>And why would high-tech be incompatible with backward religious views?
Simply because an innovative technological society requires its people to be capable of critical thought.
> 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.
Perhaps, I don't fully understand what you mean by "instrumental" in this context. Are suggesting that people can be trained or socialised to employ critical reasoning selectively, in their work, while keeping on the blinkers in other aspects of their lives?
As for superstition and occultism being prevalent, I'm not sure this should be taken too seriously. I don't think it is very deep. In fact, in some ways it is symptomatic of a *loosening* of attachment to traditional religious tenets.
> 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." (Ge
orge Gilder, Men and Marriage, pp. 112-113)
That last quote from Gilder seems entirely reasonable, but you quote it as if there was something suspicious about it. Morality is very much an accumulation of accepted wisdom. There's no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater when we exchange critical thinking for reason though, all it means is that we now demand the right to make up our own mind about morality. To examine all these accumulated moral precepts and see if they still make sense. Many of them probably still do and we can continue to live by them.
But a society cannot be innovative if its people are bound by dogma, if they cannot think for themselves. Not only is there no apparent need for religious dogmatism in a modern society where people have access to high education and leisure to think, but it would also be a serious obstacle to constantly revolutionising the means of production. So maybe this religious America is, like you say, more "pious" (sanctimonious) than truly religious?
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas