Perez, Phoebe Pinto, Ram

Cabagtong, Ranzel Daez, Patricia

Religion: A Process Addiction

In today's time as people continue to grow and multiply, so is the rapid expansion of religions on
earth. Religion is the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won
through to himself, or has already lost himself again (Karl Marx, N.D.). Religions had made such
impact to the centuries up until now. At this time, almost all of the people depend on their
religion where human knowledge and reason is seen as reliant on faith and it reached to the point
that even a person’s choice can be dreadful. Religion is as poisonous and as attractive, to many,
as heroin and consider to be an imposed addiction (Osborn, 2016).

“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.” -- This is Marx’s most well-known
observation about religion, that it is the opium of the common people. On this, there can be no
question that he is absolutely right, opium and religion are one in the same. A man addicted to
opium reduces his senses and helps one forget the miseries of the present. Likewise, religion may
be source of hope, a way of curing an illness, a sigh for a better world but it is also a result of
world out of order, and may even be a source of over-dependence. Moreover, this statement
actually open the door about religion to what may be called a social illness or a process
addiction.

David Hume, a Scottish philosopher argued that religion developed as a source of comfort in the
face of the adversity, not as an honest coping with verifiable truth. Religion is therefore an
unsophisticated form of reasoning. As per novelist Steven Weinberg in his speech, “With or
without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil
things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” With that, it’s not so much that
religion makes people do evil, it’s that it provides a person to have a convenient escape and
lowers the tendency of committing bad behavior might otherwise avoid. Ancient religious texts
about the will of God are often used as excuses for personal biases and may even start people to
act on those prejudgments. Example of this is George W. Bush, who get on war because of what
he thought his god told him to do it. And some even use religion as a convenient excuse to get
out of responsibilities. Substance addiction has been linked to an escape from reason and painful
experiences (Lenters, 1985) which is comparable to religion. Example, Jimmy Swaggert, a
former televangelist committed a sin against his wife, by having sex with prostitutes, and asked
forgiveness from an invisible man in the sky. He probably wouldn't have done so if he hadn't
been caught. That is the common basis for religion: to feel the pleasure of forgiveness without
getting it from the people who were wronged. Agreeing to Ludden, when we live in small
groups, sinners are punished by other members, and they quickly absorb that they have to get
along. But in unspecified societies, it is easy to take advantage of others because there’s no way
for the others to punish those who take advantage of the system. So their answer was to invent
ever-watchful gods who’ll punish sinners for us. This process makes the addict numb of his
senses where a person does not have to face consciously the painful existential questions of loss
and disappointment. In addition, this process addiction was described as an avoidance of taking
moral responsibility for one's life (Lenters, 1985). The religious addict could be perceived when
he fails to take moral responsibility for life decisions when he compulsively insists on giving god
credit for achievements and successes. For example, Stephen Curry, the reigning 2-time NBA MVP
and also a follower of Jesus Christ. As he stated in his interview, the Lord has blessed him with those
talents to do something special and that it is not about him. Winning games, losing games, missing shots,
making shots, it doesn’t matter because for him it’s all about giving glory to God.

Since 1650 the strong devotion of Filipinos for the Black Nazarene started. Every year on
January 9, the annual feast happens where millions of devotees gather because of their beliefs
that some miracle might happen and their faith. Many incidents also happen when people try to
touch the statue of Nazarene, stampede is always expected at this feast but devotees still go. Our
faith becomes our tradition where in people depends on a certain thing, one of the example for
this is people depends so much on our religion or in a certain saint. They tend to praise and do
nothing at all because they believe that one day their prayers will come true. People likely to
neglect the practical thinking that one should do something to earn a living, we cannot depend
everything on praying because at the end of the day we are still the one who create our rightful
paths each day. Prayers help us to keep ourselves in peace spiritually and mentally thus working
helps us to live physically. This illustrates which people foresee religion as a refuge or retreat.
Grabmeir mentioned that people are attracted to religion because it delivers believers the
opportunity to satisfy all their basic desires over and over again and that, a person can't spot
religion down to one essence. With that, Reiss and his co-researchers identified 16 basic desires
that we all share acceptance, curiosity, eating, family, honor, idealism, independence, order,
physical activity, power, romance, saving, social contact, status, tranquility and vengeance.
Religion is the general theory of this world, its logic in popular form, its enthusiasm, its moral
sanction, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the strange realization of the
human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The problem against
religion is, therefore, the struggle against the world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Thereafter, religion had certain practical functions in society that were similar to the function
of opium in a sick or hurt person. It reduced people's distress and provided them with pleasant
illusions which gave them the strength to carry on. Also, religion in place of process addiction, it
prevents people from seeing the oppression around them. Some religion makes the other
persecute those who refuse to conform, it oppresses growth in the name of their creed, it
demands the removal of secular ideas to the rule in the name of theocracy, it is an existential
threat to every progressive idea, and thus religion can prevent people from miserable life.
However, over-dependency to religion can interfere with healthy self-esteem, personal
empowerment, community engagement, or loving relationships. In the end, the issue of whether
religion is a process addiction for you comes down to similar questions to the ones you might ask
yourself about vices addiction. Has your religion eaten your life? As inference, this paper is an
attempt to understand how religious beliefs or religion itself may be considered an addiction. The
religious addict is one who has the inability to deal with things in his environment and has less
appreciation of or reliance on his self. This system of religion may be seen as addictive if it is
used as an escape from painful reality by an over-dependency on religions as a source of refuge.
This excessive dependency on religions fallouts in failure to yield personal responsibility or hold
this as an excuse for one's actions and decisions.