What constitutes religious faith

[Le Libérer]

Senario. Someone who is a herion and cocaine addict. Has been addicted for over 10 years, and knows they cannot stop using own their own. They never have been religious or subscribed to any faith. They begin a 12 step program where of course you reconize you are powerless on your own therefore looks to a "higher power" along with a strong support system within the 12 step program.

Would this person be considered religious according to Marx?

[Dean]

Senario. Someone who is a herion and cocaine addict. Has been addicted for over 10 years, and knows they cannot stop using own their own. They never have been religious or subscribed to any faith. They begin a 12 step program where of course you reconize you are powerless on your own therefore looks to a "higher power" along with a strong support system within the 12 step program.

Would this person be considered religious according to Marx?

I dunno, but I don't think that matters. I think waht matters is whether or not he believed in submission to that higher power, and what that higher power was. If the higher power is the universal human, then I see no problem with it.

[Freedom Through Anarchy]

Those type of programs have always made me wonder too.
Would the "Higher power" be some form of god or supreme being?
Or is it the help of another person that could identified as a "Higher power" for helping him or her overcome the addiction?
Or some otherform of "Higher power"?

[gilhyle]

Well if Marx considered him to have religious psychology, no consequences would flow from that. ON the other hand, if he, for example, became a mason then his belief in a higher power would involve him in organised religion.....clearly religious. In between those two extremes, is the possibility that the person himself would coe to believe that the higher power acted as an authority for determining what humans should and should not do. In that case, that person would no longer be capable of assessing the requirement for political action on the basis of an objective analysis of the situation and he would be religiously damaged (from a political point of view)

[Dyslexia! Well I Never!]

Religious faith is dangerous, is promotes belief without evidence and acceptance without query. All faith is dangerous some extent or another for example it doesn't matter if I kll you because of my faith in a god/godess or my faith that because I'm me and you're not you deserve to die. Faith would be what what spurred my action and you'd be just as dead.

Telling anyone that they incapable of something simply because it is very difficult is an obvious attempt to undermine one's self-confidence and thus by extention the confidence they have in the conclusions they can arrive at on their own. Under a sustained barrage of such poisonous rhetoric many end up ready to believe the first person or institution that wades in with an assertion of supposed truth no matter how far-fetched they may be.

A theistic 12 stem program is a cynical use of an affiction to attempt to undermine peoples capacity to think for themselves.