Economics is a religion, but it is far, far worse than any other religion, in part because it convinces it's adherents that it is not a religion at all, but a science. But even the science of racism, which feeds the flapping wings of prejudice into a genocidal hurricane, is simply a religion.
By religion here, I mean a highly developed set of "beliefs, which are both relied upon to understand the world and for which our bias can always find ample evidence to support, that is based on underlying assumptions that a person either fails to consider or simply accepts as necessarily true a priori.
The difference, however, is that, for all of the bloody histories of Judaic-Christianity, economics is a religion that is far more evil and sinister. While the former grew out of the wonder of the human mind and the longing of the human heart, economics is the child of human management that culminated and has been passed down through monarchies and other systems of power.
It is often the latter that then uses (or really misuses) religions like Judaic-Christianity, to achieve ever greater docility, obedience, and control of its subjects. That religion tills the soil of the human mind to be fertile ground for such manipulations, as Bertrand Russell has pointed out, does not mean that religion is therefore the "original sin" (i.e. the original problem). It doesn't mean that it isn't, mind you, but it doesn't mean that it is either.
That being said, Christianity and Judaism have both done terrible things historically, but at least they did it for the love of something greater than themselves, even if that belief is pure fiction, while economics does it for nothing but a love of numbers, even though it is simply a pack of ungodly lies.
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