Could a society based on Biblical principles survive? (America, church, bible)
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Patriarchal pastoral nomadism worked pretty well for the several thousand years it existed, in terms of human survival. There are only a few people still doing it, so that probably means it doesn't work for most people anymore.
If you mean new testament communalism, there are a few people still doing it today, but there never were a lot of people doing it.
Edited to add - I don't count monasticism, but if you considered them as living by new testament principles, it was successful and widespread for maybe a thousand years, and it still exists today.
Isn't a certain amount of envy, lust and greed necessary for people to be motivated to work hard, invent, or even get out of bed in the morning?
So cynical! And you're taking to a cynic.
You are asking entirely the wrong question.
The desire to effect positive change in one's life, and the hope that it's possible to do so, scarcely constitutes envy, lust or greed. It is simply reaching for one's rational self-interest and that of one's community. We are social animals, after all.
When Christians (primarily fundamentalists) talk about a society based on Biblical principles or family values or whatever, they are generally talking about some poorly thought through fantasy of a Christian theocracy. But religious fascism can only be imposed by force. In actual practice most people would have to be forced to behave in the prescribed ways. And I'm not talking about miscreants, but just ordinary good people who might not happen to think that wearing their beliefs on their sleeve and obsessing about what other people do or think privately, would constitute virtue. Let the book burnings and pogroms begin!
Of course most fundamentalists don't want this, they just think that if they could bring back prohibition and make everyone attend church that people would have these joyous epiphanies and fall in line willingly, falling under the conviction of god and giving up their wickedness and crazy notions about marriage equality and so forth.
The problem would only come later, when people prove to be far more "obstinate" than expected, and even if they become believers, would have divergent points of view about doctrine. For instance, we already know for a fact that some people embrace Christianity AND gays. Such doctrinal impurity and divisiveness could not be tolerated!
So no, such a society would not long endure.
To the point of how people are motivated, I don't think that Bible thumpers lack motivation, although some flavors of them can be rather depressing and one-foot-in-front-of-the-other. But motivation and contentment don't come from materialistic acquisitiveness and wanton dissipation, either. You seem to be suffering from the notion that devout = moral and areligious = amoral, if not outright immoral. These are false equivalencies. The most interesting and uplifting people are those whose minds are tethered to reality and free to follow evidence where it leads, and who take personal responsibility for reducing human suffering and increasing empathy, rather than palming it off on pie in the sky, by and by.
The most negative definitions are usually used with the words envy, lust and greed.
When applied in a more positive way, they can be positive, useful and motivating.
I am sure that it could - but only when it established a rule of law and humanist values simply to keep religious extremists in check.
This is against biblical principles as believed by evangelical fundies...If a society is ruled by biblical principles, it HAS TO BE RULED COMPLETELY--no exceptions can be allowed for keeping extremists in check without violating the basic biblical principles..
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