[ThanhPhero]

From a neurral point of view Islam may be the true religion, or Bhuddism may be the true approach(it is not a religion) or any other. In world history Torah carried a moral system adhered to by a tiny number of people in a corner of the known world that spread over the world through the Jewish offshoot christianity. That Judaic morality is the reason that Chriatians and Jews built World Trade that worked across all religions and societies. One can be an atheist and presume that Torah was just a set of myths of an obscure tribe and still understand that as that set of myths came to be shared by major populations that group became economically dominant. In fact, Christendom without the Jews would have gone far longer without the economic burgeoning because Christians had a limited understanding of the permissibility of Interest.

The Jews who were not allowed to own land developed trade, partly because they understood that the ban on interest was meant to apply to the strictures on lending money that does not increase, that goes to feed someone.

Investment is different. It is working money and charity does not pertain in its use. The only reason to provide capital is gain. Without capital there is no economic development. The Christians followed the lead of the Jews and the modern world was born. An atheist society cannot survive except as a totalitarianism. It cannot prosper in a modern sense except as it copies practices of a prosperous, thus Judaeo Christian society.

[counterpunch]

I don't see any correlation between free trade and any particular religion.

I see the Torah, as with all religious texts, as a complete record of the totality of a civilisation and culture. In those times, religion and society were intertwined. Religion was the history, the mythology, the politics, the laws, the science, and the health codes of a people. It was the sum of their daily lives. It was the very fabric of their culture, not because their culture sprang forth from religion, but because it was woven into it.

With the rise of the state and the various sectarian dogmas, religion has become dislodged as the cultural center. Religion has become specialized to only address the spirital, while other areas such as science and government have taken on their own specialized tasks.

Early civilisation, which sought to explain things that it couldn't, looked to the supernatural. Because of this, it is easy to mistake religion as the source of their society, but in fact their society is the source of religion. New ideas and new ways of doing things were woven into the tales of the civilisation, which became the basis of their religious texts. Religion was much more wholistic in those days. Things that were became attributed to the gods, then later to God (the evolution towards monotheism itself is very interesting and has a lot to do with politics). Fundamental laws such as the Ten Commandments did not create a new morality, but in fact were merely the record of the established morality inate in all societies out of neccessity.