[Vision2020] Interfaith Panel Thurs. May 15

[Chasuk]

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 1:40 PM, Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com> wrote:

> An agnostic or an atheist is a person.

Yep.  I was just responding to Donovan's typo in kind, rather than
inserting "[sic]," which I frequently do, but always feel supercilious
for doing.

> Though no doubt many will strenuously object to the following theory, I
> think a good case could be made that materialistic expansionist capitalism
> is really one of the dominant "faiths" in the US.  Christianity is good
> cover to dress this up in a noble spiritual ideology.  Consider how
> Christianity was used to justify the cultural genocide and theft of native
> land and resources in the colonization of North America by Europeans.
> Native faiths were denied as false or nonexistent, while the one true God of
> Christianity was justification to convert the "Godless savages," as they
> were driven out of their lands and ways of life.

Complete agreement here.  It is a symptom, or a side effect, of the
Protestant work ethic, courtesy of Calvinism.  Maybe its more
precisely a mutation of the Protestant work ethic, crossbred with the
Catholic idea of good works.  In a twisted way, we prove our
worthiness by the success of our capitalism.  That's probably why we
fear China so much: a communist (hence godless) capitalist country,
proving themselves to be at least as worthy as ourselves.    We each
have even been propagators of cultural genocide!