Well I’d like to hear out Diogenes the Cynic’s reasons why he thinks communism is a religion and debate them.
I’m not Dio, and obviously it isn’t truly a religion in the sense that it has a creation myth and a supernatural big dick to suck, but Soviet Communism requires the same sort of vapid acceptance of ideology in the face of conflicting evidence that religion does.
It’s not. Religions must have a supernatural component, a connection to the world “beyond the veil”, and specifically to spiritual beings more powerful than us. They must have a notion of the sacred and the profane. And, importantly, a way to communicate with the god or gods (through prayer, meditation or sacrifice) so that they can be asked for favors or clemency. I would consider a notion of at least a temporary afterlife or reincarnation a universal component of religion too.
Some political ideologies are indeed based on religion, though. Islamism, the Christian Right, and Zionism come to mind.
It is a faith based, fact denying worldview. It has dogma, it has prophets, it has a messianic agenda. The fact that it is officially atheistic is besides the point; religions are not necessarily theistic. Especially since Communist regimes are prone to deifying their leaders, replacing supernatural gods with god-kings.
You’ve never heard of deism? Not all religions hold that communication with gods are possible, or even useful. And religions without afterlives are not unknown either.
Deism isn’t really a religion, it’s a perspective on the nature of God. A horse of a third color, as it were.
Which makes it a religion, or at least part of one. There aren’t any non-religious reasons to think that there is a God in the first place, much less what its nature is.
Indeed. It may well be going a little too far to say Communism, as practised in the C20th, is/was a religion, but it sure shares a lot of characteristics with one. Its requirement for unthinking faith in its tenets and leaders, for instance, is common to the major world religions.
I’ve bolded those parts of Wikipedia’s definition to highlight the areas where they coincide, IMO.
The parts you didn’t bold are more central to understanding what a religion is, in my mind.
Religion is about the supernatural - gods and spirits, things more powerful, more important and more holy than us. Specifically, it’s about how to entice them to help us in our daily lives, or to preserve us after we die.
Even religions that initially downplay the importance of gods - such as Buddhism or Confucianism - quickly turn to this.
In the end, religion is how we cope with a cruel world and our own mortality - by hoping that something outside of the world we can see can help us with the parts of the human condition that we just can’t wrap our minds around.
Certainly, a political ideology can fill similar needs - although its ability to reassure us in the face of death or great suffering is typically not as great. But that doesn’t really make an ideology a religion, anymore than a hamburger is a piece of fried chicken.
More to the point, it shares a lot of the very worst characteristics of a church: Institutional authoritarian hierarchy, systematic indoctrination of the public, inquisitions to suppress heresy (e.g., Trotskyism) and maintain the purity of the faith, autos da fe (purges & show trials), etc., etc.
This is not true. There are religions which require no beliefs in higher powers. Zen Buddhism, for instance, requires no supernatural beliefs at all.
It is not a religion because it does not make any sort of appeal to supernatural forces or beings. However, it does share some features of the Mosaic religions, particularly Christianity, in that it has a sort of eschatology: for Christians, history will end and everything will be alright with the second coming (and for Jews, I guess, much the same can be said about the coming of the Messiah -I am not sure if Muslims believe anything equivalent), and for Marxists, history will end (or be radically transformed), and everything will be alright once a truly communist economic system is established is established (and, as with the second coming, etc. they think that is bound to happen eventually, that all previous history is leading up to it). I think that when people who call Marxism a religion (to the extent that they are not just bullshitting), they are really just attempting to highlight this analogy with a vivid metaphor. Like all metaphors, it is not literally true, but it may well be illuminating.
It is misleading to say that Marxism is faith based. It presents itself as science, and justifies its claims via observational evidence and and rational argumentation, just as genuine science does. It may be a false scientific theory, but that does not make it faith based (in the sense that religions are) any more than any other false scientific theory, such as Ptolemaic astronomy or the phlogiston theory of combustion were faith based. They seemed like good, rational, naturalistic theories that explained the available evidence at the time (in the case of Ptolemaic astronomy, it seemed like that for about 1,500 years). They just turned out to be wrong when further evidence became available.
Surely all Buddhism has a belief in reincarnation at its heart. What is that if not supernatural?
Let’s look at the wiki definition of “religion” just as a starting point.
Communism is faith based belief in a sacred narrative of human history and inevitable future. It contains prophets. It is moralistic. It has a sacred ethos. It has laws based on sacred beliefs and it claims to know the secrets of human nature and how humans should behave. It is not just a political or economic system, it is a mythic ideology.
For those who cite it as an example of atheistic ideology, I would point out that is not sufficient under Stalinist/Maoist-type systems simply to be an atheist. You must also believe in the party.
I have spoken to people who grew up in Communist China who told me flat out that Communism was the “religion” they were taught. The techniques for teaching it are the same as teaching religion.
This is not a required belief in Buddhism. It’s common within Buddhism, but not universal, and not necessary.
Supernatural beliefs are not a necessary part of religion.
None of those things are necessary characteristics of of religions. Many religions have not behaved like that. Few, if any, have always behaved like that. Likewise, although Marxists have behaved like that in the small handful of attempts to establish Marxist regimes that we have seen, that is weak evidence that Marxist must inevitably behave that way. It is no part of the theory. (It may or may not be the case that this sort of thing is inevitably going to happen if you attempt to apply Marxist theory to practical government, but, at worst, that is an unintended consequence rather than a defining feature of Marxism.)
The fact that some types of institution, at some points in their history, have had analogous bad effects to other types institution at other points in their history is no sort of evidence that the one is really an instance of the other.
Yes they are. (And my bare assertion is a good an argument as your bare assertion.)
Who’s saying they are? The fact is that it’s hard to nail down any characteristic that is really universal to all religions, or one thing that can said to be definitional of all of them.
I’ve stated my reasons as to why I think Communism is a religion - to me it boils down to it being a sacred ideology with “the answer” to human condition, with moral guidelines and belief in a coming paradise. It has myth. It has narrative. It has worship (of the state), and it claims supreme authority. I don’t think this proves anything about religion as a whole, but I do think it’s disngenuous when Communism is held out to be an “atheist” ideology. It’s basically a worship of the state as a sacred ideal - a “higher power” unto itself.
I’ve already refuted you simply by naming a religion that has no necessary supernatural beliefs. Is Buddhism a religion?