capitalism & religion

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

two letters from the L.A. TIMES a couple days ago:

Loggers' Lawsuit Over Religion

* So Minnesota loggers have declared that ecology is a religion and say
that the U.S. government is violating the Constitution by making decisions
favorable to "religious" environmental concerns (Nov. 29). Seems to me that
it opens the door to a suit against the U.S. government on the grounds that
capitalism is a religion.

Capitalism imposes its comprehensive belief system onto everyone and
everything it can get its claws into and stifles by all means necessary any
other belief system it encounters. Capitalism has a deity: the "invisible
hand" that keeps the world moving in accordance with the inviolate rules of
the sacred "market." It has an
ecclesiastic hierarchy consisting of banker and financier cardinals at the
top, politician priests, judges and scholars of the economic canon in the
middle and the great, genuflecting rest of us at the bottom. Capitalism has
creeds and commandments (Thou shalt devour). It has holy wars, complete
with sacrificial deaths and triumphant corporate resurrections. It even has
chrism: extremely holy oil, without which hallowed blessing nothing can
function. Capitalism sure sounds like a religion to me.

Another lawsuit, anyone?

LAUREL HALL
La Habra

 * * *

Does this mean that I can now commit murder and get away with it by
claiming that "thou shalt not kill" imposes on my religious freedom as an
atheist? On the other hand, if said loggers would like to publicly forgo a
portion of the oxygen that plants produce, we might be able to cut a deal.

 TIM LYNCH
 Van Nuys

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx & http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine