Above is a Chinese Cultural Revolution Poster, ca. 1968.
Many rulers understand the power of religion, so they sought to displace existing religions and make themselves the object of worship. The monarch of the Chinese Zhou dynasty called themself 天子 which means Son of Heaven, as an attempt to legitimize their reign. The Emperor of Japan later adopted a similar title 天皇 which means heavenly sovereign for the same reason.
Karl Marx was quoted saying that religion is the Opium of the people, but reading it merely as “religion is drug” is somewhat inadequate. Marx opposes religion because it hampered the socialism call to make structural changes to the society.
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to 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, its 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. 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. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Marx considered religion a competition to socialism because he also sought to displace religion with socialism. The communists created a new religion which is the worship of socialist government. It became a more potent opioid used by the totalitarians and fascists to control the masses. Communism spreaded by military force throughout World War II in a way reminiscent to The rise of Islamic empires and states, but ended in the Collapse of the Soviet Union.
We are still dealing with remnants of communism opioid today, and this could very well escalate to a third world war. Vladimir Putin—the de-facto dictator of Russia, former KGB officer, and a serial kleptomaniac—has been seeking to restore the glories of the former soviet union. Under his reign, he assassinated many of his critics, annexed Crimea, and invaded the Ukraine.
In China, Xi Jinping has also been seeking to restore the formal glories of the Chinese Communist Party. Xi came out of Communist Youth League of China and served as a secretary in the Central Military Commission. He eliminated presidential term limits, tightened control of society, conducted military exercises in the Taiwan airspace and Sea of Japan, and has been preparing to forcefully annex Taiwan. If he succeeds, it would be something that none of his predecessors, not even Mao Zedong, were able to accomplish.
While irreligion—in the sense that rulers make themselves the object of worship—is definitely manmade, Karl Marx is wrong about all religions being manmade. Since religion relates an individual with the external world, it may seem manmade solely from the egocentric perspective. But Christianity is a religion where God from the externality establishes a relationship with a person through a covenant. The LORD is the deliverer (rescuer) for those who are oppressed from their sufferings. The covenant cannot be abolished.