At tonight's Thanksgiving, Erin remarked on how this was her first real Thanksgiving dinner away from her family, and that it was an odd feeling to just sit down and eat without any prayer beforehand. (Yes, she's a solid atheist in no danger whatsoever, thank you for asking.)
And as she said this, it reminded me of how wrong it is to give gratitude to God for blessings that actually come from our fellow human beings putting in a great deal of work.
So I at once put my hands together and said,
"Dear Global Economy, we thank thee for thy economies of scale, thy professional specialization, and thy international networks of trade under Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage, without which we would all starve to death while trying to assemble the ingredients for such a dinner as this. Amen."
Last year I went to St. Andrew's church in Madison with my mom. The pastor read a letter to the editor where someone wrote, "Instead of giving thanks to God, we should praise our hard work and the economy that brings us all these gifts -- which God certainly never brought to us before we helped ourselves."
The pastor finished reading and ripped the newspaper in half. "Good for lining your bird cage," he said. "Not much else."