“Source?”

My guess is that their source is Lenin’s “On the Significance of Militant Materialism” but it would be much appreciated if @VictimOfReligion can verify. (This reply is also a response to VictimOfReligion)

"The most important thing — and it is this that is most frequently overlooked by those of our Communists who are supposedly Marxists, but who in fact mutilate Marxism — is to know how to awaken in the still undeveloped masses an intelligent attitude towards religious questions and an intelligent criticism of religions.

On the other hand, take a glance at modern scientific critics of religion. These educated bourgeois writers almost invariably “supplement” their own refutations of religious superstitions with arguments which immediately expose them as ideological slaves of the bourgeoisie, as “graduated flunkeys of clericalism”.

The summary goes that we should know how to get the masses to question religion (and especially its structural form) in an intelligent manner (as opposed to the Liberal’s form of militant atheism, which handles this issue in a more classist manner and has failed to address the ideological weaponry of the Church which is also used by the ruling class)

However, in his “The Attitude of the Worker’s Party to Religion” he denounces attempts at a “war on religion” (the active and forced suppression of religion) as this would only revive interest in religion and prevent it from really dying out.

“And in 1877, too, in his Anti-Dühring, while ruthlessly attacking the slightest concessions made by Dühring the philosopher to idealism and religion, Engels no less resolutely condemns Dühring’s pseudo-revolutionary idea that religion should be prohibited in socialist society. To declare such a war on religion, Engels says, is to “out-Bismarck Bismarck”, i. e., to repeat the folly of Bismarck’s struggle against the clericals (the notorious “Struggle for Culture”, Kulturkampf, i.e., the struggle Bismarck waged in the 1870s against the German Catholic party, the “Centre” party, by means of a police persecution of Catholicism). By this struggle Bismarck only stimulated the militant clericalism of the Catholics, and only injured the work of real culture, because he gave prominence to religious divisions rather than political divisions, and diverted the attention of some sections of the working class and of the other democratic elements away from the urgent tasks of the class and revolutionary struggle to the most superficial and false bourgeois anti-clericalism. Accusing the would-be ultra-revolutionary Dühring of wanting to repeat Bismarck’s folly in another form, Engels insisted that the workers’ party should have the ability to work patiently at the task of organising and educating the proletariat, which would lead to the dying out of religion, and not throw itself into the gamble of a political war on religion.”

[…]

“We must combat religion—that is the ABC of all materialism, and consequently of Marxism. But Marxism is not a materialism which has stopped at the ABC. Marxism goes further. It says: We must know how to combat religion, and in order to do so we must explain the source of faith and religion among the masses in a materialist way. The combating of religion cannot be confined to abstract ideological preaching, and it must not be reduced to such preaching. It must be linked up with the concrete practice of the class movement, which aims at eliminating the social roots of religion. Why does religion retain its hold on the backward sections of the town proletariat, on broad sections of the semi-proletariat, and on the mass of the peasantry? Because of the ignorance of the people, replies the bourgeois progressist, the radical or the bourgeois materialist. And so: “Down with religion and long live atheism; the dissemination of atheist views is our chief task!” The Marxist says that this is not true, that it is a superficial view, the view of narrow bourgeois uplifters. It does not explain the roots of religion profoundly enough; it explains them, not in a materialist but in an idealist way.”

So yeah. From what I can tell going by what’s going on in these threads, the question of religion seems to be a very divisive topic within Left-wing discourse. (iirc these discussions also existed back in the GZD subreddit prior to its quarantine) I personally believe religion holds us back generally but that doesn’t mean we should immediately dismiss religious socialist movements (i.e. Sandinistas, Gaddafi, Ba’athism, etc.) as long as they are anti-imperialist. (Note: Patsocs, which are also religious “socialists,” are not anti-imperialist as they live in (and support) an imperialist country and thus they never experienced struggle against imperialism. Thus patsocs are undeserving of support)

Once Socialism wins, the decline of religion would be inevitable anyway, as more of the masses find less reason to take the Opium which is religion. Let a drug addict reform by providing them with basic necessities in life and they will no longer find need in the drugs which they used to fill that gap. Take their drugs forcefully instead and you only get an angry drug addict suffering from withdrawal.

ik this is a controversial topic by the looks of it so if I have made any errors and/or misinterpretations feel free to correct me.