FirmhandKY
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quote:
ORIGINAL: NorthernGent
quote:
ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
4. A loss of coherency and belief in the formative Christian background of non-muslim Europeans,
Firmhand, I'm going to make some assumptions here and say your entire post is clouded by the above religious bias.
Yes, we are secularised and when pushed most Britons and French will describe their religion as "Jedi".
Organised religion is dying a death in Western Europe but it's nothing to do with the spread of Islam. People aren't converting to Islam in droves. In a nutshell, we have a history which suggests to us that bowing down before a non specific deity is not in the interests of our well-being, primarily for reasons of self-development. This is any deity - god, allah etc - people just aren't interested. This is not eroding our culture, nor our history. This is the transition from a god-fearing society to one which takes ownership. It is conceptual change rather than converting from one religion to another.
Please do not take offense at my response to your assumption, for no offense is intended.
However, I'd say that your assumption of my "religious bias" is more a reflection of a liberal world view struggling against a philosophical school of thought that takes exception to some of the dearest held precepts of the secular liberal belief system, than it has to do with my actual religious beliefs.
Some of my beliefs are that religion holds an important place in the life and death of civilizations. I define "religion" a little more broadly than most, though. I actually prefer to refer to "belief systems" rather than "religions", because "religion" has some very specific definitional problems when you start to talk about things in the intersection of politics, religion, morality, philosophy, psychology and sociology.
And "belief systems" are more malleable than "religions". There is a spectrum of "belief systems" in which certain groups share many - but not all - of the similar beliefs of other groups. It similar to the spectrum of political beliefs that are simplistically labelled "left" and "right", when the reality is that you can chart "political beliefs" in more dimensions than simply "left" and "right".
My point about "Christian Europe" is more about the sociological impact of a belief system rooted in the philosophical wellspring of Christianity, than in actual adherence and membership to an actual specific "church".
What is replacing "Christianity" in the mass populations of non-muslim Europe is human secularism (as you admit). To me, "human secularism" is a system of belief - a "religion" in other words, as I have defined it.
The problem is that human secularism has, in its roots, an inability to defend itself from the predations of an emotional, dynamic system of beliefs such as Islam. The basic problem is human secularism's core belief of "relativism".
"Relativism" means that no one system of belief is seen as more valid, or more correct than any other. That "right" and "wrong" are situational. Multi-culturism is the expression of this belief in relativism.
Human secularism doesn't appeal to most people in the emotional center that is the real core of a human being. Human secularism makes the mistake in believing that the appeal to "reason" and "logic" will succeed in overcoming emotional objections.
I think this is a mistaken belief.
A confident, vibrant and growing belief system such as Islam, faced against a reticent, unsure, and emotionally unappealing belief system such as human secularism will almost certainly lead to a society in which the least dynamic system accomodates the more dynamic and growing system.
The question is - at what point does the accomodation stop?
My thoughts are that it will stop pretty much with the extinction of the European belief system of human secularism, or only if there is a revival of another more dynamic belief system with roots in the European system already.
There aren't too many of those. An energized Christianity is a possibility, except that human secularism would transfer whatever energy and intellectual thought that it might use against Islam, to instead focus against a resurgent Christianity, and thereby hasten it's own demise.
Anyway, the end result will be a Europe more culturally like Arabia, than today's Europe.
Eurabia.
quote:
ORIGINAL: NorthernGent
Britain has something like 2 million Muslims, France 5 million. Referring to Europe as Eurabia is like me referring to the US as Africa or Spain (actually, I'll guess the US has a far higher proportion of Hispanics and African Americans who have brought their catholic and evangelic slants on christianity with them).
Parts of the American West and Southwest are often referred to as "Mex-America". No biggie. The highest birth rate of an ethnic group in the US is the Hispanic, along with massive Hispanic legal and illegal immigration.
If nothing changes, then the US will indeed become more of a Hispanic society.
However, Hispanics are primarily Christian (Catholic) and speak a romantic language, and are culturally very much more related to the primary, dominant US culture.
It doesn't bother me.
FirmKY
edited: spelling
< Message edited by FirmhandKY -- 2/17/2007 1:37:19 PM >
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