Did Marxism/Communism/Socialism ever really outlaw Religion ? [Archive]

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leftwinger2007

12th April 2017, 18:47

Hi my question is did Marxism/Communism/Socialism ever really outlaw Religion or is this just a Capitalist Myth I have read that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels never called for Religion to be banned not Lenin either even if Religion was banned a Christian Jew or Muslim could just lie and pretend to be an Atheist like the Communist Party of China I read wants Atheists only members but they could pretend to be Atheists or Agnostics to join since Marx said economic exploitation caused people to turn to religion does this mean under Marxism Socialism and Communism if there is a famine or black death or a economic collapse that people will turn to religion again thank for your time ?

Either they decreed reforms which the republican bourgeoisie had failed to pass solely out of cowardice, but which provided a necessary basis for the free activity of the working class – such as the realization of the principle that in relation to the state, religion is a purely private matter

1891 Introduction by Frederick Engels
On the 20th Anniversary of the Paris Commune

[Historical Background &
Overview of the Civil War]

Marx was, but Marxism is not explicitly atheist (although it does hint at such a
conclusion by using materialist analysis). Marx viewed religion as being the
"opium of the people," in that it provides a metaphysical retreat from their
hardship and exploitation and distracts them from the class struggle. However,
he devoted much of "On the Jewish Question" to arguing that freedom and religion
were not incompatible within a secular nation, and held the view that with the
advent of socialism, religion will disappear on its own.

Marx's staunch atheism hasn't stopped Marxists from being theistic, most notably
Eugebe V. Debs, the famous American socialist and trade union organizer who was
very religious. Even in the modern day, the Dalai Lama has described himself as
Marxist on multiple occasions.

Do Marxists support suppression of religion?[edit]
Marx branded the notion that religion should be violently suppressed as
"ridiculous"[1], and Engels criticized the Blanquists' support for the legal
suppression of religion and legal enforcement of atheism.[2][3]

willowtooth

12th April 2017, 20:01

Hi my question is did Marxism/Communism/Socialism ever really outlaw Religion or is this just a Capitalist Myth I have read that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels never called for Religion to be banned not Lenin either even if Religion was banned a Christian Jew or Muslim could just lie and pretend to be an Atheist like the Communist Party of China I read wants Atheists only members but they could pretend to be Atheists or Agnostics to join since Marx said economic exploitation caused people to turn to religion does this mean under Marxism Socialism and Communism if there is a famine or black death or a economic collapse that people will turn to religion again thank for your time ?

Socialism pre-dates marxism, the american and french revolutions were the first socialist revolutions, the demand for freedom of religion was unanimous, so you could call "freedom of religion" the first outlawing of religion. Atheism wasn't really a word at this point in time. Since it carried a death sentence in the christian world.

Marxism or communism became popular after the manifesto was written in 1848. While marx was a ruthless critic of religion, the church, priests themselves. He never called for the outlawing of religion, kill the pope and his millionaire cardinals sure, but Marx believed in the dissolution of the state entirely and any establishment of laws, prisons, courts etc. So Marx never wrote anything about creating a law that says, anyone caught worshiping a monkey statue will be punished with 50 lashes and 20 years imprisonment or anything like that.

Then came the Leninist, in the Russian revolution of 1917 and the rise of Marxist-Leninism or state socialism which is where you get the first theories about state atheism, Lenin and Stalin were very clear about the destruction of religion, a good example is the league of militant of atheists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists

However while there was certainly oppression against organized religion, religious public worship, religious leadership, and promotion of atheism. In many Marxist Leninist states, like the USSR, China, the DPRK etc. The only place on earth to truly outlaw religion was Albania, where being caught with a Bible or a Quran carried jailtime, religious weddings and even names were outlawed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism

Fellow_Human

13th April 2017, 07:58

Ideologies can't "outlaw" anything; governments do. And yes, governments who claimed to carry the Marxist legacy have persecuted the religious.

Over 100,000 priests, Buddhist lamas, monks and nuns were executed in the Great Purge. Managers and party members couldn't be seen anywhere near a church because they might lose their jobs. Teachers instructed children to point indecent gestures to the sky in demonstration of their defiance to theism.

This is just one small way in which the Bolsheviks, Stalin in particular, shat all over Marx.

And guess what. After all those repressions, the post-Soviet region is still much more religious than the West.

General Winter

13th April 2017, 10:50

Left anticommunists lie worse than Goebbels.Compare figures:

"Up to 1930, 31 bishops, 1,600 clergy and 7,000 monks were murdered under the Soviet regime. According to statistics available for 1930, there were then confined in prisons, under starvation conditions, 48 bishops, 3,700 clergy and 8,000 monks and nuns. The “International League against the Third International” at Geneva issued statistics on August 6th 1935, showing that in Russia 40,000 priests had been arrested, banished or murdered." http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb58.htm

Over 100,000 priests, Buddhist lamas, monks and nuns were executed in the Great Purge.

Even Goebbels has scrupled about lying that "teachers instructed children to point indecent gestures to the sky in demonstration of their defiance to theism." .He only wrote that " children under the age of 18 are forbidden to take part in religious services and prayers." - http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb58.htm

No comment.

Fellow_Human

13th April 2017, 17:14

Compare figures:

I said, in the Great Purge, not just year 1930 or 1935. The Stalinist repressions peaked in 1937-1938.

Top Soviet politicians (or rather, bureaucrats, since the Soviet Union had no "politicians" in the democratic sense) admit it themselves today. See, for example, Alexander Yakovlev's A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia.

Why should the exact figure matter so much to you, when the unjustified killing of even one person is a most heinous crime? I suppose you concur with the Stalinist attitude that “The death of one is a tragedy, but the death of millions is just a statistic.”

Even Goebbels has scrupled about lying that "teachers instructed children to point indecent gestures to the sky in demonstration of their defiance to theism."

Bro, I hear a rumor that the Jewish-raised atheist Trotsky baptized his children -- for no other purpose than to spite religious Jews :laugh:

Let me tell you another story, not quite as funny, but still. Even though my parents are deeply religious Orthodox Jews, my mother is a convert and comes from a Catholic family. Growing up in the Soviet Union, she was mocked by her teacher for attending church on Easter. Years later, after the Soviet collapse, my maternal grandmother met the retired teacher in a train. Now guess what the retired teacher said to the child who had enter the passenger car. “Why didn't you salute, ‘Glory to Jesus Christ,’ when you walked in?”

Opportunists, opportunists everywhere. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.

The Sentinel

13th April 2017, 20:20

The way I see it is that Marx wasn't necessarily outrightly anti-religious, but rather he viewed religion as a 'stage' or 'tool' of society's development. Which does mean that an ideal communist society wouldn't have (or even need) organised religion! But I don't see how that could be achieved by just outlawing all religious activities/ideas.

I think it's important to understand the difference between the terms 'Religion' and 'Theism'. The first indicates an organised religion, a system that claims the existence of a divine set of rules of the society; whereas the former would refer to a more individual belief. So we could technically have a communist society where individuals have theist beliefs, but no religion would dictate/influence law or even morality.

On the other hand, there are non-marxist socialist theories as well; Islamic Socialism for example, which comes out of anti-imperialism and believes that a leftist/progressive interpretation and implementation of Islamic teachings and jurisprudence would create a true socialist society. Some organising like the MEK have even tried to apply Marxist theories in an Islamic framework as well. Different religious believes have their versions of the same.

Governments like China might dislike organised religion cz it often dictates its own version of how the society should be run, which tends to conflict with Leninist/Maoist jurisprudence and philosophies governance. Same reason why theocratic governments dislike communist groups.

The Sentinel

13th April 2017, 20:28

The way I see it is that Marx wasn't necessarily outrightly anti-religious, but rather he viewed religion as a 'stage' or 'tool' of society's development. Which does mean that an ideal communist society wouldn't have (or even need) organised religion! But I don't see how that could be achieved by just outlawing all religious activities/ideas.

I think it's important to understand the difference between the terms 'Religion' and 'Theism'. The first indicates an organised religion, a system that claims the existence of a divine set of rules of the society; whereas the former would refer to a more individual belief. So we could technically have a communist society where individuals have theist beliefs, but no religion would dictate/influence law or even morality.

On the other hand, there are non-marxist socialist theories as well; Islamic Socialism for example, which comes out of anti-imperialism and believes that a leftist/progressive interpretation and implementation of Islamic teachings and jurisprudence would create a true socialist society. Some organising like the MEK have even tried to apply Marxist theories in an Islamic framework as well. Different religious believes have their versions of the same.

Communist governments like China might dislike organised religion cz it often dictates its own version of how the society should be run, which tends to conflict with Leninist/Maoist jurisprudence and philosophies governance. Same reason why theocratic governments dislike communist groups.

General Winter

14th April 2017, 02:05

I said, in the Great Purge, not just year 1930 or 1935. The Stalinist repressions peaked in 1937-1938.

So Goebbels's figures are correct,you say. Then why you do not give references to your authorities :"I have drew up this information from the article of Dr. Goebbels,this guy would not lie."?

By the way, the use of fake quotations - " the death of one is a tragedy,but the death of millions is just a statistic“ - is goebbesism,too.

So my congratulation!

ckaihatsu

14th April 2017, 14:11

The way I see it is that Marx wasn't necessarily outrightly anti-religious, but rather he viewed religion as a 'stage' or 'tool' of society's development.

I, for one, would welcome an elaboration of this -- how exactly can monotheism be considered a 'societal developmental stage' of humanity / civilization -- ?

GiantMonkeyMan

14th April 2017, 14:41

So Goebbels's figures are correct,you say. Then why you do not give references to your authorities :"I have drew up this information from the article of Dr. Goebbels,this guy would not lie."?

By the way, the use of fake quotations - " the death of one is a tragedy,but the death of millions is just a statistic“ - is goebbesism,too.

So my congratulation!
Equating pointing out the mass murder of the Stalinist purges to Nazi propaganda is just crass. It's not a lie to say that thousands of Orthodox clergymen, Old Believers, Rabbis and such were killed in the purges by the Stalinist authorities on the basis of their organisational positions within their religions and their criticism of the regime.

General Winter

15th April 2017, 16:14

willowtooth

16th April 2017, 05:39

It is is just crass to repeat Goebbels' propaganda among leftists being not able to hide this fact.

Fuck Goebbels and goebbelsists.

How did things stand in reality?

Immediately after the revolution the Church has placed itself in enmity to the Soviet power and took an active part in the civil war at the side of the counter-revolution.The confrontation between the Church and the Soviet state lasted for 25 years and finished in 1943.

Marxists do not support suppression of religion, bureaucratic methods do not help here.The course of life under socialism itself kills religion little by little.An interesting fact : if you watch the periodicals of late Soviet times you almost will not find there atheistic propaganda - atheism didn' need the propaganda press yet, young people didn't interest in religion at all ,religion was dying slowly by itself.
I dont think Goebbels is relevant here, and I dont mean that in some godwin's law reducto ad hitlerum nonsense way.

I mean there should be alot of pressure against right wing shills like robert conquest and other anti communist writers of books like the black book of communism. Anti-communist propaganda that is riddled with easily exposed errors that are still being used by reactionaries everyday. Its still listed as sources for news outlets like BBC, FOX news, even on wikipedia. It's being used as required reading in many schools such as Stanford and Oxford.

Shit like this goes way beyond anything Goebbels ever wrote
https://pics.onsizzle.com/this-is-carl-marks-he-invented-communism-which-killed-120-16138222.png

General Winter

16th April 2017, 08:15

I dont think Goebbels is relevant here, and I dont mean that in some godwin's law reducto ad hitlerum nonsense way.

The point is that texts of right and left anti-communists are congruent at first,in propaganda strokes:statements like "100 000 priests were killed" or "teachers instructed children to point indecent gestures to the sky in demonstration of their defiance to theism." are quite according Hitler's principle "the bigger the lie, the more it will be believed".This was said by a person who introduces himself as a leftist!

At second,they are congruent in interpretation of facts and events.They both reject the coseption of the class struggle,the conception of revolution as "the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles" ( Engels ) ,instead of it they draw a primitive picture where evil butchers because of the ill nature murder innocent victims - no revolution,no class struggle!

willowtooth

16th April 2017, 14:01

The point is that texts of right and left anti-communists are congruent at first,in propaganda strokes:statements like "100 000 priests were killed" or "teachers instructed children to point indecent gestures to the sky in demonstration of their defiance to theism." are quite according Hitler's principle "the bigger the lie, the more it will be believed".This was said by a person who introduces himself as a leftist!

At second,they are congruent in interpretation of facts and events.They both reject the coseption of the class struggle,the conception of revolution as "the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles" ( Engels ) ,instead of it they draw a primitive picture where evil butchers because of the ill nature murder innocent victims - no revolution,no class struggle!

thats not even close to some of the things said about stalin.... Ive never heard the indecent gestures to sky thing before, but Wikipedia even lists this 100,000 figure

During the purges (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge) of 1937 and 1938, church documents record that 168,300 Russian Orthodox clergy were arrested. Of these, over 100,000 were shot.[77] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union#cite _note-77)Many thousands of victims of persecution became recognized in a special canon of saints known as the "new martyrs and confessors of Russia".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union

this is their source https://books.google.com/books?visbn=0300103220&id=ChRk43tVxTwC&pg=PA165#v=onepage&q&f=false

Alexander Yakovlev is miles away from Goebells

General Winter

16th April 2017, 16:02

willowtooth

16th April 2017, 16:23

I very much doubt whether Wikipedia can be called a trustworthy source. But it's not the main point.They ignore the main question : what side of this conflict was just?

There is a certain organization wich takes an active part in anti-Soviet struggle. Should one be surprised when this organization gets a lot of kicks from the Soviets and should one believe that these kicks are unjust?

Alexander Yakovlev is Gorbachev's Goebbells.Refering to Yakovlev is like refering to Goebbels.

okay but I still dont know if your saying 100,000 priests were murdered for good reason, or that it was much less than 100,000, or that the events simply never happened at all. the average american high school kid can justify the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki in a few sentences, and it was a much worse tragedy, with much more innocent victims, and they can do it without questioning the total deaths.

ckaihatsu

16th April 2017, 17:35

okay but I still dont know if your saying 100,000 priests were murdered for good reason, or that it was much less than 100,000, or that the events simply never happened at all. the average american high school kid can justify the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki in a few sentences, and it was a much worse tragedy, with much more innocent victims, and they can do it without questioning the total deaths.

If by 'justify' you mean 'explain the reasons for' -- and I *wouldn't* agree that the average American high school student would know the *real motivations* for the use of the two atomic bombs in WWII:

Truman and many of his advisers hoped that the U.S. atomic monopoly might offer diplomatic leverage with the Soviets. In this fashion, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan can be seen as the first shot of the Cold War.

Atomic Weapons Were Not Needed to End the War or Save Lives

Like all Americans, I was taught that the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to end WWII and save both American and Japanese lives.

But most of the top American military officials at the time said otherwise.

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946 that concluded (52-56):

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

The Real Reason America Used Nuclear Weapons Against Japan. It Was Not To End the War Or Save Lives.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-reason-america-used-nuclear-weapons-against-japan-it-was-not-to-end-the-war-or-save-lives/5308192

---

Seventy years ago today, US forces firebombed Tokyo to force the Japanese to an early surrender in the dying months of World War II. The atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have dominated the retelling of WWII history, but as a single attack the bombing of Tokyo was more destructive.Mar 8, 2015

Tokyo WWII firebombing, the single most deadly bombing raid in history, remembered 70 years on

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-09/tokyo-wwii-firebombing-remembered-70-years-on/6287486

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Japan's military and civil defenses were unable to stop the Allied attacks. The number of fighter aircraft and anti-aircraft guns assigned to defensive duties in the home islands was inadequate, and most of these aircraft and guns had difficulty reaching the high altitudes at which B-29s often operated. Fuel shortages, inadequate pilot training, and a lack of coordination between units also constrained the effectiveness of the fighter force. Despite the vulnerability of Japanese cities to firebombing attacks, the firefighting services lacked training and equipment, and few air raid shelters were constructed for civilians. As a result, the B-29s were able to inflict severe damage on urban areas while suffering few losses.

The Allied bombing campaign was one of the main factors which influenced the Japanese government's decision to surrender in mid-August 1945.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan

The Sentinel

16th April 2017, 22:09

Ismail

12th May 2017, 22:15

Leaving aside exceptional cases like 1936-1938 in the USSR or the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" in China, I'd say Konstantin Chernenko gave a good summary of the socialist attitude toward religion (Human Rights in Soviet Society (https://archive.org/details/HumanRightsInSovietSociety), 1981, pp. 65-70):

Speaking of Communists’ attitude to religion, Lenin stressed: “Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases, or no religion whatever, i.e., to be an atheist, discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable.” . . . .

In czarist Russia, the church was a state institution. It was the duty of every subject of the Russian Empire to profess some faith. Dissemination of materialist views and antireligious propaganda were prohibited.

The state legislatively interfered in the internal affairs of religious associations. The priests’ status was virtually that of officials. . .

The clergy were paid large subsidies, salaries and various allowances. For instance, in 1907, the Holy Synod was allocated 29 million rubles, almost as much as was allocated for the Ministry of Public Education. The church owned immense property, including tracts of land, trading enterprises and bank accounts. . .

Those who did not abide by the precepts of religion were threatened with dismissal from work. For instance, the great Russian scientist Klimenty Timiryazev was dismissed for “godlessness” from the Agricultural Academy, which bears his name today. . . .

The position of the Communist Party in the sphere of religion was formulated in its First program. It called for unrestricted freedom of conscience, complete equality of citizens irrespective of religion, and separation of the church from the state and the school. The implementation of these principles became possible after the Great October Socialist Revolution. . .

The separation of the church from the state meant that state agencies were not to interfere in the internal affairs of religious associations and that the church was not to interfere in the affairs of the state and in the activities of political and economic organizations and of health-protection, educational, social security and other agencies. . . .

As was to be expected, the clergy, which had been one of the pillars of the monarchy and was now deprived of its privileges, vehemently attacked the revolutionary laws on religion and the church and offered fierce resistance to Soviet power. “Regiments of Jesus”, “Regiments of the Holy Virgin” and “Holy Cross detachments” were formed in the years of the Civil War, when foreign military forces intervened to fight against the Red Army. Monasteries often served as bases for the counterrevolution. In fact, not a single counterrevolutionary uprising took place without the complicity or even direct participation of clergymen.

It is natural, therefore, that the struggle against the enemies of the socialist state included also the struggle against those reactionary clerics who engaged in activities hostile to the Soviet people. However, many members of the clergy realized that its opposition to Soviet power was undermining the authority of the church and its influence among the masses. . . .

Already in 1923, representatives of an influential religious trend which called for “renovation” of the Orthodox Church on the principles of recognizing the new Soviet power, addressed a message of greetings to the Soviet Government, which said in part: “Using state methods, the Great October Revolution ... is carrying out the great principles of equality and labor . . . All over the world the strong oppress the weak. Only in Soviet Russia has the struggle against this injustice begun. The Council believes that every upright citizen should take an active stand among these fighters for human truth, implementing in every way the principles of the October Revolution.” In subsequent years, under the pressure of believers, the heads of the majority of religious faiths declared their loyalty to Soviet power. . . .

To our Party, the struggle against religious prejudices has always been an ideological struggle of a scientific, materialist world view against an antiscientific, religious one. We are waging this struggle only by means of persuasion and education. The Communist Party has always held that all attempts to make believers give up their convictions by coercive measures are not only futile, but also harmful, that atheism can be spread, not through prohibiting religion, but by means of consistent persuasion, by drawing believers into an active social life. After all, you can't order a man to think scientifically.It was possible for Party members to be religious believers, but the chance of a religious believer becoming a leader of the party was nil, just as it was quite unlikely for a Communist to become head of a religious community.

ckaihatsu

13th May 2017, 14:01

I, for one, would welcome an elaboration of this -- how exactly can monotheism be considered a 'societal developmental stage' of humanity / civilization -- ?

Well, monotheism is a particular belief. The way I see it is [and maybe there's a better to look at it], a lot of our definition of morality and jurisprudence has religious origins. For example, before we had structured governments, it was religion that dictated morality and law (take pre-colonial India). Yes, regimes have also used religion for their own benefit. But then religious beliefs became a tool to push humans from nomadic tribes to civilisations.
Were there other factors? Yes.
Could there have been other ways of this happening? Absolutely.
Just something I've noticed is that in many countries even today, it's people's religious beliefs that keep them from killing each other and not the legal system.

But there's definitely a time when we gotta through that tool out..

I would like to hear your thoughts on this.

I think it's safe to say that religion and religious beliefs are a *dependent* variable in social relations, and that they're certainly not a *leading* dynamic of social change, as in the development of civilization.

Yes, religion may be used from 'above' (the elites) for the sake of social engineering, but, again, we can't look to religious culture as the 'motor' of *overall* social development.

The development of *monotheism* (versus its predecessor, *polytheism*) was an emergent cultural event that happened at one point in history:

[T]he rise of ‘universalistic’ religions based on adherence to a dominant god, principle of life or code of conduct.

From:

By the 7th century BC new civilisations based on the new techniques were on the ascendant. The Assyrian Empire stretched from the Nile to eastern Mesopotamia, welding an unprecedented number and diversity of peoples into a single civilisation, with a single script for the different languages. A new civilisation began to develop in northern India, with the regrowth of trade and the building of cities after a lapse of nearly 1,000 years. A handful of kingdoms began to emerge in northern China out of the chaotic warfare of 170 rival statelets. And around the Mediterranean—in Palestine, Lebanon, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy and north Africa—city states grew up free of the extreme political and ideological centralisation of the old Mesopotamian and Egyptian empires.

New productive techniques were matched by scientific advance and ideological ferment. There had been a growth in certain areas of scientific learning, especially mathematics and astronomy, in Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Egypt. But these advances were based on the persistence of priesthoods which, over two millennia, were increasingly cut off from material life, their findings embedded in complex and abstruse religious systems. Renewed advance depended on breaking with these. It came, not in the centres of the old civilisations—the Mesopotamian cities of Ashur and Babylon or the Egyptian cities of Memphis or Thebes—but in the new cities of northern India, northern China and the Mediterranean coast.

The new and reinvigorated civilisations shared certain common features as well as the use of iron. They saw a proliferation of new crafts; a growth of long distance trade; a rise in the importance of merchants as a social class; the use of coins to make it easy even for lowly cultivators and artisans to trade with each other; the adoption (except in China) of new, more or less phonetically based, alphabets which made literacy possible for much wider numbers of people; and the rise of ‘universalistic’ religions based on adherence to a dominant god, principle of life or code of conduct. Finally, all the new civilisations were, like the old, based on class divisions. There was no other way of pumping a surplus out of cultivators who were often hungry. But there were considerable differences between the civilisations. Material factors—environment, climate, the pool of already domesticated species, geographical location—affected how people made a livelihood and how the rulers took control of the surplus. These, in turn, influenced everything else that happened.

Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 46-47

And, for a trans-historical framework:

History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle

http://s6.postimg.org/44rloql0x/160309_History_Macro_Micro_politics_logistic.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/r686uhkod/full/)

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Zoroastrianism, another of Jaspers' examples, is one of the first monotheistic religions and it greatly influenced modern Abrahamic religions with such conceptions as the devil and Heaven/Hell.[17] The exact date of Zarathustra's life is debated by scholars, with some, such as Mary Boyce, arguing that Zoroastrianism itself is significantly older.[17] Others, such as William W Malandra and RC Zaehner, suggest that he may indeed have been an early contemporary of Cyrus living around 600 BC.[18] However, Boyce and other leading scholars who once supported much earlier dates for Zarathustra/Zoroaster have recently changed their position on the time when he likely lived, so that there is an emerging consensus regarding him as a contemporary or near-contemporary of Cyrus the Great.[19]

Jaspers' axial shifts included the rise of Platonism, which would later become a major influence on the Western world through both Christianity and secular thought throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age#Thinkers_and_movements