"Religion's misguided missiles"

[Carl Remick]

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Carl Remick" <carlremick at hotmail.com>
>To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> > "It came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying
>source
> > of the divisiveness in the Middle East which motivated the use of
>this
> > deadly weapon in the first place. But that is another story and not
>my
> > concern here. My concern here is with the weapon itself. To fill a
>world
> > with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering
>the
> > streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used."
> >
> > [Full text:
> > http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4257777,00.html]
>
>===========
>
>That both Islam and Christianity [in it's earlier manifestations]
>condemned usury rather unequivocally, as did many who espoused social
>revolution, should not be lost on us if we are to espouse a
>materialist analysis of last week....
>
>Ian

Am not sure what your point is, but I was fascinated by Michael Lewis's 
hallucinatory explanation of why the WTC, with all its financial businesses, 
was targeted by the terrorists -- a comment that is certainly marked 
capitalist religiosity of the most fundamental kind:

"The sort of people who work in financial markets are not merely symbols but 
also practitioners of liberty. They do not suffer constraints on their 
private ambitions, and they work hard, if unintentionally, to free others 
from constraints. This makes them, almost by default, the spiritual 
antithesis of the religious fundamentalist, whose business depends on a 
denial of personal liberty in the name of some putatively higher power."

Full text:   http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/23/magazine/23LEWIS.html

Carl

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