1. Seneca said religion is true to the masses, false to the wise, and useful to the rulers.

2. In a way, Paul expresses a similar sentiment when he says “Brothers, consider the time of your calling: Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were powerful; not many were of noble birth. (1 Cor 1:26).”

3. Religion has always had as its proper place the duping of the unruly, gullible, superstitious, lower classes into thinking there is more to life than just their rotten circumstances. The masses are kept in line in this way.

4. Religion truly is the opiate of the masses.

The ruling class has always known the value of religion. For instance, Serapis (Σέραπις, Attic/Ionian Greek) or Sarapis (Σάραπις, Doric Greek) was a Graeco-Egyptian god. The cult of Serapis was cleverly introduced during the 3rd century BC on the orders of Ptolemy I of Egypt as a means to unify the Greeks and Egyptians in his realm. As Seneca said, the wise rejected knowledge claims about gods. For instance, pre Socratic philosopher Protagoras said, in his lost work On the Gods, that: “Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not, nor of what sort they may be.” Some, such as Xenophanes, ridiculed the way we create Gods, saying “But if cattle and horses and lions had hands or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do, horses like horses and cattle like cattle also would depict the gods’ shapes and make their bodies of such a sort as the form they themselves have. Ethiopians say that their gods are snub–nosed [σιμούς] and black, Thracians that they are pale and red-haired.” Is it coincidence that the Christian God and Jesus exemplify “Love,” the most noble of the human traits? Similarly, Socrates rejected the idea that we know what happens after we die, saying “death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness or a change and migration of the soul from this world to another.” While some might fear the nothingness, Socrates does not—he regards it as a great gain, like a sleep undisturbed even by dreams (The pre Christian Jewish belief echoes this first option of Socrates: Ecclesiastes 9:5 says “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.”) The other option, as Socrates sees it, is even better: what we would now regard as a heavenly afterlife in which one is judged by those “who were righteous in life” and is, for good measure, happy and immortal. So Socrates rejects the idea that we have knowledge of life after death. There is a continuum from annihilation to bliss, and no one knows what the truth is. The Greeks saw the value of claiming knowledge and persuading people about the divine, but these were noble lies.