Theocracy Watch: The Re-emergence of Religion in Europe

Dr. Leonard Peikoff, in his excellent 2004 DIM Hypothesis course, warns that the revival and rise of religion is inevitable given the current philosophical state of the world, culminating eventually in theocracy and a new dark ages. From time to time I'll post some of the signs and indications of this rise.

Here are some excerpts from a page one story in the WSJ from 4/12/07 (available at wsj.com, subscribers only), headlined "THE NEW CRUSADERS: As Religious Strife Grows, Europe's Atheists Seize Pulpit":

Passive indifference to faith has left Europe's churches mostly empty. But debate over religion is more intense and strident than it has been in many decades. Religion is re-emerging as a big issue in part because of anxiety over Europe's growing and restive Muslim populations and a fear that faith is reasserting itself in politics and public policy...

..."The battle over religion is restarting. It is going to be a difficult one," says Terry Sanderson, president of Britain's National Secular Society...

...Both atheists and their foes agree on one thing: God -- declared dead over a century ago by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche -- is making a comeback, at least as a focus of controversy. "Faith is on the public agenda in a way that is unprecedented in recent times," proclaimed the founding manifesto of Theos, a new British-based Christian think tank....

...Secular Europeans voice dismay at American religiosity and worry that faith-based reasoning is spreading in Europe, too....

...There is also deep suspicion of Poland, a devoutly Catholic new member of the European Union. Its deputy education minister late last year urged the teaching of creationism, the Bible-inspired alternative to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution...

...The most potent force driving activist atheism is concern that Islam, Europe's fastest-growing religion, is jeopardizing the principles of the Enlightenment -- and emboldening other religions to raise their voices, too, and re-fight old battles...

...Muslim activism is encouraging other faiths to be more assertive. University of London professor Anthony Grayling cites violent protests by British Sikhs that forced the cancellation of a play in Birmingham in 2004, and Christian protests against the television broadcast of a London opera that featured Jesus dressed in diapers. Christians and Muslims both campaigned vigorously, but without success, to torpedo elements of a new British law that bans discrimination against homosexuals. Such faith-based agitation, says Mr. Grayling, threatens a "dark ages for free enquiry and free speech."