quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

I am not convinced that any immigration dysfunctions ought to be blamed on religious doctrine. If the crush of immigration from the East and South becomes an even more serious problem it might be put instead to the acceleration of people movement and the difficulty of assimilating them into European culture and economics. Canada and the States have been blessed with a slower arrival of new refugees and with land to provide room for them. That all makes a big difference and puts Western Europe at a disadvantage.

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ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

One's first assumption may very well be that this is about the US. It is not, it is about Europe.

In fact there is as much or of those characteristics present in Europe as there is in the US. Mostly based on the progress, cosmopolitanism brought on by the EU and yes, the Euro to a certain extent but also because of the overwhelming evidence of shared religious, economic and political values and all across a vastly differing historical, language and cultural lines.

Just starting watching a debate on the future of Europe given the recent influx of immigrants. Now it is the enlightenment of modern christian society VS the unenlightened diaspora of Islamic society whose chief protagonists have brought them there specifically because of the violence as tool, to enforce their submission to orthodoxy and that of the 12th century.

I say the exceptionalism is in the culture of enlightenment brought about by secular humanism in that there is a concrete and stark demarcation between faith and science. And I submit that it was their secular enlightenment, that became the single most important factor in bringing about such European stability, prosperity and exceptionalism.

The debate turns ultimately to the very concept of religion and how that drives each society and I argue that even more and even a title wave of anti-theism or at least atheism, is required...for Europe's survival. It is only through such intellectual, scientific, secular enlightenment that society does not bring about the self-fulfilling destiny of any divinely inspired Armageddon.

It is time for religion to poison society no more. Think what you want but society at large must give up the whole concept of an Armageddon (rapture or second coming) and theocratic rule to escape its wrath and thus be forced to live by another man's dictates, not those devised by secular man in accordance with the laws of man.