This video has been very popular on Youtube recently, with over 6 million views:
I've blogged about this before, and this is the drum that conservative commentators like Mark Steyn have been beating for years. However, projecting long-term cultural change from current demographic data is always a tricky business. Cultural and demographic changes are often the results of numerous processes and trends. It's true that fertility rates are a huge factor in projecting these types of cultural changes, maybe even the biggest, but there are other factors to consider. The Network for Strategic Missions has a few quotes up by missions researchers about the video. Hence Jason Mandryk of Operation World:
One element that we cannot possibly accurately estimate (at least I cannot see a mechanism for accurate estimation) is the secularizing effect of European society on immigrants with a religious affiliation and on the children of religion parents . . . Can we have ANY idea about how effective secular materialism will be in converting Muslims, Hindus, non-Western Christians, etc to non-religion? I don’t know, but on an anecdotal basis, the large majority of the Muslims I know in the UK – which would consist of about 40 people, predominantly male and Pakistani and under 35 years old – demonstrate high degrees of nominalism and almost all of the same traits which have seen the exodus of a younger generation from Christianity to non-faith in the last 10-20 years. Many younger Muslims in the UK (and in other Western nations) show the same social values that nominal Christians do - and as great a personal commitment to secular materialism as to their religion - and as such, make for perfectly acceptable and indeed welcomed citizens of a pluralist society.
And Peter Crossing of the World Christian Database questions some of the stats used in the video:
The grain of truth that the Muslim population percentage is increasing in Europe is correct, but WCD projections show Europe overall at 7% by 2050. It may partly be the difference between a straight mathematical extrapolation, and a projection which includes factors that change current growth. (Large growth rates are only sustainable for small populations and inevitably level out as the percentage increases. ie. it’s easy for a population to increase from 20 to 40, but much harder from 20m to 40m).
The base data too, from which the extrapolation is calculated, is very different to WCD:
e.g. Britain Muslims (WCD)
1970: 635,000 1.14%
2010: 1,680,000 2.73%
(as against YouTube’s something like 80,000 in 1970 to 2.5m in 2009–big difference in the extrapolation!)
WCD has 2050: 2,850,000 4.15%
And, by the way, it just seems really unlikely that 1m Muslims in the Netherlands are having the same number of children as 15m non-Muslims. UN says 180,000 births per year, which would mean 90,000 Muslim births. There are 500,000 Muslim females, but say 250,000 at a stretch of child-bearing age–that’s almost every second female giving birth, every year.
If I were a betting man, I'd say the demographic shift described in the video is definitely happening, but not quite at the drastic rates reported. I'll remain skeptical about any supposed certainties that such demographic numbers can deliver about the future. However, it's definitely something to think about. If the numbers about European and American birth rates are even close to correct, then it seems clear that the combination of secularism and affluence is poison to a culture's ability to reproduce itself.
[HT: My mom for the video, Andrew Jackson for the responses of missions researchers]
In the comments section of my last post on a typical silly argument by Richard Dawkins against religious belief, Uncle Skeptic said:
Allowing for some literary license with regard to generality and geography, the Dawkins quote is right on. If we can’t, in general, “judge an individual’s justification for her beliefs by the cultural soup from which those beliefs arise”, then how do you explain the overwhelming correlation between religion and geography? If you look at the geographical distribution of religions, it’s obvious that the vast majority of religious people do, in fact, acquire their religion based on the prevailing cultural soup.
A few points here. First, you are confusing sociological questions with epistemological questions. There are simple sociological reasons why we find high levels of religious uniformity among entire cultures, nations, and races: such uniformity allows for social cohesion, national identity, and a shared set of values. That people often adopt the beliefs of those around them is not new or surprising. Suppose 99% of the people of a culture believe the same thing on a particular religious subject - say, that humans are made in the image of God - and they believe simply because that's what their parents or their culture told them. This fact has exactly zero bearing on whether people actually are made in the image of God or not. As for me, if I'm trying to determine for myself what my view on human nature is, sociological facts about how and why this belief is widely held in my culture are entirely irrelevant. What only matters is whether I have good reasons for accepting it or not, and that is an epistemological question that is independent of sociological ones. If I have a suspicion that I have been duped or "indoctrinated" either for or against this belief, I need only to investigate the matter for myself. Just because a belief is held widely in one particular culture does not automatically make it wrong.
I generally refrain from posting on issues relating to politics or the media on this blog, but some stories are just too odious to ignore. Breitbart ran this piece from the Agence France-Presse. The story portrays itself as an objective report about the U. S. military, but in reality it is little more than a cleverly-constructed theological hit piece. The premise is that there are individuals in the U. S. Armed Forces who feel they have suffered religious discrimination from some overzealous evangelical officers:
Since his last combat deployment in Iraq, Jeremy Hall has had a rough time, getting shoved and threatened by his fellow soldiers. The trouble started there when he would not pray in the mess hall.
"A senior ranking staff sergeant told me to leave and sit somewhere else because I refused to pray," Hall, a 23-year-old US army specialist, told AFP.
Later, Hall was confronted by a major for holding an authorized meeting of "atheists and freethinkers" on his base. The officer threatened to discipline him and block his re-enlistment.
I have no doubt that there are instances of this sort of bad behavior on the part of Christians. Every socio-political-religious group has its fools. The Christian church has them, so do the Muslims, as well as the atheists. Heck, I'd be willing to bet that you could even find a few Unitarians who like to bust heads every now and then. No group is comprised of flawless members, and hence this is not controversial. In an organization as large as the United States Armed Forces (about 2.9 million strong), it is not surprising to find all sorts of unacceptable behavior, even among Christians.
The story portrays this to be a widespread phenomenon. For example, the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation claims to have 6,800 accounts of this sort of abuse at the hands of Christians in the military. The MRFF and some of the offended soldiers that are quoted in the piece seem to think that a military coup by evangelical soldiers is close at hand. But a Pentagon spokesperson says that there have been only 100 formal complaints about religious harassment filed over the past two years. Let's crunch the numbers here. If the higher number is correct (and I do not concede for a moment that it is), then of the 2.88 million members of the U. S. military, less than a quarter of 1 percent of them have suffered harassment at the hands of these dastardly fundamentalists. If the lower number is correct, then it's about .0035 percent. You will forgive me if I find incendiary remarks drumming up fears about those who want to "create a fundamentalist Christian theocracy" in the military a bit hyperbolic. Perhaps the MRFF has been studying the Joe McCarthy playbook.
But the AFP story holds its cards until the very last sentence. The unnamed journalist interviews a former chaplain who says he was harassed for not towing a certain theological line. The final quote belongs to the anonymous chaplain:
"As a soldier, many times you want to believe you're fighting on the right side. It's easy to kill someone if you believe that they're going to hell and that they are religiously opposed to you."
Of course! If you hold to the exclusivity of salvation through Christ, you may become a murderer! I'm sure all the evangelicals in the military are constantly engaged in a vicious internal battle, struggling to will themselves not to cut the throats of their unbelieving comrades in their sleep.
I do not give the AFP a pass on this issue simply because the quote comes from a source that was interviewed and not the actual author of the story, just as I would not give them a pass if they were to give the final word to someone who said that holding Jewish beliefs might cause someone to want to drink human blood. That this statement would even be quoted is unconscionable, and it only serves as an illustration of the schizophrenia that surrounds the notion of "tolerance" in contemporary western culture. To the anonymous former chaplain (and to the AFP) I would say: you do not show the dangers of religious intolerance by making equally egregious and inflammatory statements about the beliefs of evangelicals. That's like trying to spread the virtues of pacifism by randomly kicking people in the groin.
Here is David K. Naugle on the late Pope John Paul II's vision for a Christian transformation of human culture:
Given that culture is the history-shaping outcome of humanity's native philosophical and religious impulse, in order to alter human experience for the better, a radical transformation must take place at the cultural level and in the set of basic ideas that make it up. The pontiff's settled solution, therefore, to the modern problem of human pulverization is through the instrumentality of culture change, and indeed a change in its underlying philosophy and religion as the ultimate sources from which it springs. While there may be a place for active resistance against the forces of terror, it seems that for Wojtyla such efforts deal only with the symptoms, not with the root causes of the political and social disease. Change at the most primordial level, therefore, requires a metamorphosis in ultimate meaning through words - both human and divine - that conceptualize reality and frame human existence. Hence, in taking aim at this deeper level of reality, Wojtyla seeks to displace the well-ensconced ideologies responsible for the miseries of contemporary man through the proclamation and practice of a vibrant Christian humanism grown in Catholic soil. He has offered this fresh, comprehensive vision of life as a new basis for Western culture and as the wellspring of genuine hope.
Naugle, a Baptist philosopher, keeps up this congenial tone in his whole section on John Paul's concept of a Christian worldview. I've never given much serious consideration to the thought of the late pope (AKA Karol Wojtyla), but according to passages like this one he was a formidable thinker who proposed an inspired Christian vision for the renewal of human culture.
Jeffrey Lowder of Infidels fame poses an interesting question to theists. He relates a story by the atheist philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. After his debate with Bill Craig, Sinnott-Armstrong received an email from a theist calling him
a "small minded" "egotist," "an arrogant fool," and a "pompous PhD," then added "it is pathetic that the College allows you in a classroom," and "That you don't [believe in God], I am sorry to have to inform you, calls into question your intelligence." Then it concluded, "Please be assured that this theist will impartially consider any persuasive response you can offer and, as such, I look forward to continuing this dialogue with you."
Lowder then poses his question to Christians, and to evangelicals in particular:
What are your thoughts about the email sent to Sinnott-Armstrong? Do you condone the email? Do you condemn it? Or are you indifferent? Do you agree with Sinnott-Armstrong that "Many theists feel perfectly justified in abusing atheists"? Why?
I'll respond to Lowder's question, but first I'd like to point out that this sort of behavior runs both ways. Christians make inane, cruel, vitriolic, and incorrigibly stupid statements to their ideological opponents at an astonishingly high rate. But there are atheists who do it too. See here for a good example of one of those enlightened brights sharing his special brand of intellectual clarity with us knuckle-dragging theists.
Albert Mohler is the president of the institution I attend and we both teach Adult Bible Fellowship classes at the East Campus of Highview Baptist Church in Louisville. Orson Scott Card is a Mormon and one of my favorite science fiction authors. His early novel Ender's Game is a modern-day classic of military sci-fi, and I just read the first sequel, Speaker for the Dead, last year. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they are debating one another at Beliefnet on the topic of whether Mormonism is really Christian. I admire Card as an excellent novelist and a sincerely religious man, but I'm with Big Al on this one.
Should Christians read Sam Harris' antitheistic bestseller The End of Faith? One Amazon.com reviewer of the book answers the question this way:
If you are a Christian, and are even remotely curious about this book and its contents, you do not need to buy it. You can obtain a free transcript by simply walking to the nearest mirror and promptly flipping yourself the bird.
I think that's an accurate summary of the book's primary message.
Here is the always witty Alvin Plantinga's review of Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion. It's long, but I'll quote the best bit:
Now despite the fact that this book is mainly philosophy, Dawkins is not a philosopher (he’s a biologist). Even taking this into account, however, much of the philosophy he purveys is at best jejune. You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside) many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class.
I've been beating a similar drum for quite some time now. If - like the Dawkinses and Harrises of the world - you are going to continually holler and stamp your feet about the irrationality and danger of theism, you better have some pretty potent arguments to back up your claim. But alas, their arguments are batting solid .200s in the Little Leagues of serious philosophy. I suppose we should expect this. Biologists do not often make good philosophers, and vice versa. If I were to make a monolithic argument about biology it would probably be pretty febrile. But, unlike Dawkins, I understand my own academic limitations.
On the other side, we believers look at the evidence and believe that there is a God. In that sense, the atheist has considerably less intellectual honesty than the sophisticated believer. The atheist says he knows, despite the fact that what he “knows” is unprovable. The believer believes because he knows that what he believes is ultimately unprovable.
It's a good debate, but I can't help feeling that Harris came out on top. Prager just didn't deal as well with Harris' arguments as a stronger theistic thinker might have.
Now here is something interesting. The Washington Post and Newsweek have started an online dialogue called "On Faith." They've invited contributors from every conceivable position related to faith - even atheists - to respond to certain questions. The first question is:
If some religious people believe they have a monopoly on truth, then are conversation and common ground possible? If so, what would be the difficulties and benefits of such a conversation?
Al Mohler, president of the institution I attend and a member of my church, is one of the contributors, as well as fellow Southern Baptist Richard Land. Mohler's response has elicitied the traditional hand-wringing from secular types who think that being an evangelical equals being a moron. Right now, his response has the third largest number of comments (151) behind only Randall Balmer (159) and the atheist apologist Sam Harris (a whopping 397). I'll be watching this conversation intently.
This just in: a Syracuse economist is claiming that religious conservatives give more to charity than liberals do. This is intriguing, and it reminds me of a study from earlier this year that claimed that people are more likely to be happy if they are (1) white or Hispanic, (2) rich, (3) Republican, (4) married and (5) regular churchgoers. If these studies are correct, they provide powerful evidence that being a religious conservative has significant quality of life benefits for everyone involved. But of course all these must be myths, because as many bright beacons of moral clarity keep telling us, it is positively evil to hold to any religious faith.
Christian blogger Doug Wilson is always a treasure chest of intelligence and wit. He recently posted two "letters" to Sam Harris, the militant atheist who has written two popular anti-religious books, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. Wilson's "letters" can be found here and here. In the first post Wilson has this to say to Harris:
You want Christians to quit behaving in certain ways. But why? You want them to write nice letters, and you want them to stop turning America into a big, dumb theocracy. But why? If there is no God, what could possibly be wrong with theocracies? They provide high entertainment value, and they give everybody involved in them a sense of dignity and high moral purpose. You get to wear ecclesiastical robes, march in impressive processions to burn intransigent people at the stake, you get to believe you are better than everybody else, and, at the top of the doctrinal heap, that God likes you. Further, the material universe doesn't care about any of this foolishness, not even a little bit. So what's wrong with having a little bit of fun at the expense of other bits of protoplasm? Hitler, Ronald Reagan, Pol Pot, Mother Teresa, Mao, Nancy Pelosi, Stalin, Ted Haggard, and the Grand Inquistor are all just part of a gaudy, and very temporary, show. Sometimes the Northern lights put on a show in the sky. Sometimes people put on a show on the ground. Then the sun goes out, and it turns out nobody cares.
I think all this is just Wilson's tongue-in-cheek way of expressing a more sober philosophical statement: On the assumption of atheistic naturalism, moral values have no objective ontological status and thus one moral position is as good as another. There are certainly atheists who dispute this, but I think it's correct. Like Wilson, I'm mystified by the monolithic moral agenda being advanced by men who are champions of a worldview in which monolithic moral agendas are meaningless.
Here is the transcript of an informal radio debate between Richard Dawkins and an Irish Catholic theist. The theist puts it to him pretty well, I think, on a number of key issues. And I promise I will quit blogging about Dawkins one day. The day he dies.
In a punishing review of Richard Dawkins' latest anti-religious diatribe, The God Delusion, Terry Eagleton of the London Review of Books writes the following:
Dawkins holds that the existence or non-existence of God is a scientific hypothesis which is open to rational demonstration. Christianity teaches that to claim that there is a God must be reasonable, but that this is not at all the same thing as faith. Believing in God, whatever Dawkins might think, is not like concluding that aliens or the tooth fairy exist. God is not a celestial super-object or divine UFO, about whose existence we must remain agnostic until all the evidence is in. Theologians do not believe that he is either inside or outside the universe, as Dawkins thinks they do. His transcendence and invisibility are part of what he is, which is not the case with the Loch Ness monster ... The Jews of the so-called Old Testament had faith in God, but this does not mean that after debating the matter at a number of international conferences they decided to endorse the scientific hypothesis that there existed a supreme architect of the universe – even though, as Genesis reveals, they were of this opinion. They had faith in God in the sense that I have faith in you. They may well have been mistaken in their view; but they were not mistaken because their scientific hypothesis was unsound.
Eagleton himself is hostile to any form of traditional or conservative religion, and yet he recognizes that for all his self-important posturing, Dawkins makes a weak case for his brand of hellfire-and-brimstone atheism. He points out that Dawkins is like "a bumptious young barrister" who believes he "can defeat the opposition while being complacently ignorant of its toughest case."
This reminds me of the episode of Seinfeld when Jerry, Elaine, and George were surprised to find that Kramer had excelled to the top of his karate class after only a very short time of training. Cut to later in the episode when Jerry and Elaine decide to witness the kung fu dynamo in action as he whips up on his classmates, only to find that said classmates are a bunch of little kids. So in addition to his occupation as rabid atheist evangelist, Dawkins can now moonlight as an eccentric hipster doofus.
Eric Kaufman of the UK's Prospect magazine offers a more nuanced view in the continuing debate over the impact of low secular birth rates for the future of the West, especially European nations (see here, here, here, and here for previous posts and links on the subject). Kaufman points out that the low birth rates for secularists in the West do not necessarily mean they will be outnumbered by the devoutly religious in the next century, simply because the gap in birth rate is often counterbalanced by the apostasy rate. In other words, religious parents may have more children than their secular counterparts, but those kids may abandon the faith of their parents at an equally high rate and become secular themselves.
However, Kaufman makes a convincing argument that within this century the birth rate gap will outpace the apostasy rate, and Europe will take on a more conservative religious flavor:
Western Europe will initially emerge as a more religious society, but not a fundamentalist one. Even so, religiosity—as belief rather than attendance—significantly predicts a more conservative ideological orientation. Though we are unlikely to see the rise of evangelical Christian politics in Europe, we may find a long-term drift towards more conservative social values. Europeans will become more "traditional" on moral issues like abortion, family values, religious education and gay marriage. Inter-faith co-operation between Christians and Muslims on these issues is quite possible since ecumenical structures are already in place in most countries to facilitate it. The ease with which conservative Protestants and traditionalist Catholics and Jews have co-operated in the US may be taken as evidence. Much will depend on how these ideological synergies are channelled by parties and electoral systems in different countries, but by the mid-21st century, the peak of secular European politics will be long past.
Kaufman also makes the claim that it is not mass conversions or religious revivals that really move a society toward religion, but higher birth rates. Interestingly, many American Christians are catching on to the importance of demography for spreading the influence of their faith. Mark Driscoll, for example, teaches his church that one of the best ways they can turn Seattle into a Christian city is to simply have more babies than the non-religious people there, which isn't very hard. Be fruitful and multiply, indeed.
Wired magazine takes a look at the recent upsurge in the rantings of militant atheists who claim any and all religion is "evil." The writer of "Battle of the New Atheism" focuses on Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. Dawkins has been saying some crazy things recently, and his interview with Wired is no exception. Consider this bit of big-hearted humanitarianism:
"How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents?" Dawkins asks. "It's one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods?"
And the Christians are "theocrats" because they want intelligent design to be included in public school textbooks alongside evolution. Well, I guess this makes Dawkins an "atheocrat."
The writer of the Wired piece is very hostile to religious claims himself, but in the end he rejects this new version of ideological jihad:
Where does this leave us, we who have been called upon to join this uncompromising war against faith? What shall we do, we potential enlistees? Myself, I've decided to refuse the call. The irony of the New Atheism -- this prophetic attack on prophecy, this extremism in opposition to extremism -- is too much for me.
Here is wisdom from someone I disagree with on even the very basic issues of life, but we agree enough to recognize that such atheistic fundamentalism is unwarranted, unhealthy, and downright comical.
As a side note, I should say that I do not find the arguments of Harris, Dawkins, and Dennett to be very persuasive. They are popular level atheistic apologists, and in my opinion their arguments do not carry the weight of more clear-headed atheist philosophers like Quentin Smith, Michael Martin, or the late John Mackie. This makes it all the more peculiar that they are the most vocal about the indestructibility of their worldview. But this is often the case, even with Christian apologists: those with the most shaky logical foundations are sometimes the most adamant about the strength of their arguments. Strange.
In an opinion piece at the Dubliner, the atheist bulldogmatist Richard Dawkins makes the following claim:
Regarding the accusations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, deplorable and disgusting as those abuses are, they are not so harmful to the children as the grievous mental harm in bringing up the child Catholic in the first place.
So in Dawkins' worldview, raping kids is morally superior to teaching them to sing "Jesus Loves Me." I think it's safe to say that Dawkins can no longer be taken seriously. Such misguided fanaticism does not deserve a shred of respect, especially academic respect. I believe that after these comments all reasonable people - atheist, Christian, and Darwinist alike - are justified in labeling Dawkins a myopically-inclined idiot.
And yes, I did just coin the term "bulldogmatist." Maybe I'll get a patent for it.
Here are a few recent articles on Islamic extremism, one from the right and one from the left. First is this piece by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post. Krauthammer argues that many Muslims make fierce calls for tolerance of their own religion, but do not extend the same courtesy to other religions. But worse than this is the western media's complicity in this hypocrisy:
First Salman Rushdie. Then the false Newsweek report about Koran-flushing at Guantanamo Bay. Then the Danish cartoons. And now a line from a scholarly disquisition on rationalism and faith given in German at a German university by the pope.
And the intimidation succeeds: politicians bowing and scraping to the mob over the cartoons; Saturday's craven New York Times editorial telling the pope to apologize; the plague of self-censorship about anything remotely controversial about Islam -- this in a culture in which a half-naked pop star blithely stages a mock crucifixion as the highlight of her latest concert tour.
In today's world, religious sensitivity is a one-way street. The rules of the road are enforced by Islamic mobs and abjectly followed by Western media, politicians and religious leaders.
Second is an article in the L. A. Times by the militant atheist and antitheist Sam Harris, a liberal who argues that the American left, blinded by their ideology, fail to see the real threat posed by militant Islam:
my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith ...
At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.
Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization.
Strong words from a self-avowed liberal atheist. I recommend reading both articles in full.
"Christianity is a myth," declared the professor in my college folklore class. "However," he continued, "that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't true." The word "myth" as it has come to be used in the common vernacular simply means "something that isn't true." So in this sense the idea that President Bush was behind the attacks of 9/11 is clearly a myth.
But let's distinguish for a moment between this common definition of myth and the somewhat different notion of mythology. What is a myth in this second sense? According to the Encyclopedia Mythica, a myth is
a story of forgotten or vague origin, basically religious or supernatural in nature, which seeks to explain or rationalize one or more aspects of the world or a society ... Broadly speaking myths and mythologies seek to rationalize and explain the universe and all that is in it. Thus, they have a similar function to science, theology, religion and history in modern societies.
Mythology, then, serves the same function as a worldview, but in narrative form. It is a way in which people understand themselves in relation to reality, what there actually is, and thus it is a way in which people understand their own meaning.
Now back to my question: is Christianity mythology? Well, not in the first sense of being a story that isn't factually true. But do mythic stories have to be false? To put it another way, does the concept of myth entail falsehood? C. S. Lewis certainly didn't think so. In his excellent essay, "Myth Became Fact," he defends the idea that Christianity is the one, true, factual myth. He sees the function of myth as that of taking abstract truths and completing them, and thus completing human knowledge:
In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to the experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction ... When we translate we get abstraction - or rather, dozens of abstractions. What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is), and, therefore, every myth becomes the father of innumerable truths on the abstract level. Myth is the mountain whence all the different streams arise which become truths down here in the valley; in hac valle abstractionis ["In this valley of separation"]. Or, if you prefer, myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really belong to. It is not, like truth, abstract; nor is it, like direct experience, bound to the particular.
For Lewis then, mythology may help us better understand those ultimate, metaphysical, and sometimes mysterious truths about the world in which we live. However, Lewis sees the Christian story as the myth, the one that teaches us the ultimate truth about reality itself. But unlike the other mythologies, the Christian story is factually true, and that is what makes it so important:
Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens -- at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. I suspect that men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed. To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace which we accord to all myths. The one is hardly more necessary than the other ...
Those who do not know that this great myth became Fact when the Virgin conceived are, indeed, to be pitied ... We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about 'parallels' and 'Pagan Christs': they ought to be there - it would be a stumbling block if they weren't. We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic -- and is not the sky itself a myth -- shall we refuse to be mythopathic? For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher.
In a world of where rationalism and materialism act as usurpers to the epistemological throne, the declaration of the true myth of Christianity - the story of the world above reaching down to the world below - is essential. The fact is that many people do believe in various mythologies: they literally idolize their favorite sports teams, or musicians, or pop singers, or political theories, and yet none of these can do the job, for they are all unfortunately tied to the finite and temporary realm in which we live. The myth of the dying, atoning God, of eternity's Messiah who saves mankind, is also fact. It is the one true mythology, the one true story by which faltering humanity may chart its course to eternity.
[Note: "Myth Became Fact" can be found in the excellent anthology of Lewis' essays and articles, God in the Dock.]
I read the following quote in a book I was reading a few weeks back and I had planned on posting it here. But today I see that Tom Gilson has beaten me to it in this excellent post. The quote is from Bertrand Russell, perhaps the most influential atheist of the 20th century:
That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins -- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.
If you want a summation of why I could never be an atheist, this is it. It is a worldview that - when honestly appraised - provides no meaning, no purpose, no morality, and no hope.
The Christian world is changing significantly, according to this article at the Philadelphia Inquirer:
In 1960, there were an estimated 50 million evangelical Christians in the West, and 25 million in the rest of the world; today, there are an estimated 75 million in the West, and 325 million in the rest of the world (representing about 20 percent of the two billion Christians worldwide), according to Robert Kilgore, chairman of the board of the missionary organization Christar.
The point of the article is that even though Christianity flowered and spread in Europe and North America, it is now fading in the West and taking root in Asia, Africa, and South America. A few years back I recall reading about an American who was touring some of Europe's more famous cathedrals. During one of these tours, the guide rather proudly pointed out that Europe's cathedrals and churches are empty now because Europeans are abandoning Christianity for paganism. Just as the rise of the Christian church squeezed out paganism a millennium ago, explained the guide, the pagans are now exacting their terrible revenge.
Although I'm not very surprised by this development - history tells us we should expect sweeping changes of this sort as the centuries pass - it is rather shocking to see it happening before our very eyes. Some people lament the fact that the West is not the cultural center of Christianity anymore, but I don't see why the kingdom of God is better off with a Western flavor than with an African or an Asian one. It seems that if we look at the West with the image this article paints in our mind, we would have to say that the Enlightenment has been (thus far) a success, as western civilization has increasingly abandoned traditional religions for secularism and, in some cases, the new paganism of New Age beliefs.
The article also paints a picture of a future clash of civilizations as growing Christian and Islamic populations may come into conflict. There is a lot of hubbub today about the clash of radical Islam with democratic secular societies, but it is very possible that one of the most pressing international issues of the next few centuries will be this clash of religions, with the Islam-democracy battle fading into the background as secular societies diminish.
As far as the spread of the kingdom of God is concerned, consider this from the article:
The new evangelicals are more exuberant in their worship services; put more faith in spiritual healing, prophecy and visions; and read the Bible more literally than many of their Western cousins.
Why is this? I think we have to admit that the most successful missionaries over the past decades have been our charismatic and pentecostal brothers and sisters, and the third world in some sense is following the Third Wave. But why are they more successful, exactly? There are probably multiple reasons, but I think the main reason is also the simplest: they stress the powerful working of the Holy Spirit more than, say, Southern Baptists. Since it's something they focus on, God seems to work in greater power in their ministries. Evangelicals in the Reformed tradition are quick to point out the deficiencies in some Charismatic theology (particularly the "health and wealth" gospel, which has many adherents in Africa, for example). Many of these complaints are legitimate. However, I think most evangelicals would be surprised at how traditionally orthodox many of these Christians in the rest of the world are. They believe in the Trinity, and in the virgin birth, and in justification by faith, and in the infallibility of Scripture, and all of that. But they add to this an emphasis on healing and the power of the Spirit.
One final point: there are commentators on the far left who see Christianity - especially any brand of the church that seeks to proselytize others - as a sort of western imperialism that evangelizes other nations and cultures only as a way of gaining power over them. The work of missionaries is seen as primarily a political or a racist enterprise. I have heard Christianity referred to as the "white man's religion." Well, not any more. Western "whites" have largely forsaken the gospel that was once such an important feature of their cultural life. They have abandoned the riches of God for the man-centered refuse of this present world. Is it any wonder that God would then choose to glorify Himself in other parts of the world? When all is said and done, there will probably be only a small sliver of whiteness in the vast sea of faces that stands before the throne of God, and that's a good thing too.
Mark Steyn again writes on the implication of low western birth rates for the future at The Australian. See my posts on this topic from last month here, here, and here.
My friends tell me that I need to blog more on current events, and I retort that at ChristianThinker.net I don't want to be the kind of blogger that feels he absolutely must say something about every major news story, chiming in with every other blog out there so it doesn't seem like I'm missing the current blog-boat. Thus I've been mum on the whole Muslim cartoon controversy thing, but now I think I'd like to make a few points. So this is me chiming in:
Pop quiz: Do you know the original date the Danish newspaper printed the cartoons? "Mid-January," you say? Try September 30th! There's a good post on this topic, and a "the Saudis are behind the whole thing" conspiracy theory over at the Daily Kos. (ChristianThinker's note: I know that many of my readers would just as soon stick a spork up their nose as go to the Daily Kos. But trust me on this one, it's a pretty good post.)
The European newspapers are in the wrong. It was stated by a French newspaper early on that the main impetus for printing the cartoons was to "show that 'religious dogma' had no place in a secular society." That statement was later retracted, but it exemplifies the leftist idea that a vital role for a free press is its offensive power for social transformation. This is the free press as a weapon against worldviews that those in charge of the press don't like.
The Islamic reaction in the form of violence is even more wrong. This goes without saying, but the important thing to notice is that the reaction of the Muslim world may be waking Europeans from their dogmatic slumber to the truth that there is a (very) large portion of humanity that doesn't agree with the whole democratic freedom thing. There is a significant block of the Islamic world that is as interested in Enlightenment ideals about as much as it is into the latest gossip about Britney Spears.
Help me try to figure this one out: Since 9/11, the progressive liberal types, especially in the academic world, have ramped up their programs, speeches, classes, sensitivity seminars, etc. that aim to portray Muslims in a positive light and minimize anti-Islamic sentiment. This is all well and good. But the same does not go for when a "Christian" does or says something crazy. When an anti-abortion activist kills an abortion doctor or bombs a clinic, for example, there are no sensitivity training seminars on how everyone ought to stay calm and not become bigoted toward Christians. In fact the opposite seems to be true. Those anecdotal examples become poster-children for why the tyrannical "religious right" is destroying America. In short: Muslim terrorists cause the secular left to become more sensitive and respectful of Muslims, but Christian terrorists only reinforce them in their antagonism toward orthodox Christianity. Please note that I'm not making this claim about all liberals, or Democrats, or whatever. But I do think there is a certain block on the left - particularly within academia - of which this is true.
This opinion piece by James P. Gannon addresses some of the same issues about the effects of secularization on Europe that I've been posting about recently. This one more squarely lays the blame for low birth rates on the effects of widespread secularism:
Among the consequences of Europe's abandonment of its religious roots and the moral code that derives therefrom is a plunge in its birth rates to below the replacement level. Abortion, birth control, acceptance of gay marriage and casual sex are driving the trend.
In an earlier post I said that if modern Europe dies out (with the likely replacement being Islamic cultures and nations), then it represents the failure of the Enlightenment project. Well, what did I mean by that?
It's simple. The European period known as the Enlightenment can be broadly and loosely defined as that intellectual and cultural movement away from religion and theocratic governments and toward secularism and democracy. The predominant time-frame is the 18th century, but in reality the Enlightenment movement began in the 17th century and continued into the 19th. Christians often speak quite disparagingly of this period of intellectual history, but it actually had both positive and negative influences on society. If you like practicing your religion, for example, without being burned at the stake or having your tongue ripped out, then you have the Enlightenment to thank. The fact is that many early Enlightenment figures were orthodox Christians themselves, or close to it. Men like Rene Descartes and John Locke embraced the virtue of reason as a buttress for Christian belief. It is those anti-religious figures of the later Enlightenment such as David Hume and Voltaire that are more representative of mlitant secularism, with Immanuel Kant not far behind. In short, the type of life that most modern Westerners are used to - democratic societies with free expression, free religion, free sexuality, free markets, etc. - is a direct result of the Enlightenment.
But now it seems that the failure of the Enlightenment project - or at least of a significant portion of it - may be at hand. The modern progressive liberal is in a direct line with the Humes and the Voltaires. He believes in the inevitable progress of man, away from those oppressive and impractical institutions like superstitious religion and authoritative moral codes and toward a bright future of liberty, equality, fraternity, and world peace.
But now we see that there is a price to pay for the advance of secularism. The combination of affluence, loose sexual standards, matriarchal state welfare systems, and a denigration of the traditional family is an explosive mix. Or rather, an implosive mix. This is because strongly religious cultures simply have more children than secular cultures who adopt these attitudes and practices. Period. And right now that means Islamic cultures are producing a higher rate of children than Europeans, Canadians, and North Americans. If things continue as they are, native Europeans will die out or be overrun by Islamic immigrants from North Africa and other Muslim nations within a century or two.
But why is this? I'll try to explain it (as I understand it) in terms of an illustration. Let's take a young, modern European. We'll call him Wolfgang. He lives in Berlin. He has a college degree. He makes the equivalent of $50,000 a year and has government-subsidized healthcare. He does not go to church, and has a circle of friends his own age with whom he likes to hang out, go to clubs, etc. Now suppose he falls in love with a German girl. They value their relationship, but they also value their own freedom. They move in together, because marriage is out of style and they see it as a fundamentally outdated and religious institution anyway. She, being a modern woman, also has a career. They enjoy traveling and eating out, listening to music and enjoying sex. What reason would they have for having children? They view children not as a blessing but as an impedance to their lifestyles. They don't have any religious committment to producing offspring, and they have unrestrained access to birth control and abortion. Wolfgang is only one example. His illustration doesn't touch on the other Germans living large on welfare. It is a culture of leisure where having and raising children is seen as an unnecessary encumbrance.
To think about this in different terms, think about American sitcoms. In the 1950's going all the way up to the 1980's, the predominant sitcoms were about families. The ones that were not about families usually had to do with work environments (M*A*S*H, WKRP Cincinatti, etc.). Today, there are still many sitcoms about traditional families, but there is also a large number where the "family" is a group of young people living in an urban setting. They provide the emotional support for each other that family members would provide in a traditional setting. Compare the most popular NBC Thursday night sitcom of the '80's - The Cosby Show - with the most popular sitcom in the same slot in the '90's - Friends. You get the picture.
There are certainly other factors, and these crude illustrations do not suffice to explain the whole phenomenon, but I think they help. The free markets, free love, and individual empowerment that are the results of the Enlightenment have contributed to the impotence of modern Europe to repopulate. Canada is about the same, and the United States is heading in that direction.
And if these trends continue, what then? What kind of a future world would it be with a Europe where the majority of the population is Muslim, the governments and armies are Muslim, and the academies are Muslim? As a child of classical Christianity, I would value the commitment to traditional morality and religious thinking that sort of society might bring. The question, of course, is how much of the negative elements of Islamic society would come along with it. A future moderate Islamic Europe - say, in the vein of modern-day Turkey - seems, on the whole, to be at least as desirable if not moreso than the current secular version. However, if Islamic jihadist fundamentalism (i. e. Islamofascist states that support terrorism and the elimination of infidels) takes root in part or all of Europe, then the world is in trouble. In short, a Europe comprised of nations like Turkey: Fine. A Europe comprised of nations like Iran: definitely not fine.
But I'm getting off topic here. My point is that if either of these Islamified visions of Europe comes about, the Enlightenment, at least in Europe, will have failed. If the same trend continues in Canada and America - with the replacement culture likely being Catholic Hispanics - then the Enlightenment will have achieved an equally miserable failure.
Now I have to admit that all of this is predicated on some very large What ifs? I am not predicting much here. I am only commenting on potentialities. The lesson to be learned - if any of these potentialities come to pass - is that the survival of humanity itself is in some sense dependent on having robust religious cultures. I'm not saying that it's impossible that a secular culture could achieve significant population growth, but I am saying that it makes it very difficult. Many of the very ideals of secularism - individual liberty, sexual license, the responsibility shift away from the individual and toward the state, the erosion of traditional moral moorings - do not bode well for sustaining a population growth rate that matches the rate of the centuries that have come before. The Enlightenment dream of the continual progress of man in a man-centered universe may turn out to be no more than a philosopher's fantasy.
For some reason I just can't get this issue of the potential Islamization of Europe out of my head. Well now it seems that the Pope may be predicting the same thing. Check out this transcript of a conversation between Hugh Hewitt and Father Joseph Fessio about the Pope's opinion on the matter.
As a follow-up to the post I made earlier today, Mark Steyn states the case a little more boldly in a Wall Street Journal editorial. If you have a bone in your body that cares about western civilization and the future of your children, you'll probably want to read this. Here's how he starts:
Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There'll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands--probably--just as in Istanbul there's still a building called St. Sophia's Cathedral. But it's not a cathedral; it's merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon Western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to figure out a way to save at least some parts of the West.
And on the low western birth rate:
The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion.
It looks like immigrant North African youths are causing havoc again in France. Like the recent riots among Muslim immigrants in Paris, I predict more of this type of thing in the future. The real question is how far down this road Europe is going to go. Tony Blankley of the Washington Times has argued that the when the growth of Muslim populations in Europe is mixed with the growth of jihadism within those populations, Europe itself is in danger. This is a clarion call that many have been making recently, and the reality of a future fascist "Eurabia" is made even more possible by the declining birth rate of native Europeans. And although I haven't read the book, I understand that Pat Buchanan's The Death of the West presents a similar scenario. The failure of the Enlightenment project may be at hand.
It looks like an unfortunate church in Israel was the victim of a textbook example of religious intolerance recently. Although evangelicals get hammered as being "intolerant" for refusing to believe that God hands out free passes to heaven to everyone who has a religious or moral worldview, I don't think that's exactly fair. Suppose I simply believe someone is going to hell for his sins unless he repents and places faith in Christ, but I love him as an individual and respect his decision to disagree with my viewpoint. I have many friends and acquaintances who fall into this camp. I think they're wrong, and they think I'm wrong. What's the big deal? Why is that so intolerant?
To understand this a little more, I might classify two definitions of intolerance. We'll call one the politically correct definition of intolerance and the other the classical definition. Now let's define the definitions:
(politically correct) intolerance = a disagreement and/or statement of that disagreement with another on the nature of ultimate religious truth, specifically the belief that adherence to another religion will result in ultimate condemnation or hell for the one adhering
(classical) intolerance = denying practitioners of a competing religion their right to practice or believe that religion, usually through violent or coercive means
I thoroughly reject the feel-good, let's-all-get-along, fuzzy politically correct version, which itself is a sort of religious intolerance (according to its own definition) since it asserts a moral dictate about what kind of religious beliefs one can hold. I recognize that there is a virtual academic cottage industry devoted to this PC tolerance, where anyone who claims that their religion is the sole correct religion (or the sole path to heaven, or whatever) is vilified as a racist hatemonger. The obvious reply is, "So, the only legitimate religion I can hold is pluralism? Gee, that sure does wonders for cultural distinctives!"
So the classical definition is better, and much more compatible with a society that values religious freedom. True religious intolerance occurs when someone actually acts on that religious disagreement by harming the other person, or denying his right to religious freedom, or destroying his property, or whatever. For a lesson in how that's achieved, just take a gander at the behavior of those Orthodox Jews from Arad.
I generally refrain from posting on issues relating to politics or the media on this blog, but some stories are just too odious to ignore. Breitbart ran this piece from the Agence France-Presse. The story portrays itself as an objective report about the U. S. military, but in reality it is little more than a cleverly-constructed theological hit piece. The premise is that there are individuals in the U. S. Armed Forces who feel they have suffered religious discrimination from some overzealous evangelical officers:
In a punishing review of Richard Dawkins' latest anti-religious diatribe, The God Delusion, Terry Eagleton of the London Review of Books writes the following: 
The Christian world is changing significantly, according to this article at the Philadelphia Inquirer:
It looks like an unfortunate church in Israel was the victim of a textbook example of religious intolerance recently. Although evangelicals get hammered as being "intolerant" for refusing to believe that God hands out free passes to heaven to everyone who has a religious or moral worldview, I don't think that's exactly fair. Suppose I simply believe someone is going to hell for his sins unless he repents and places faith in Christ, but I love him as an individual and respect his decision to disagree with my viewpoint. I have many friends and acquaintances who fall into this camp. I think they're wrong, and they think I'm wrong. What's the big deal? Why is that so intolerant?
