>>But notice, this whole discussion has not touched on either marxism or
>>religion. Rather, it has consisted of a series of free-floating
>>assertions about _people_. The argument is not that marxism is a
>>religion. To make that claim would require an analysis of actual >marxist
>>positions. Rather Joe & others are claiming to be mindreaders -- they
>>know better than I do what is going on in my head when I affirm a
>>position about the world.
>
>No, what makes Marxism a secular religion isn't any particular >position or
>even a set of them. It's the way people have held it--as sometime >believed
>a priori, immune from criticism, with a kind of worshipful devotion to
> >>>(often unread) texts; with the language of orthodoxt, betrayal, etc.;
>and >it's something that people have used to inspire the meaning in their
>lives. >Not all of this is bad, especially the last. None of it has any
>connection >to the truth value of any theoretical propositions in Marxism.
Oh come on, Justin, then every "movement" involving people could be seen in this light, especially secular mass movements. You can't expect information in a mass movement to filter throughout the mass without "losing something" or being interpreted by people who aren't as good as interpretation as people who are good would like. There's nothing particular here that could only be laid on Marxism. That's the nature of the beast.
This one of Justin's was in response to me:
>Thi really shouldn't be too hard. Everyone but the religious Marxists
> >>(and not all Marxists are religious, although an increasing number of
>the decreasing number of Marxists are religious) sees that Marxism has
>functioned like a religion.
Sure, it has had that unfortunate circumstance, and I don't doubt that something like that can happen to other "movements." Try reading, "A Canticle for Leibowitz" for a sci-fi take on how something like this could happen.
>You think it's not a religion because it >rejects the supernatural? Zen
>Buddhism, Unitarianism, Quakerism, and >humanistic Judaism reject the
>supernatural.
I think it's not a religion because that's not how it was intended. That it happened in many cases is just a problem that all mass movements have inherent in them, even religious ones.
As for the religions above rejecting the supernatural, I thought that a belief in deities counted as proof of belief in the supernatural (if not all supernatural elements), and Buddhism, although I'm not sure about Zen, has had its supernatural interpretations and additions (doesn't Tibetan Buddhism believe in spirits and ghosts? There's another kind of Japanese Buddhism that equates the Buddhas with powerful spirits or gods, isn't there?).
Todd
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