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Responding to Tollison's claim that: 
 
<< Nelson's basic thesis is that economics is more like a religion than a  
science. In fact, he argues that economics in the twentieth century has  
virtually supplanted organized religion with a creed of material progress.  
Within economics Nelson analogizes Samuelson and company as being more like 
Roman Catholics who adhere to natural law doctrine, such as the efficacy of 
market institutions with a strong overlay of government regulation. Chicago 
economists are more like Calvinists in that they are radical 
revolutionaries  
in the pursuit of a more libertarian approach to economic life in general. 
>> 
 
Economics does have an intellectual basis and, in fact, I think one can 
correctly argue that it also has, to some degree, a moral aspect to its 
principles. This certainly can make it appear somewhat similar to a 
theology, that is, somewhat similar in nature to the codified intellectual 
and moral structure of an organized Western theological institution, but 
does it make economics anything that could possibly substitute for a 
religion like, say, Buddhism or Zoroastrianism or even the various forms of 
modern Christianity predicated on the "Gospel" of the New Testament for, 
for example? I think a bit of secular meditation on the possible connection 
between economics and any current world religion will reveal economics as, 
at best, a moral schism relegated to the intellectual world and therefore 
falling far short of the qualitative realms of a religion. Nelson makes a 
stretch, but even with a great deal of glibness his thesis comes up short 
in my view. 
 
Chas Anderson 
 
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