Europe without Christianity: - Relativism, Atheism and Islam

While Christianity is still very relevant in the United States, and is exploding in the developing world, Europe today has sunk below unbelief, and is now labeled "Christophobic" and "anti-religious."

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Decline and Fall: Europe's Slow Motion Suicide, by Bruce S. Thornton

It used to be said that when it came to worldviews, Americans were from Mars and Europeans were from Venus. But a new school of thought posits a different role for our continental counterparts. Europe, in this schema, is more like a dying star: a once-brilliant civilization whose best days lie behind it, that has lost the internal strength to endure, and that is headed toward oblivion. Bruce Thornton, a classics professor at California State University, is the latest to take up this thesis. In Decline and Fall, he makes the case that a number of factors—including unsustainable welfare states, dwindling birthrates, undiscriminating immigration laws, a society disconnected from the transcendent truths of Christianity, and a failure to confront the gathering threat of Islamic jihadism aggressively—are leading Europe to commit "slow-motion suicide."

Government largesse may seem an unlikely source of civilizational decline, but Thornton shows that it is indeed cause for concern. A massive influx of immigrants from the Middle East, unassimilated into European society, contributes little to economic growth. Meanwhile, tax receipts, required to sustain social-welfare benefits, may dry up as Europe ages. As The Economist recently reported, the projected median age in Europe in 2050 will be 53, meaning that a large population of young workers will be necessary to support the older generation's exit from the economy.

Unfortunately, there may not be enough workers. Thornton identifies another sign of Europe's fall from prominence: its ongoing baby bust. Despite policies like paid leave for new parents, benefit checks for children until the age of 18, and subsidies for child care, European births remain below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. Combine this population decline with a boom in Muslim immigration from the Middle East, and you have the makings of what scholar Bat Ye'or has called "Eurabia."

Europe's historic cathedrals overflow with tourists, not parishioners, he rightly observes. Related to the decline of faith is the rise of multiculturalism. In equal measure admiring of Third World cultures and disdainful of the West, it renders Europeans "incapable of defending their civilization against those who would destroy it."

Thornton leaves no doubt as to the identity of these enemies. The European Union, he writes, is now home to between 15 and 20 million Muslims, many of whom are not only unassimilated to the broader culture but also openly and sometimes violently hostile to it. Some of the blame, he acknowledges, must fall on European countries. Freeing up their economies might have given immigrants a chance to prosper, but they opted instead to throw money at the immigration problem in the form of welfare programs. Rage-filled ethnic ghettos like France's mainly Muslim banlieues are the unintended result.

But the fault lies, too, with the immigrants themselves. Unafraid of controversy, Thornton contends that a leading cause of violence among Muslim immigrants is their faith. Not distortions of Islam, but "core Islamic beliefs" about unbelievers and the obligations of jihad, are what drive Islamic extremists to abhor and, on occasion, attack their adoptive countries. In support of this view, which will not endear him to the Council on American-Islamic Relations and its European equivalents, Thornton marshals a bevy of well-known yet determinedly ignored statistics. For example, 40 percent of British Muslims approve of introducing sharia in the country. Nearly as many consider British culture to be a threat to the Muslim way of life. Anticipating the familiar objection that a "small minority of extremists" has hijacked the peaceful Muslim faith, Thornton calls attention to the troubling fact that 13 percent of British Muslims—some 200,000 people—say that they support violence against those who have offended them or their faith. Between one-third and one-fourth of French, Spanish, and British Muslims have "sometimes" supported suicide bombers. The usual tactic of those challenged with these details is to level charges of "Islamophobia" against their critics. Thornton justifiably dismisses such reactions as "smear terms used to demonize the unexceptional and empirically verifiable notion that in many respects Western culture is superior to others."


Tags: Roots Europe Relativism Christianity Islam atheism God Jesus Holy Spirit Bible Christian history Western Civilization

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[IMelkor42]

A message from the new world: Return to the dark ages plzkthnx.

[mikypi3151592]

Good for the Europeans.  History of Christianity in Europe is a bloody one. By the way, Christians are the ultimate moral relativists.

[IKNFLY666]

wow...then how do they explain the Atheist Chinese Commies having no faith in God yet can become the most populous country in the world.....

[flensdude]

Europe's problem: high suicide, abortion and divorce rates; there are more dogs then children in the streets; low birth rates.

Rest of the world: falsely taught that evolution is wrong; can rarely hold high office without belief in a god; women have less rights.

So, it's either belief in lies and low moral values and live a "blissful" life, or belief in scientific and accepted truths and live a "depressing" life.

Life's a bitch, eh?

[MultiApodyopsis]

Europe doesnt need religion, the middle east dfoesnt need religion nor does north america or asia! Religion will bring trouble!

[dan11009]

I cant believe they are trying to link europes problems with the lack of christianity, so weird

[3treU]

Humans Rights have to be equal with no way to control public liberties that the problem what people from religions think there have the right to control everyone what it is not right for freedom of expression. Time chance and Religions don't have to control humans creative to extent mind and universal finding more answer from miseries of our own galaxies.

[3treU]

Religions and politics never have to do work together, or it takes control from the people religions it is an idea what make many blind everyone and turn then against from their own selfish.

[Nialyah]

I'm speechless by the enormous levels of stupidity shown by the people in this video.

[rwtj01]

what a shit video. "so pathetically absurd and . . . infantile that it is humiliating and embarrassing to think that the majority of people will never rise above it." -- Sigmund Freud talking about religion