Marxism is a religion.So is Astrophysics.Astro's believe they know the origin of the world, the atoms from which life springs, how the sun shines, and the position of man in the universe, as well as the ultimate fate of everything. Many decry the fact that other religions assume a God who is lord of the universe, yet cares about each of us as individuals. Iorinically they seem to have no problem with gravity and mass/energy conservation caring about the 10^25 particles in every individual though.Like any good religion they are of course riven by heresy and perform rituals that are incomprehensible to the non-initiated.They are a proseletyising faith, on any given day there is at least one TV programme extolling the virutes of some aspect of their belief system, as well as a vast subset of the Internet. High priests in Astro are required to spend much of their lives preaching, and failure to publish sermons can resault in loss of their position.Their graven images produced by yet more incomprehensible rituals show random arrays of light which they claim are evidence of things that few people understand, let alone care about.Like any good religion, they are centred around the acquisition of physical wealth, and here they are enormously successful, persuading governments to give them vast amounts to conduct their rituals both on earth and in space.Of course Christianity/Islam/Judaism are merely derivatives of Zoroastrianism and like astrology are based upon primitive views of the way the skies about us are structured. All are littered with guiding stars, sacred rocks that fall from the sky, chariots of fire, bolts from the sky, ladders into heaven etc.As Isaac Asimov points out so eloquently in the Tragedy of the Moon, the basis of almost all religion is Astrophysics.

Quotethe basis of almost all religion is AstrophysicsIt is? I feel like drinkin' my way to Stonehenge so I can get back to my roots. Pass that (liquid) barley sandwich! Awwww, shoot! Missed that solstice over the healstone again. Crap, now they are gonna sacrifice me with that mistletoe knife they've been sharpening. Lousy Druids. Wish the Picts were in charge again. Now *they* had some pure astrophysics. Painted you with blue woad and stuff before you howled at the moon. None of this newfangled pesky Zorastrian cult that has cropped up recently. Maybe if I sheer off my red hair they'll forget and not notice that I missed solstice and sacrifice someone else. Heck, I'm not the king anyway, at least this year. Filthy is the king. Yeah, filthy, not me.James 'caught in Sir James George Frazer's religious worldview.'

Yeah, I'd forgotten Stonehenge, lots of other Henges around.Asimov's thesis is that in early societies some people worked out that astronomical events correlate with important times, such as flooding on the Nile, or the right time to plant crops. Before street lights people were far more aware of astronomical events, and it is actually quite hard to tell the difference between prediction and control.We live in an era where a man can move the cursor on the screen to the part of the world he wants to delete. I've never seen either George Bush, any more than a Greek ever saw Zeus. But both of us believe he exists, and would not like to incur his wrath.