I am interested to know what my fellow Europeans feel about the demise of Christianity within European society and the effects that it has had. Growing up in the 1980's, my school was Church of England and we were taught from the Bible and sung hymns and worshiped God in assembly. Having young nieces and nephews, it is quite clear that this has all been removed from schools. I personally feel it has had a detrimental effect and there is clear link between Christianity being driven out and questionable morals increasing in society. Am I the only one who thinks this?
If the question is whether you're the only person thinking it, then no. However, people believe a lot of stuff, so I'm not sure that's a very helpful conclusion. First, can you explain what you mean by questionable morals? I think some modern things, mainly communication, has shook the box of ideas. Ideas get replaced by ideas, and some ideas are bad, others are good (or at least, I could see how one would argue that). Every communication revolution (printing press, radio, internet) has lead to a quick shift in ideas, and such processes are painful. Christianity is just another idea which isn't keeping up. In time, it will adapt, I'm sure, it's too large to simply keel over. The shift in ideas has made us question many things, Christianity included. As such, for almost whatever you may have meant by questionable morals, my guess is the link them and declining Christianity is not that declining Christianity causes declining morals, so much as both phenomena derives from another cause. Then again, I'm so far unsure to what extent morals are actually declining and to what extent it is merely that you have stopped agreeing with them, or that you now have better access to hearing about it. I would also say that the process is effectively inevitable. Attempting to stop the march of ideas tend to end up failing (and in the process editing the ideas to the point where the status quo wouldn't have been maintained anyway). The idea of clinging on to Christianity is not a new one, but I think it does itself a disservice, especially today. Some ideas such as conservative values I think are suffering for being tied to Christianity. I think it is possible to make sensible arguments for some of those ideas, but most arguments I see are attached to Christianity, which makes the entire endeavour laughable in today's world where Christianity is not a given.
Although a young girl that we know well completed Grade 10 here in Canada we find it interesting that she is now far, far, far more motivated at the Grade 11 level to learn a Homeschooling program that has a Christian flavour. Young people seem to be bored with the politically correct educational material that is written by scholars who seem to be in the mind set of Richard Dawkins Ph. D. http://www.acecanada.net/about.html
There is both advantages and disadvantages. I'm now from a second generation of atheist. As much we can enjoy the end of bad sides of christianity, we have now the bad sides of modernity and Islam. I think that gay people should be free to love each other, I'm from a catholic country and there is for many people no way to let your children within the church considering that the church didn't took all the problem of paedophilia seriously. I almost never met catholic people under 30, I knew a few but it's very rare, even more rare among the gauls. However, I despise the new era of just pure hedonism we are here. It seems to me vain and empty. Today, people mocking or criticizing the christian religion aside for the paedophilia problems seems to me pathetic. They're attacking a very old wolf, who may have been feared a long time ago but is now toothless. Especially that most of those little edgy mocking people are rarely brave enough to mock Islam. Because Islam isn't a toothless wolf, it's quite a feary wolf even. Personnaly, I studied stoician philosophy and learned a lot. Because I ned some guidelines for my own life. I'm quite sad however to have the feeling to live on a dead civilization, a civilization which just died around 1950.
Not at all but I can't speak for Europe although I can speak for America. You have seen an increase in our gun violence as liberalism and their God hate has spread to more people. That is not a coincidence. We now have liberals taking photos of our presidents severed head, liberal actors calling for the assassination of Trump, liberal musicians talking about blowing up the White House. Its directly related.
Christianity is definitely on a serious decline in Western Europe and the US, unfortunately, but numerically those places are a small part of the global population. Christianity is exploding elsewhere. How many people know that Brazil, population 211,000,000, has about the same percentage of evangelical Christians as the US? What we are seeing is what has happened in other times, the center of Christianity is simply shifting, as it once did from the Middle East to Europe.
What makes you an authority on what young people think? I guess by politically correct you mean science is taught rather than fairy tales.
Actually....... Atheistic Darwinian Evolutionary Theory is quite likely a fairy tale........ but YHWH is the Intelligence that EVOLVED in infinite time in the past in fundamental or nearly fundamental energy. www.CarbonBias.blogspot.ca/ Europeans will soon break free from the dogmatic and simplistic thinking of Richard Dawkins Ph. D. Near death experiencer and former Atheist Atheist Mellen Benedict: https://www.near-death.com/reincarnation/experiences/mellen-thomas-benedict.html#a05 If you have read Stephen Hawking's Universe this may remind you of chapter 13.
ALL scientific claims are subject to challenge, peer review, and must be proved before they are accepted. You religious claims on the other hand are never proved.
Oh OK, what is your proof for what set off the Big Bang, or how the first non-life became life? All you have is changing speculation, accompanied by threats to those questioning the current dogma. I don't have absolute proof either, but I think the evidence for my position makes it more likely true than not.
The fact that the Universe is expanding equally -- and working back in time -- shows the universe was once a single point. There is also the background radiation. As you are aware, there are scientific theories about the origin of organic molecules, but there is no proof at this point. However, the fact that science cannot explain everything does not mean one can substitute fairy tales for an explanation.
And what was the cause of that major event? The fact it had a beginning is evidence for the biblical account of creation. Science used to believe the universe just always existed. Since you don't know, shouldn't the God hypothesis be on the table? I'm against fairy tales also, but nice to see you agree neither of us has absolute proof. I simply choose to take a step towards God, you choose to take a step away from him.
