When Karl Marx said, "Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people." He was trying to summarize his very controversial point of view, that religion is a crutch that people fall back on to escape the physical reality. People use it as a reason to get up in the morning and suffer another day of backbreaking labor so they can afford to buy bread to feed their families, as opposed to stealing what they want / need (for fear of being punished in the after life.) He felt that religion gave people a way to deal with grief and problems in their lives, but like opium