A recent article in of all places, The Wall Street Journal, which I read daily, had a piece entitled “As Religious Strife Grows, Europe’s Atheists Seize Pulpit” (Andrew Higgins) April 12, 2007, prompted me to write a few words on a trend I have been following for a few months now.
Actually, indicators of this anti-religion movement have been appearing for quite some time now.
The European Union was celebrating its 50th Anniversary and was looking to state the basic principles that unite them. Christianity was proffered and was soundly rejected. The Pope was furious.
Cartoons of Muhammad were published in European news media and their publishing defended.
The book by Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion” is still a number one best. Other books like “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris along with his mini book “A Letter to a Christian Nation” have many people talking. It seems many more books of a similar subject matter are planned for the near future.
An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal awakened me to this trend. The author of the article decried the rudeness and incivility of people that were anti-religious or atheists. He talked about the peaceful coexistence of religious and non-religious people, side by side throughout our history and now an abrupt end to that live and let live attitude with of all things, confrontation.
How uncivilized!
New descriptive words and phrases have materialized in an effort to describe these people or group(s) of people who, ostensibly, oppose religion(s):
Militant Unbelievers
Zealous Disbelievers in God
Combative Brand of Atheists (confronts not ignores religion)
Missionary Secularists
Aggressive Secularists
More will be added as they appear…
According to these articles, the main cause for the emergence of these aggressive secularists is the growth of Islam in Europe.
Europe has slowly turned secularist through time. I think history has taught them a good lesson; the same lesson taught our Founding Fathers, to keep religion and government separate.
There are exceptions to the rule of course and countries like Poland who entered the EU recently are as religious (Catholic) as they come. Being of Polish heritage, I am actually embarrassed how backward the Poles are when it comes to religion. The church in Poland has been allowed to govern and Poles and so many if not all, were brain-washed from an early age. Maybe a fresh breath of enlightenment from the West will help them climb out of the dark ages.
I need to know more about this movement and will be discussing what I learn in this blog.
This is kind of exiting!
Actually, indicators of this anti-religion movement have been appearing for quite some time now.
The European Union was celebrating its 50th Anniversary and was looking to state the basic principles that unite them. Christianity was proffered and was soundly rejected. The Pope was furious.
Cartoons of Muhammad were published in European news media and their publishing defended.
The book by Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion” is still a number one best. Other books like “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris along with his mini book “A Letter to a Christian Nation” have many people talking. It seems many more books of a similar subject matter are planned for the near future.
An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal awakened me to this trend. The author of the article decried the rudeness and incivility of people that were anti-religious or atheists. He talked about the peaceful coexistence of religious and non-religious people, side by side throughout our history and now an abrupt end to that live and let live attitude with of all things, confrontation.
How uncivilized!
New descriptive words and phrases have materialized in an effort to describe these people or group(s) of people who, ostensibly, oppose religion(s):
Militant Unbelievers
Zealous Disbelievers in God
Combative Brand of Atheists (confronts not ignores religion)
Missionary Secularists
Aggressive Secularists
More will be added as they appear…
According to these articles, the main cause for the emergence of these aggressive secularists is the growth of Islam in Europe.
Europe has slowly turned secularist through time. I think history has taught them a good lesson; the same lesson taught our Founding Fathers, to keep religion and government separate.
There are exceptions to the rule of course and countries like Poland who entered the EU recently are as religious (Catholic) as they come. Being of Polish heritage, I am actually embarrassed how backward the Poles are when it comes to religion. The church in Poland has been allowed to govern and Poles and so many if not all, were brain-washed from an early age. Maybe a fresh breath of enlightenment from the West will help them climb out of the dark ages.
I need to know more about this movement and will be discussing what I learn in this blog.
This is kind of exiting!
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