>But for fundamentalist Christianity to retain a strong hold in a
>nation like the USA would be strange. Dogmatic thinking, which is
>basically what any religion amounts to, is seemingly incompatible
>with social and technological innovation which seems so much a part
>of the USA. So am somewhat suspicious about the claims that yanks
>are a nation of backward dogmatics.
Huge majorities of Americans - 70-80% and higher - tell pollsters they believe in angels, heaven, and hell, and almost all report daily prayer. No other First World nation comes close. Though as Dan Lazare once said to me, Americans are pious, which isn't necessarily the same as religious.
And why would high-tech be incompatible with backward religious views? It fits right in with Adorno's analysis of superstition - when reason is drained of all its critical and "spiritual" aspects and becomes purely instrumental, it leaves a great opening for occultism. A perfect example is George Gilder, the now-busted high priest of high tech, who says that fundamentalist Christianity "represent[s] and promote[s] the best hope for American democracy and peace, capitalist prosperity and progress. Ironically enough, it is the so-called reactionaries who offer the best prospects for continued American leadership in the world economy in the new era of accelerating technological change. Just as the nuclear families of Western Europe unleashed the energies of the industrial revolution, so the new miracles of modern technology are created and sustained by the moral discipline and spiritual incandescence of a culture of churches and families. In families, men and women routinely make long term commitments and sacrifices that are inexplicable and indefensible within the compass of secular hedonist values. Modern society, no less than any previous civilization, rests on the accumulated moral and spiritual capital embodied in the rock of ages." (George Gilder, Men and Marriage, pp. 112-113)
Doug