Capitalism - the Ultimate Religion

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

...and... what you should do now is read some of my other posts, because my case that capitalism is a religion does not rest on the sentence you have quoted here. If my case did rest on the notion that capitalism has merely "affected" human relations, that would indeed be an insipid case.

Or how about instead of diferring me to posts I've already largely responded to, you can just have a bloody point to make.
So far, I've yet to see an arguement you've made that actually affirms capitalism as a religion of any kind other than your word an the word of a few people you've quoted that it is.

Superman affected lots of people around the world. But I would ask you, is Superman, as I said in the first line of Post #1, "Authoritarian, inconsistent, making claims to be universal, dependent on sacred tenets, elevating a tiny number of individuals to the status of prophets, saints and celebrities who hold the gaze of the hypnotised masses (... etc, etc)"? Hardly.

A few points -
Superman comics cannon is authoritarian in the sense that you cannot really go against it without backlash. The decades-long cannon is frequiently inconsistent in many respects despite making claims to be universal (such as superman's powers or other universal tenants in superman cannon). The comic books themselves (as well as television, movies, and other media) are all the tenants of this 'faith' and it has elevated a tiny number of individuals to the status of prophets, saints, and celebrities who hold the gaze of the hypnotized masses (the creators, writers, and actors who have all added content to the superman cannon.)
So - YES - that arguement can be made, following your inane arguement, that superman fandom constitutes a religion.
The reason this happens is because you've defined capitalism and religion both so broadly that anything popular or any form of governing or economic system can be a religion according to your own arguements.

"some attempt"? I think you mean I showed you that the dictionary definition of religion fits capitalism. I also referenced Walter Benjamin and Max Weber who said the same thing.

You didn't show me anything. You posted the definition and hinted that it fit all definitions without giving any explainations whatsoever and ignoring my counterarguements in the process. Granted, this is only because of the reasons I've outlined above in this post.

I can confirm that's a good approximation to what I accused you of.

And so far, that's about the best arguement you've made.

it can't fit any of them. It's a system where every part of it is well defined - it has to be well defined because you can't base a society off it if it wasn't. If a part is less-than-optimally defined, then that's why all societies have a group of people specifically devoted to defining a lacking aspect of it.
So say that because you may or may not fully understand the system and you have confidence that it can work doesn't make it a belief - otherwise I could potentially argue that my computer is a religion because I believe in the owner's manual and technical specifications of how the computer works and operates.
This is what makes social engineering, economics, and government more of a science and not at all like a religion.
And no, telling me that you can argue that or that it does fit x and y and z aspects of a definition isn't an arguement nor is it any kind of point.
Just becuase you understood the plot to the South Park episode called "Margaritamaker" (or whatever that episode was called/spelled as) as a documentary doesn't mean it's generally true now or ever.

Sorry I can't understand what you're saying here. By all means try again or PM me, I'm afraid I can't make enough sense of what you're trying to say.

Let me get this straight - you just told me to bugger off and re-read your previous posts because I pointed out that a statement of yours has no point to it but when I lay an entire point in front of you and you can't make heads or tails of it?
...
Fine. Let's try this again.
Capitalism is not a religion.
It professes no beliefs about existance and the purpose of life, morality, or any other thing I can recall off the top of my head that religions traditionally cover.
There is no central figure or figures of worship or anything to worship, like Jesus, Bhudda, Zeus, Hercules, Anubis, and so on.
There are no tenants of faith, rules, or codes in which a person is to live their life by. The closest arguement for capitalism in this respect is the social order aspect of an economic system but religion typically covers a person's code of behavior and not simply the method in which they maneuver in a social-economic way. In other words, capitalism doesn't tell you if murder is right or wrong or how you should live your life.
There are no rituals of any kind that are similar to any religious connotation or similarities. In other words, there are no capitalist weddings, celebrations, or observations.
I could go on, but I'm pulling all this from memory and I've made my point - capitalism is not a religion in any sense of the related terms, as defined.

Well, no because I'm not into redefining words arbitrarily, and obviously an apple is a piece of fruit, whereas capitalism is an economic, sociological and ideological system which has so many similarities to belief systems that are indisputably religions that I'm prepared to argue that it is one. Obviously I'm not the first person ever to want to explore the proposition, seeing as Max Weber's co-writer said the same thing in 1921.

No - you've simply generalized the definitions so much that you can fit them together - like rubbing off all the points on a cube so it can fit through a circle hole. The problem is that they aren't defined in such a manner as to go together.

Granted that wouldn't make it hell. The terrible script and bad acting would make it hell.

ACE Eddie Award: 1 Nomination
ADG Excellence in Production Design: 3 Nominations and 1 win
AMLA Awards: 1 Win
ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards: 9 Wins
BAFTA Awards: 1 Nomination
Emmy Awards: 155 Nominations and 33 Wins
Hugo Awards: 13 Nominations and 1 Win
NAACP Image Awards: 1 Win
Peabody Awards: 1 Win
People's Choice: 1 Nomination
Saturn Awards: 18 Wins
Screen Actors Guild Awards: 2 Wins
Taurus World Stunt Awards: 1 Nomination
TV Land Awards: 1 Win
Writer's Guild of America Awards: 1 Win

Yes.... Star Trek and its six television shows, eleven movies, and countless novels represent a terrible show.

They're not the law, they can't deliver justice and injustice, they merely provide information, often somewhat incomplete.

Which, again, doesn't give you the leeway to redefine them just because you think the dictionary doesn't have the defintion you've chosen to have to make the case for this arguement.

I've set my evidence and observations out in this thread as listed at the top of this post. Have a look. After all that evidence and argument, I still have to make my own decision, but it is based on something substantial, not just a feeling as you allege.

Where? In the previous posts you claim I've not read? I've been posting since page 2 - I've seen all of your posts and I've yet to see any actual arguement for your position that doesn't rely on simply stating your arguement without actually presenting an arguement.

I said it's not just an economic system nor is it, as you are now arguing, a mere "system of trade". It's got its own ideological culture, its own social strata, it is massively political and at its core seems to be widely worshipped (among other things - see all my posts listed above)

Umm... Capitalism has none of those things.
You keep bringing these over-generalizations up as though it were a bygone conclusion and while it's adorable you're still not actually raising any points.
I suppose my response is that no, none of these things are actually true and the reason that is is for the reasons I brought up earlier in this post in regard to the fact that no one actually worships capitalism or treats it as though it were an actual religious faith.