life to an unknown man?"
[51] "That was always my practice."
[52] " Can I not, by doing good, dispense with making a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella? "
[53] "I have never been in that country."
[54] " Is it necessary for me to imprison myself in a retreat with fools? "
[55] "As for me, I always made little journeys from town to town.''
[56]" Is it necessary for me to take sides either for the Greek Church or the Latin? "
[57] "When I was in the world I never made any difference between the Jew and the Samaritan."
[58] "Well, if that is so, I take you for my only master." Then he made me a sign with his head which filled me with consolation. The vision disappeared, and a clear conscience stayed with me.

Voltaire (1694-1778)
The Philosophical Dictionary
(1764)
Excerpts from the Original Electronic Text at the web site of the Hanover Historical Texts Project. 

An early champion in France of Newtonian science, Lockean principles of "liberty," and religious toleration, Voltaire criticized European (and especially French) institutions and beliefs with savagely satirical wit and humor. Forced to live in exile in Geneva (after being imprisoned in the Bastille), Voltaire lived by his pen, attacking the injustice of the criminal system, the irrationality of aristocratic privilege, the brutality and senselessness of war, and especially the dogmatic and persecutory mentality that he saw in Christianity as it was believed and practiced by most Christians, especially clerics. Voltaire himself was a deist who, in his writings, often playfully used the figure of Jesus to convey his deist views and to criticize intolerant Christians. The following excerpts are from his essay on "Religion," a dream-like fantasy in which a genie takes him to a "desert" to converse with sages, and from his essay on "Theist" or deist.
Questions
1. In Voltaire's story, who was responsible for killing so many people? Why were they killed?
2. How does Voltaire's character of Jesus describe his religion? What are the implications of his comment that his religion is "as old as the universe"?
3. How does Voltaire define a "theist" (deist)? How would you characterize theist beliefs and ethics?

 
RELIGION


[1] I MEDITATED last night; I was absorbed in the contemplation of nature; I admired the immensity, the course, the harmony of these infinite globes which the vulgar do not know how to admire.
[2] I admired still more the intelligence which directs these vast forces. I said to myself : " One must be blind not to be dazzled by this spectacle; one must be stupid not to recognize the author of it; one must be mad not to worship Him. What tribute of worship should I render Him? Should not this tribute be the same in the whole of space, since it is the same supreme power which reigns equally in all space? Should not a thinking being who dwells in a star in the Milky Way offer Him the same homage as the thinking being on this little globe where we are? Light is uniform for the star Sirius and for us; moral philosophy must be uniform. If a sentient, thinking animal in Sirius is born of a tender father and mother who have been occupied with his happiness, he owes them as much love and care as we owe to our parents. If someone in the Milky Way sees a needy cripple, if he can relieve him and if he does not do it, he is guilty toward all globes. Everywhere the heart has the same duties: on the steps of the throne of God, if He has a throne; and in the depth of the abyss, if He is an abyss."
[3] I was plunged in these ideas when one of those genii who fill the intermundane spaces came down to me. I recognized this same aerial creature who had appeared to me on another occasion to teach me how different God's judgments were from our own, and how a good action is preferable to a controversy.
[4] He transported me into a desert all covered with piled up bones; and between these heaps of dead men there were walks of ever-green trees, and at the end of each walk a tall man of august mien, who regarded these sad remains with pity.
[5] " Alas! my archangel," said I, " where have you brought me? "
[6] " To desolation," he answered.
[7] " And who are these fine patriarchs whom I see sad and motionless at the end of these green walks? they seem to be weeping over this countless crowd of dead."
[8] " You shall know, poor human creature," answered the genius from the intermundane spaces; " but first of all you must weep."
[9] He began with the first pile. " These," he said, " are the twenty-three thousand Jews who danced before a calf, with the twenty-four thousand who were killed while lying with Midianitish women. The number of those massacred for such errors and offences amounts to nearly three hundred thousand.
[10] " In the other walks are the bones of the Christians slaughtered by each other for metaphysical disputes. They are divided into several heaps of four centuries each. One heap would have mounted right to the sky; they had to be divided."
[11] " What! " I cried, " brothers have treated their brothers like this, and I have the misfortune to be of this brotherhood!"
[12] " Here," said the spirit, " are the twelve million Americans killed in their fatherland because they had not been baptized."
[13] " My God! why did you not leave these frightful bones to dry in the hemisphere where their bodies were born, and where they were consigned to so many different deaths? Why assemble here all these abominable monuments to barbarism and fanaticism? "
[14] " To instruct you."
[15] " Since you wish to instruct me," I said to the genius, " tell me if there have been peoples other than the Christians and the Jews in whom zeal and religion wretchedly transformed into fanaticism, have inspired so many horrible cruelties."
[16] " Yes," he said. " The Mohammedans were sullied with the same inhumanities, but rarely; and when one asked amman, pity, of them, and offered them tribute, they pardoned. As for the other nations there has not been one right from the existence of the world which has ever made a purely religious war. Follow me now." I followed him.
[17] A little beyond these piles of dead men we found other piles; they were composed of sacks of gold and silver, and each had its label: Substance of the heretics massacred in the eighteenth century, the seventeenth and the sixteenth. And so on in going back: Gold and silver of Americans slaughtered, etc., etc. And all these piles were surmounted with crosses, mitres, croziers, triple crowns studded with precious stones.
[18] " What, my genius! it was then to have these riches that these dead were piled up? "
[19]" Yes, my son."
[20] I wept; and when by my grief I had merited to be led to the end of the green walks, he led me there.
[21] " Contemplate," he said, " the heroes of humanity who were the world's benefactors, and who were all united in banishing from the world, as far as they were able, violence and rapine. Question them."
[22] I ran to the first of the band; he had a crown on his head, and a little censer in his hand; I humbly asked him his name. " I am Numa Pompilius," he said to me. " I succeeded a brigand, and I had brigands to govern: I taught them virtue and the worship of God; after me they forgot both more than once; I forbade that in the temples there should be any image, because the Deity which animates nature cannot be represented. During my reign the Romans had neither wars nor seditions, and my religion did nothing but good. All the neighbouring peoples came to honour me at my funeral: that happened to no one but me."
[23] I kissed his hand, and I went to the second. He was a fine old man about a hundred years old, clad in a white robe. He put his middle-finger on his mouth, and with the other hand he cast some beans behind him. I recognized Pythagoras. He assured me he had never had a golden thigh, and that he had never been a cock; but that he had governed the Crotoniates with as much justice as Numa governed the Romans, almost at the same time; and that this justice was the rarest and most necessary thing in the world. I learned that the Pythagoreans examined their consciences twice a day. The honest people! how far we are from them! But we who have been nothing but assassins for thirteen hundred years, we say that these wise men were arrogant .
[24] In order to please Pythagoras, I did not say a word to him and I passed to Zarathustra, who was occupied in concentrating the celestial fire in the focus of a concave mirror, in the middle of a hall with a hundred doors which all led to wisdom. (Zarathustra's precepts are called doors, and are a hundred in number.) Over the principal door I read these words which are the precis of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the causists : "When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain."
[25] " Certainly," I said to my genius, "the barbarians who immolated all these victims had never read these beautiful words."
[26] We then saw the Zaleucus, the Thales, the Aniximanders, and all the sages who had sought truth and practised virtue.
[27] When we came to Socrates, I recognized him very quickly by his flat nose. " Well," I said to him, " here you are then among the number of the Almighty's confidants! All the inhabitants of Europe, except the Turks and the Tartars of the Crimea, who know nothing, pronounce your name with respect. It is revered, loved, this great name, to the point that people have wanted to know those of your persecutors. Melitus and Anitus are known because of you, just as Ravaillac is known because of Henry IV.; but I know only this name of Anitus. I do not know precisely who was the scoundrel who calumniated you, and who succeeded in having you condemned to take hemlock."
[28] "Since my adventure," replied Socrates, " I have never thought about that man; but seeing that you make me remember it, I have much pity for him. He was a wicked priest who secretly conducted a business in hides, a trade reputed shameful among us. He sent his two children to my school. The other disciples taunted them with having a father who was a currier; they were obliged to leave. The irritated father had no rest until he had stirred up all the priests and all the sophists against me. They persuaded the counsel of the five hundred that I was an impious fellow who did not believe that the Moon, Mercury and Mars were gods. Indeed, I used to think, as I think now that there is only one God, master of all nature. The judges handed me over to the poisoner of the republic; he cut short my life by a few days: I died peacefully at the age of seventy; and since that time I pass a happy life withh all these great men whom you see, and of whom I am the least."
[29] After enjoying some time in conversation with Socrates, he went forward with my guide into a grove situated above the thickets where all the sages of antiquity seemed to be tasting sweet repose.
[30] I saw a man of gentle, simple countenance, who seemed to me to be about thirty-five years old. From afar he cast compassionate glances on these piles of whitened bones, across which I had had to pass to reach the sages' abode. I was astonished to find his feet swollen and bleeding, his hands likewise, his side pierced, and his ribs flayed with whip cuts. " Good Heavens! " I said to him, " is it possible for a just man, a sage, to be in this state? I have just seen one who was treated in a very hateful way, but there is no comparison between his torture and yours. Wicked priests and wicked judges poisoned him; is it by priests anhd judges that you have been so cruelly assassinated? "
[31] He answered with much courtesy--"Yes."
[32] "And who were these monsters? "
[33] "They were hypocrites."
[34] "Ah! that says everything; I understand by this single word that they must have condemned you to death. Had you then proved to them, as Socrates did, that the Moon was not a goddess, and that Mercury was not a god? "
[35] "No, these planets were not in question. My compatriots did not know at all what a planet is; they were all arrogant ignoramuses. Their superstitions were quite different from those of the Greeks."
[36] "You wanted to teach them a new religion, then? "
[37] "Not at all; I said to them simply--' Love God with all your heart and your fellow-creature as yourself, for that is man's whole duty.' Judge if this precept is not as old as the universe; judge if I brought them a new religion. I did not stop telling them that I had come not to destroy the law butt to fulfill it; I had observed all their rites; circumcised as they all were, baptized as were the most zealous among them, like them I paid the Corban; I observed the Passover as they did, eating standing up a lamb cooked with lettuces. I and my friends went to pray in the temple; my friends even frequented this temple after my death; in a word, I fulfilled all their laws without a single exception."
[38] "What! these wretches could not even reproach you with serving from their laws? "
[39] "No, without a doubt."
[40] "Why then did they put you in the condition in which I now see you? "
[41] "What do you expect me to say! they were very arrogant and selfish. They saw that I knew them; they knew that I was making the citizens acquainted with them; they were the stronger; they took away my life: and people like them will always do as much, if they can, to whoever does them too much justice.'' . . .
[42] " You therefore contributed in no way by your speeches, badly reported, badly interpreted, to these frightful piles of bones which I saw on my road in coming to consult you? "
[43] "It is with horror only that I have seen those who have made themselves guilty of these murders."
[44] " And these monuments of power and wealth, of pride and avarice, these treasures, these ornaments, these signs of grandeur, which I have seen piled up on the road while I was seeking wisdom, do they come from you? "
[45] "That is impossible; I and my people lived in poverty and meanness: my grandeur was in virtue only."
[46] I was about to beg him to be so good as to tell me just who he was. My guide warned me to do nothing of the sort. He told me that I was not made to understand these sublime mysteries. Only did I conjure him to tell me in what true religion consisted. [47] "Have I not already told you? Love God and your fellow-creature as yourself."
[48] " What! if one loves God, one can eat meat on Friday? "
[49] "I always ate what was given me; for I was too poor to give anyone food."
[50] " In loving God, in being just, should one not be rather cautious not to confide all the adventures of one's life to an unknown man?"
[51] "That was always my practice."
[52] " Can I not, by doing good, dispense with making a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella? "
[53] "I have never been in that country."
[54] " Is it necessary for me to imprison myself in a retreat with fools? "
[55] "As for me, I always made little journeys from town to town.''
[56]" Is it necessary for me to take sides either for the Greek Church or the Latin? "
[57] "When I was in the world I never made any difference between the Jew and the Samaritan."
[58] "Well, if that is so, I take you for my only master." Then he made me a sign with his head which filled me with consolation. The vision disappeared, and a clear conscience stayed with me.

baric of beings, therefore there is no God", but they ought to say, 'Our masters attribute to God their own absurdities and their own rage, therefore God is the opposite of what they say, as wise and good and they say he is mad and bad." Thus speak the wise. But if a fanatic overhears them, he denounces them to the magistrate who puts them to torture, believing he avenges and impersonates the divine majesty he outrages.

(My translation)   Full English text here et en français
 
Plus ça change...
Voltaire (1694-1778)
The Philosophical Dictionary
(1764)
Excerpts from the Original Electronic Text at the web site of the Hanover Historical Texts Project. 

An early champion in France of Newtonian science, Lockean principles of "liberty," and religious toleration, Voltaire criticized European (and especially French) institutions and beliefs with savagely satirical wit and humor. Forced to live in exile in Geneva (after being imprisoned in the Bastille), Voltaire lived by his pen, attacking the injustice of the criminal system, the irrationality of aristocratic privilege, the brutality and senselessness of war, and especially the dogmatic and persecutory mentality that he saw in Christianity as it was believed and practiced by most Christians, especially clerics. Voltaire himself was a deist who, in his writings, often playfully used the figure of Jesus to convey his deist views and to criticize intolerant Christians. The following excerpts are from his essay on "Religion," a dream-like fantasy in which a genie takes him to a "desert" to converse with sages, and from his essay on "Theist" or deist.
Questions
1. In Voltaire's story, who was responsible for killing so many people? Why were they killed?
2. How does Voltaire's character of Jesus describe his religion? What are the implications of his comment that his religion is "as old as the universe"?
3. How does Voltaire define a "theist" (deist)? How would you characterize theist beliefs and ethics?

 
RELIGION


[1] I MEDITATED last night; I was absorbed in the contemplation of nature; I admired the immensity, the course, the harmony of these infinite globes which the vulgar do not know how to admire.
[2] I admired still more the intelligence which directs these vast forces. I said to myself : " One must be blind not to be dazzled by this spectacle; one must be stupid not to recognize the author of it; one must be mad not to worship Him. What tribute of worship should I render Him? Should not this tribute be the same in the whole of space, since it is the same supreme power which reigns equally in all space? Should not a thinking being who dwells in a star in the Milky Way offer Him the same homage as the thinking being on this little globe where we are? Light is uniform for the star Sirius and for us; moral philosophy must be uniform. If a sentient, thinking animal in Sirius is born of a tender father and mother who have been occupied with his happiness, he owes them as much love and care as we owe to our parents. If someone in the Milky Way sees a needy cripple, if he can relieve him and if he does not do it, he is guilty toward all globes. Everywhere the heart has the same duties: on the steps of the throne of God, if He has a throne; and in the depth of the abyss, if He is an abyss."
[3] I was plunged in these ideas when one of those genii who fill the intermundane spaces came down to me. I recognized this same aerial creature who had appeared to me on another occasion to teach me how different God's judgments were from our own, and how a good action is preferable to a controversy.
[4] He transported me into a desert all covered with piled up bones; and between these heaps of dead men there were walks of ever-green trees, and at the end of each walk a tall man of august mien, who regarded these sad remains with pity.
[5] " Alas! my archangel," said I, " where have you brought me? "
[6] " To desolation," he answered.
[7] " And who are these fine patriarchs whom I see sad and motionless at the end of these green walks? they seem to be weeping over this countless crowd of dead."
[8] " You shall know, poor human creature," answered the genius from the intermundane spaces; " but first of all you must weep."
[9] He began with the first pile. " These," he said, " are the twenty-three thousand Jews who danced before a calf, with the twenty-four thousand who were killed while lying with Midianitish women. The number of those massacred for such errors and offences amounts to nearly three hundred thousand.
[10] " In the other walks are the bones of the Christians slaughtered by each other for metaphysical disputes. They are divided into several heaps of four centuries each. One heap would have mounted right to the sky; they had to be divided."
[11] " What! " I cried, " brothers have treated their brothers like this, and I have the misfortune to be of this brotherhood!"
[12] " Here," said the spirit, " are the twelve million Americans killed in their fatherland because they had not been baptized."
[13] " My God! why did you not leave these frightful bones to dry in the hemisphere where their bodies were born, and where they were consigned to so many different deaths? Why assemble here all these abominable monuments to barbarism and fanaticism? "
[14] " To instruct you."
[15] " Since you wish to instruct me," I said to the genius, " tell me if there have been peoples other than the Christians and the Jews in whom zeal and religion wretchedly transformed into fanaticism, have inspired so many horrible cruelties."
[16] " Yes," he said. " The Mohammedans were sullied with the same inhumanities, but rarely; and when one asked amman, pity, of them, and offered them tribute, they pardoned. As for the other nations there has not been one right from the existence of the world which has ever made a purely religious war. Follow me now." I followed him.
[17] A little beyond these piles of dead men we found other piles; they were composed of sacks of gold and silver, and each had its label: Substance of the heretics massacred in the eighteenth century, the seventeenth and the sixteenth. And so on in going back: Gold and silver of Americans slaughtered, etc., etc. And all these piles were surmounted with crosses, mitres, croziers, triple crowns studded with precious stones.
[18] " What, my genius! it was then to have these riches that these dead were piled up? "
[19]" Yes, my son."
[20] I wept; and when by my grief I had merited to be led to the end of the green walks, he led me there.
[21] " Contemplate," he said, " the heroes of humanity who were the world's benefactors, and who were all united in banishing from the world, as far as they were able, violence and rapine. Question them."
[22] I ran to the first of the band; he had a crown on his head, and a little censer in his hand; I humbly asked him his name. " I am Numa Pompilius," he said to me. " I succeeded a brigand, and I had brigands to govern: I taught them virtue and the worship of God; after me they forgot both more than once; I forbade that in the temples there should be any image, because the Deity which animates nature cannot be represented. During my reign the Romans had neither wars nor seditions, and my religion did nothing but good. All the neighbouring peoples came to honour me at my funeral: that happened to no one but me."
[23] I kissed his hand, and I went to the second. He was a fine old man about a hundred years old, clad in a white robe. He put his middle-finger on his mouth, and with the other hand he cast some beans behind him. I recognized Pythagoras. He assured me he had never had a golden thigh, and that he had never been a cock; but that he had governed the Crotoniates with as much justice as Numa governed the Romans, almost at the same time; and that this justice was the rarest and most necessary thing in the world. I learned that the Pythagoreans examined their consciences twice a day. The honest people! how far we are from them! But we who have been nothing but assassins for thirteen hundred years, we say that these wise men were arrogant .
[24] In order to please Pythagoras, I did not say a word to him and I passed to Zarathustra, who was occupied in concentrating the celestial fire in the focus of a concave mirror, in the middle of a hall with a hundred doors which all led to wisdom. (Zarathustra's precepts are called doors, and are a hundred in number.) Over the principal door I read these words which are the precis of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the causists : "When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain."
[25] " Certainly," I said to my genius, "the barbarians who immolated all these victims had never read these beautiful words."
[26] We then saw the Zaleucus, the Thales, the Aniximanders, and all the sages who had sought truth and practised virtue.
[27] When we came to Socrates, I recognized him very quickly by his flat nose. " Well," I said to him, " here you are then among the number of the Almighty's confidants! All the inhabitants of Europe, except the Turks and the Tartars of the Crimea, who know nothing, pronounce your name with respect. It is revered, loved, this great name, to the point that people have wanted to know those of your persecutors. Melitus and Anitus are known because of you, just as Ravaillac is known because of Henry IV.; but I know only this name of Anitus. I do not know precisely who was the scoundrel who calumniated you, and who succeeded in having you condemned to take hemlock."
[28] "Since my adventure," replied Socrates, " I have never thought about that man; but seeing that you make me remember it, I have much pity for him. He was a wicked priest who secretly conducted a business in hides, a trade reputed shameful among us. He sent his two children to my school. The other disciples taunted them with having a father who was a currier; they were obliged to leave. The irritated father had no rest until he had stirred up all the priests and all the sophists against me. They persuaded the counsel of the five hundred that I was an impious fellow who did not believe that the Moon, Mercury and Mars were gods. Indeed, I used to think, as I think now that there is only one God, master of all nature. The judges handed me over to the poisoner of the republic; he cut short my life by a few days: I died peacefully at the age of seventy; and since that time I pass a happy life withh all these great men whom you see, and of whom I am the least."
[29] After enjoying some time in conversation with Socrates, he went forward with my guide into a grove situated above the thickets where all the sages of antiquity seemed to be tasting sweet repose.
[30] I saw a man of gentle, simple countenance, who seemed to me to be about thirty-five years old. From afar he cast compassionate glances on these piles of whitened bones, across which I had had to pass to reach the sages' abode. I was astonished to find his feet swollen and bleeding, his hands likewise, his side pierced, and his ribs flayed with whip cuts. " Good Heavens! " I said to him, " is it possible for a just man, a sage, to be in this state? I have just seen one who was treated in a very hateful way, but there is no comparison between his torture and yours. Wicked priests and wicked judges poisoned him; is it by priests anhd judges that you have been so cruelly assassinated? "
[31] He answered with much courtesy--"Yes."
[32] "And who were these monsters? "
[33] "They were hypocrites."
[34] "Ah! that says everything; I understand by this single word that they must have condemned you to death. Had you then proved to them, as Socrates did, that the Moon was not a goddess, and that Mercury was not a god? "
[35] "No, these planets were not in question. My compatriots did not know at all what a planet is; they were all arrogant ignoramuses. Their superstitions were quite different from those of the Greeks."
[36] "You wanted to teach them a new religion, then? "
[37] "Not at all; I said to them simply--' Love God with all your heart and your fellow-creature as yourself, for that is man's whole duty.' Judge if this precept is not as old as the universe; judge if I brought them a new religion. I did not stop telling them that I had come not to destroy the law butt to fulfill it; I had observed all their rites; circumcised as they all were, baptized as were the most zealous among them, like them I paid the Corban; I observed the Passover as they did, eating standing up a lamb cooked with lettuces. I and my friends went to pray in the temple; my friends even frequented this temple after my death; in a word, I fulfilled all their laws without a single exception."
[38] "What! these wretches could not even reproach you with serving from their laws? "
[39] "No, without a doubt."
[40] "Why then did they put you in the condition in which I now see you? "
[41] "What do you expect me to say! they were very arrogant and selfish. They saw that I knew them; they knew that I was making the citizens acquainted with them; they were the stronger; they took away my life: and people like them will always do as much, if they can, to whoever does them too much justice.'' . . .
[42] " You therefore contributed in no way by your speeches, badly reported, badly interpreted, to these frightful piles of bones which I saw on my road in coming to consult you? "
[43] "It is with horror only that I have seen those who have made themselves guilty of these murders."
[44] " And these monuments of power and wealth, of pride and avarice, these treasures, these ornaments, these signs of grandeur, which I have seen piled up on the road while I was seeking wisdom, do they come from you? "
[45] "That is impossible; I and my people lived in poverty and meanness: my grandeur was in virtue only."
[46] I was about to beg him to be so good as to tell me just who he was. My guide warned me to do nothing of the sort. He told me that I was not made to understand these sublime mysteries. Only did I conjure him to tell me in what true religion consisted. [47] "Have I not already told you? Love God and your fellow-creature as yourself."
[48] " What! if one loves God, one can eat meat on Friday? "
[49] "I always ate what was given me; for I was too poor to give anyone food."
[50] " In loving God, in being just, should one not be rather cautious not to confide all the adventures of one's life to an unknown man?"
[51] "That was always my practice."
[52] " Can I not, by doing good, dispense with making a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella? "
[53] "I have never been in that country."
[54] " Is it necessary for me to imprison myself in a retreat with fools? "
[55] "As for me, I always made little journeys from town to town.''
[56]" Is it necessary for me to take sides either for the Greek Church or the Latin? "
[57] "When I was in the world I never made any difference between the Jew and the Samaritan."
[58] "Well, if that is so, I take you for my only master." Then he made me a sign with his head which filled me with consolation. The vision disappeared, and a clear conscience stayed with me.
 
https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111vol.html
 
Perhaps you prefer Tom Paine?  Or England in the C19th?
A past golden age in which the whole of England was both devout and observant is itself a myth:
 
The Religious Census of 1851 demonstrated what Christians had long feared, that a large proportion of the population of England were neither Church people nor of any other religion. Although the exact figures must be treated with great caution, it seems clear that at least one-half of the people who might have been expected to go to church or chapel in 1851 did not do so. Most of the non-attenders came from the working classes...'the population having been till recently all but destitute of church ordinances, has relapsed into a state of semi-heathenism', wrote a vicar in a new parish near Oldham.
....
Queen Victoria...cared little for 'extreme views' in religion, and in teaching her children...chose to dwell not on 'the supernatural features of the Christian religion, but rather upon the pure and comprehensive morality which it teaches us as its essential and indestructible element;
Dickens's morality owed nothing to Evangelicalism or Tractarianism. Much religion, he suggested, was a 'vent for bad humours and arrogance' and there was no authority for the Murdstones in the New Testament; David Copperfield's opinion that 'we can all do some good if we will' was far more appealing. Dickens's obituary notes in Fraser's Magazine (July 1870) rightly seized on the point that 'he spent no thought on religious doctrines or religious reforms but regarded the Sermon on the Mount as good teaching, had a regard for the village church and churchyard, and quarrelled with nothing but intolerance'
Asa Briggs: The Age of Improvement
 
The original report of the 1851 Census reads as follows:
The most important fact which this investigation as to attendance brings Most important before us is, unquestionably, the alarming number of the non-attendants. Even fnquirj as to in the least unfavorable aspect of the figures just presented, and assuming (as attendance, no doubt is right) that the 5,288,294 absent every Sunday are not always the same individuals, it must be apparent that a sadly formidable portion of the English people are habitual neglecters of the public ordinances of religion. Nor is it difficult to indicate to what particular class of the community this portion in the main belongs. The middle classes have augmented rather than diminished that devotional sentiment and strictness of attention to religious services by which, for several centuries, they have so eminently been distinguished. With the upper classes, too, the subject of religion has obtained of late a marked degree of notice, and a regular church-attendance is now ranked amongst the recognized proprieties of life. It is to satisfy the wants of these two classes that the num ber of religious structures has of late years so increased. But while the labouring myriads of our country have been multiplying with our multiplied material prosperity, it cannot, it is feared, be stated that a corresponding increase has occurred in the attendance of this class in our religious edifices. More espe- cially in cities and large towns it is observable how absolutely insignificant a portion of the congregations is composed of artizans. They fill, perhaps, in youth, our National, British, and Sunday Schools, and there receive the elements of a religious education ; but, no sooner do they mingle in the active world of labour than, subjected to the constant action of opposing influences, they soon become as utter strangers to religious ordinances as the people of a heathen country. From whatever cause, in them or in the manner of their treatment by religious bodies, it is sadly certain that this vast, intelligent, and growingly important section of our countrymen is thoroughly estranged from our religious institutions in their present aspect. Probably, indeed, the pre valence of infidelity has been exaggerated, if the word be taken in its popular meaning, as implying some degree of intellectual effort and decision ; but, no doubt, a great extent of negative, inert indifference prevails, the practical effects of which are much the same. There is a sect, originated recently, adherents to a system called " Secularism " ; the principal tenet being that, as the fact of a future life is (in their view) at all events susceptible of some degree of doubt, while the fact and the necessities of a present life are matters of direct sensation, it is therefore prudent to attend exclusively to the concerns of that existence which is certain and immediate — not wasting energies required for present duties by a preparation for remote, and merely possible, contingencies. This is the creed which probably with most exactness indicates the faith which, virtually though not professedly, is entertained by the masses of our working population ; by the skilled and unskilled labourer alike — by hosts of minor shopkeepers and Sunday traders — and by miserable denizens of courts and crowded alleys. They are unconscious Secularists — engrossed by the demands, the trials, or the plea sures of the passing hour, and ignorant or careless of a future. These are never or but seldom seen in our religious congregations ; and the melancholy fact is thus impressed upon our notice that the classes Which are most in need of the restraints and consolations of religion are the classes which are most without them.
Census of Great Britain, 1851
 
If this is what New Labour hoped to rectify, they were about 150 years too late.

Tom Paine in The Age of Reason (1794) described Jesus as ‘a virtuous and amiable man’ who preached ‘most excellent morality…It is upon this plain narrative of facts…that the Christian mythologists, calling themselves the Christian church, have erected their fable, which for absurdity and extravagance is not to be exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients.’

Many people of all faiths and none have engaged with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. In the words of Jesus Christ Superstar, ’he’s a man, he’s just a man’, and engagement with him does not mean that we have the slightest interest in the notion that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to it.
 
How about Lenin?
 
V. I.   Lenin
Socialism and Religion


Published: Novaya Zhizn, No. 28, December 3, 1905. Signed: N. Lenin. Published according to the text in Novaya Zhizn.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 10, pages 83-87.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup: B. Baggins
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2000). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. • README


Present-day society is wholly based on the exploitation of the vast masses of the working class by a tiny minority of the population, the class of the landowners and that of the capitalists. It is a slave society, since the “free” workers, who all their life work for the capitalists, are “entitled” only to such means of subsistence as are essential for the maintenance of slaves who produce profit, for the safeguarding and perpetuation of capitalist slavery.
The economic oppression of the workers inevitably calls forth and engenders every kind of political oppression and social humiliation, the coarsening and darkening of the spiritual and moral life of the masses. The workers may secure a greater or lesser degree of political liberty to fight for their economic emancipation, but no amount of liberty will rid them of poverty, unemployment, and oppression until the power of capital is overthrown. Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by want and isolation. Impotence of the exploited classes in their struggle against the exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to the belief in a better life after death as impotence of the savage in his battle with nature gives rise to belief in gods, devils, miracles, and the like. 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.
But a slave who has become conscious of his slavery and has risen to struggle for his emancipation has already half ceased to be a slave. The modern class-conscious worker, reared by large-scale factory industry and enlightened by urban life, contemptuously casts aside religious prejudices, leaves heaven to the priests and bourgeois bigots, and tries to win a better life for himself here on earth. The proletariat of today takes the side of socialism, which enlists science in the battle against the fog of religion, and frees the workers from their belief in life after death by welding them together to fight in the present for a better life on earth.
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.
The Russian revolution must put this demand into effect as a necessary component of political freedom. In this respect, the Russian revolution is in a particularly favourable position, since the revolting officialism of the police-ridden feudal autocracy has called forth discontent, unrest and indignation even among the clergy. However abject, however ignorant Russian Orthodox clergymen may have been, even they have now been awakened by the thunder of the downfall of the old, medieval order in Russia. Even they are joining in the demand for freedom, are protesting against bureaucratic practices and officialism, against the spying for the police imposed on the “servants of God”. We socialists must lend this movement our support, carrying the demands of honest and sincere members of the clergy to their conclusion, making them stick to their words about freedom, demanding that they should resolutely break all ties between religion and the police. Either you are sincere, in which case you must stand for the complete separation of Church and State and of School and Church, for religion to be declared wholly and absolutely a private affair. Or you do not accept these consistent demands for freedom, in which case you evidently are still held captive by the traditions of the inquisition, in which case you evidently still cling to your cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes, in which case you evidently do not believe in the spiritual power of your weapon and continue to take bribes from the state. And in that case the class-conscious workers of all Russia declare merciless war on you.
So far as the party of the socialist proletariat is concerned, religion is not a private affair. Our Party is an association of class-conscious, advanced fighters for the emancipation of the working class. Such an association cannot and must not be indifferent to lack of class-consciousness, ignorance or obscurantism in the shape of religious beliefs. We demand complete disestablishment of the Church so as to be able to combat the religious fog with purely ideo   logical and solely ideological weapons, by means of our press and by word of mouth. But we founded our association, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, precisely for such a struggle against every religious bamboozling of the workers. And to us the ideological struggle is not a private affair, but the affair of the whole Party, of the whole proletariat.
If that is so, why do we not declare in our Programme that we are atheists? Why do we not forbid Christians and other believers in God to join our Party?
The answer to this question will serve to explain the very important difference in the way the question of religion is presented by the bourgeois democrats and the Social-Democrats.
Our Programme is based entirely on the scientific, and moreover the materialist, world-outlook. An explanation of our Programme, therefore, necessarily includes an explanation of the true historical and economic roots of the religious fog. Our propaganda necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism; the publication of the appropriate scientific literature, which the autocratic feudal government has hitherto strictly forbidden and persecuted, must now form one of the fields of our Party work. We shall now probably have to follow the advice Engels once gave to the German Socialists: to translate and widely disseminate the literature of the eighteenth-century French Enlighteners and atheists.[1]
But under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an “intellectual” question unconnected with the class struggle, as is not infrequently done by the radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism.   Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven.
That is the reason why we do not and should not set forth our atheism in our Programme; that is why we do not and should not prohibit proletarians who still retain vestiges of their old prejudices from associating themselves with our Party. We shall always preach the scientific world-outlook, and it is essential for us to combat the inconsistency of various “Christians”. But that does not mean in the least that the religious question ought to be advanced to first place, where it does not belong at all; nor does it mean that we should allow the forces of the really revolutionary economic and political struggle to be split up on account of third-rate opinions or senseless ideas, rapidly losing all political importance, rapidly being swept out as rubbish by the very course of economic development.
Everywhere the reactionary bourgeoisie has concerned itself, and is now beginning to concern itself in Russia, with the fomenting of religious strife—in order thereby to divert the attention of the masses from the really important and fundamental economic and political problems, now being solved in practice by the all-Russian proletariat uniting in revolutionary struggle. This reactionary policy of splitting up the proletarian forces, which today manifests itself mainly in Black-Hundred pogroms, may tomorrow conceive some more subtle forms. We, at any rate, shall oppose it by calmly, consistently and patiently preaching proletarian solidarity and the scientific world-outlook—a preaching alien to any stirring up of secondary differences.
The revolutionary proletariat will succeed in making religion a really private affair, so far as the state is concerned. And in this political system, cleansed of medieval mildew, the proletariat will wage a broad and open struggle for the elimination of economic slavery, the true source of the religious humbugging of mankind.

Notes
[1] See Frederick Engels, “Flüchtlings-Literatur”, Volksstaat, Nr, 73 vom 22.6.1874.
 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/dec/03.htm
 
What else do the slime intone? “I wish I could believe her.”  What’s open to doubt, puke-monkeys, the metal rod in my back, the entire history of the free world,  who I am.  Well, apart from oodles of living family, there are always public records.  But the joke academics who dismiss everything – oh where is the fucking sick-bowl?  They are beyond obscene.  Aren’t they, Vice-Chancellor?  Sickening, repulsive, stomach-churning.  Technicians from trade-schools with no intellectual values whatever and of course no moral ones.