[Sweeper]

Allright, as I heard what Marx said about religion and calling it Opium well I was a bit shocked.
Like he said:

Religion, is opium to the people

Allright fair enough, though it shocked me because it makes sense and not sense in some situations.
Mostly I don't understand how people can be communists and at the same time be Christians or any religion for that matter.
As Communism is based on Marx theories or have I fallen off somewhere?
I am not going to be one of them that fills the entire screen with text, I'll be short and brief and ask some commies here.
Vassili Zaitsev: You said you were christian and communist, then how is it possible?

Does anyone else have something to add? or correct me if I have misunderstood, because the way I see it, this makes Communism and religion just as compitable as Communism and Capitalism.

[jaakko]

Communist can be religious if he doesn't promote religion and keeps it as a private business. Being a communist is the political result of being an adherent of Scientific Socialism (ie. Marxism). Because of Marxism's dialectical materialist philosophical base, a religious person can't be Marxist (unless he totally divides his mind into the materialist and into the objective idealist side, which I think is quite impossible) while he can be a communist.

[ZoltanVarga]

It's difficult to see how organised religion would be able to survive in a truly Socialist society.

There would be, i expect, no state-funding of any organised faith, no religious instruction in schools and no organisations such as scout groups controlled by any religious body. As such any religious denomination seeking to 'spread the word', gain converts and so forth are going to find this task somewhat problematic.

Also, what would happen to all Church-owned private property such as buildings and land? If this property could be utilsed in a positive way for the benefit of all society, I would fully expect, nay hope, it to become publically-owned! This of course would lead to the problem for religions of where to proslytise their faith.

I reason that religion wouldn't only whither away for people as an 'opiate' to make life bearable, but because organised religion would find it almost impossible to maintain their hold over people as they would no longer have the means available to do so!

[Adrien]

Well i absolutely agree when you say that the state should stop funding in any way the religious organizations, but i think that in a socialist state there should be religious instructions, but an instruction which would not go into ideology too much, an instruction which would state the facts: all the wrong religions did to the world.

If we don't instruct people about what we reproach to religions, there is a risk to see them being caught by these religious organizations. They must be informed, and it is a duty of the state to help the people.