I see religion as philosophy for the people. I guess it’s more like religion is philosophy for the people with added spirits to spice things up. Cause, well, philosophy can be very boring and people forget what you’ve said.

I’ve felt this for a while but had little to back it up. But it seems Tolstoy has, indeed, my back…

The formation of this philosophy of life appropriate to humanity in the new conditions on which it is entering, and of the practice resulting from it, is what is called religion.

– The Kingdom of God is within you, Leo Tolstoy, p87

Philosophy itself talks in ridiculous up-its-own-arse language. Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad all had ways of explaining that philosophy to people.

It seems Nietzsche, too, thinks along these lines:

Christianity is Platonism for the “people”

From this section:

“But the struggle against Plato, or—-to speak plainer, and for the “people”—-the struggle against the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity (for Christianity is Platonism for the “people”), produced in Europe a magnificent tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere previously; with such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the furthest goals.”

– Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche, Preface (Emphasis was Nietzsche’s)