Хорошо, Вика, значит мы не совсем друг друга поняли.
Я пытаюсь донести мысль о том, что основные положения авраамических религий (мессианство, фатализм, выражающийся концoм света, итд) сыграли решающую роль в истории человечества. Именно приверженность к этим религиозным догмам привело к тому, что запад начал свою экспанцию, начиная с крестовых походов и кончая колонизацией нового света. Я как-то общался с одним китайцем и когда я задал ему вопрос: почему китайцы, которые изобрели компас, книгопечатание, порох и ракеты не завоевали весь остальной мир? На что он ответил, что это противоречит их философским и религиозным взглядам. Для них Китай - центр мира (поднебесная). Весь остальной мир просто был недостоин внимания.
У китайцев нет идеи мессианства и апокалипсиса, поэтому они и не экспандоировали. Западные же религиозные догмы с одной стороны привели к "прогрессу" (т.е. порох,. компаcс и книгопечатание стали утилизироваться). В конечном итоге апокалиптическое мышление действительно может привести к катастрофе, если приверженцы неавраамических религий вовремя не остановят запад и исламский мир.
Для большей наглядности переношу один мой постинг с соседней ветки:
Олменд
(addict)
21/6/04 10:04
Мой тезис был: " избранных народов нет". За этот тезис я отвечаю и готов даже выносить оскорбления.
>>Вроде я в Библии я встречал похожие слова.
А что оскорбительного если Бог избрал один народ для какойто своей цели.
Он и наказывает его больше остальных.

Я считаю, что религиозный догмат "избранности" контрпродуктивен. Вы уже упомянули слово "наказание". Ведь религиозные догматики всех кулеров (и даже атеисты) могут истолковать этот догмат по своему, если вдруг понадобится найти козла отпущения.
С другой стороны - это плохой пример для подражания, так как какой-нибудь "неизбранный" народ может также заявить, что он └избран⌠ богом для какой-то цели и что у него особые права вершить судьбы мира.
Не буду упоминать историю третьего рейха (так как это уже история), но именно так многие американцы до сих пор и понимают свою миссию (manifest destiny) :

It seems to me that God, with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world's future. Heretofore there has always been in the history of the world a comparatively unoccupied land westward, into which the crowded countries of the East have poured their surplus populations. But the widening waves of migration,which millenniums ago rolled east and west from the valley of the Euphrates meet today on our Pacific coast. There are no more new worlds.
The unoccupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and will soon be taken. The time is coming when the pressure of population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe and Asia.
Then will the world enter upon a new stage of history≈the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled.
Long before the thousand millions are here, the mighty centrifugal tendency, inherent in this stock and strengthened in the United States, will assert itself.
Then this race of unequaled energy, with all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth behind it≈the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization≈having developed peculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind, will spread itself over the earth.
If I read not amiss, this powerful race will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond.
Josiah Strong, "Our Country," 1886
http://www2.bc.edu/~weiler/imperialismdocs.htm
We can begin with the Crusades. During the Middle Ages, European Christians launched military campaigns to take the Holy Land from the Muslims. Early on the Crusaders took Jericho. Following the example of Joshua 6, they marched around the city led by clergy carrying sacred banners and pictures of Christian saints. When the walls did not fall down as expected, they attacked and overran the city. Then they massacred the inhabitants. Jews were locked in their synagogue and burned alive. Even some of the Crusaders were horrified by the slaughter. (10)
The Crusaders could have argued that the Bible was on their side. After all, Joshua commanded that "the city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction" (6:17). The writer reports that they did just that -- killing "by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkey" (6:21). "They burned down the city, and everything in it" (6:24). For the Crusaders, the Book of Joshua was a blueprint for their military campaigns.
....
"We shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us...," the Puritan John Winthrop wrote. The Puritans who disembarked in Massachusetts in 1620 believed they were establishing the New Israel. Indeed, the whole colonial enterprise was believed to have been guided by God. "God hath opened this passage unto us," Alexander Whitaker preached from Virginia in 1613, "and led us by the hand unto this work.
Promised Land imagery figured prominently in shaping English colonial thought. The pilgrims identified themselves with the ancient Hebrews. They viewed the New World as the New Canaan. They were God's chosen people headed for the Promised Land. Other colonists believed they, too, had been divinely called. The settlers in Virginia were, John Rolf said, "a peculiar people, marked and chosen by the finger of God.""
This self-image of being God's Chosen People called to establish the New Israel became an integral theme in America's self-interpretation. During the revolutionary period, it emerged with new force. "We cannot but acknowledge that God hath graciously patronized our cause and taken us under his special care, as he did his ancient covenant people," Samuel Langdon preached at Concord, New Hampshire in 1788. George Washington was the "American Joshua," and "Never was the possession of arms used with more glory, or in a better cause, since the days of Joshua, the son of Nun," Ezra Stiles urged in Connecticut in 1783. In 1776, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson wanted Promised Land images for the new nation's Great Seal. Franklin proposed Moses dividing the Red (Reed) Sea with Pharaoh's army being overwhelmed by the closing waters. Jefferson urged a representation of the Israelites being led in the wilderness by the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day. Later, in his second inaugural address (1805), Jefferson again recalled the Promised Land. "I shall need...the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessities and comforts of life."1
The sense of divine election and the identification of the Americas with ancient Canaan were used to justify expelling America's Indigenous Peoples from their land. The colonists saw themselves as confronting "satanic forces" in the Native Americans. They were Canaanites to be destroyed or thrown out.
America the New Israel
http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/joshua/manifest.html

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