Hi, Michael. I am in partial agreement with you. (Hey, half a loaf is better than none. <g>)
First, a long detour.
I would agree that the United States has not "embraced atheism." It has merely embraced the "principle of impartiality" where religious (or non-religious) beliefs are concerned.
Some of the references to God in public rituals that you bring up, by the way, are of fairly recent vintage, e.g.:
While "In God We Trust" was commissioned by Lincoln to be placed on our coins as a way to unite the nation during a bloody and vicious Civil War, it was never intended to replace our national motto. Our original (correct) motto was, "E Pluribus Unum" (Out of Many Comes One), but the Eisenhower administration in the 1950's, trying to make greater the gulf between the "good" religious Americans and the
"bad" atheist Communists, enacted a law to change the motto and add the clause regarding God into the Pledge of Allegiance.
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And BTW, many of the religious symbols embedded in public buildings originally had a specific Masonic significance . (When Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol, he did so in full Masonic regalia.)
On the other hand, every President, from Washington on, has indeed taken his oath of office on the Bible, and has added the words "so help me God" at the end of the official oath (which does not contain them). (I guess a Jewish President would have to do it on the Torah, and a Muslim one on the Koran.) And Congress does open its sessions with a prayer, although I do not know when it started to do so. And a politician who confesses to being an atheist may still have a big problem in getting elected. Certainly he would have had one in the past.
The fact is, and here again you are right, America has always been a religious country. And that is why the Founders strove so hard to keep the government neutral in this respect. After all, most of the colonies had established churches, and had laws discriminating against other denominations, not to speak of Judaism, atheism, and a host of other "impious" views.
The debates on ratifying the Constitution, most specifically the clause banning a religious test for holding office, are illuminating. Everyone immediately understood what the clause signified. Some welcomed it:
William Van Murray, Esq., applauded the absence of religious tests. in a 1787 essay in the American Museum. America, he wrote, "will be the great philosophical theater of the world," since its Constitution recognizes that "Christians are not the only people there."
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But many in the state legislatures deplored it. For example:
Mr. CALDWELL thought that some danger might arise. He imagined it
might be objected to in a political as well as in a religious view. In the first
place, he said, there was an invitation for Jews and pagans of every kind
to come among us. At some future period, said he, this might endanger
the character of the United States. Moreover, even those who do not regard
religion, acknowledge that the Christian religion is best calculated, of all
religions, to make good members of society, on account of its morality. I
think, then, added he, that, in a political view, those gentlemen who
formed this Constitution should not have given this invitation to Jews and
heathens. All those who have any religion are against the emigration of
those people from the eastern hemisphere.
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Other comments:
Amos Singletary, another delegate to the Massachusetts ratification
convention, was upset at the Constitution's not requiring men in power to
be religious "and though he hoped to see Christians [in office], yet by the
Constitution, a papist, or an infidel was as eligible as they."
Major LUSK...passed to the article dispensing with the qualification of a
religious test, and concluded by saying, that he shuddered at the idea that
Roman Catholics, Papists, and Pagans might be introduced into office,
and the popery and the inquisition may be established in America.
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And what did the defense have to say? Usually, something along the lines of the following (emphasis mine):
It is objected that the people of America may, perhaps, choose
representatives who have no religion at all, and that pagans and
Mahometans may be admitted into offices. But how is it possible to exclude
any set of men, without taking away that principle of religious freedom
which we ourselves so warmly contend for?
if any persons of such descriptions should,
notwithstanding their religion, acquire the confidence and esteem of the
people of America by their good conduct and practice of virtue, they may
be chosen. I leave it to gentlemen's candor to judge what probability there
is of the people's choosing men of different sentiments from themselves.
In other words, the defenders ended up by appealing to common sense: in the America of the time, it was highly unlikely that an Atheist, or a "Mahometan," or a Jew, or a "Pagan" would be elected to office -- because people prefer to elect men who share their own sentiments. But if they prefer to elect men who do NOT, they should be allowed to do so.
What are the sentiments of Americans today? Different surveys estimate that anywhere from 25% to 45% of Americans attend church (or synagogue, etc.) regularly. The balance is composed of "unchurched" believers (in something or other); agnostics (care, but don't know); indifferentists (don't know and don't care); and atheists (positively disbelieve).
My own guess is that this proportion is unlikely to change radically soon. And that makes the possibility that America will ever become "atheist" extremely remote.
I admit I have gone all the way around the barn to get to your central proposition, which is that "no atheist society can ever operate a successful free market." Here the distinction is between atheist and non-atheist.
Then you seem to narrow it down to a distinction between atheist and Christian, when you say: "A person in the marketplace, living by the Judeo-Christian ethic, views another man in terms of potential mutual benefit..."
What about non-Christian but non-atheist societies, Michael? Or an American Buddhist or agnostic in the marketplace? etc.
It seems to me that what you are talking about is the so-called "Protestant Work Ethic," as defined by Max Weber in his famous book, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. The essential driving force of that ethic was (according to Weber) the belief in the godliness of hard work and thrift, and in the certainty of reward (i.e., God rewards the virtuous with worldly success). That ethic is very easy to "secularize." And I think you are romanticizing things a bit when you say that commerce is based on the desire of people to "do things for one another."
One final question on a trivial matter: Why do you quote Ayn Rand? Wasn't she an atheist?
Joan
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