Atheistic states have always fallen apart. We see also that the more atheistic a state becomes the more it disintegrates. For examples one looks to the Communists but one can now look to the secularists too. Europe is in dire need of some financial direction and this has everything to do with its spiritual reality and its lack of spiritual direction.
Pope Benedict XVI commented on the European financial crisis and stated that European Financial Institutions need to put people at the center of their policies, rather than profits. Putting people at the center if one were a secular humanist would this not be obvious? The problem with a humanistic world view is that one human is placed at the center of that view and that is the individual who holds it. “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” (George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1945)
How does this affect me? The call of faith is not first to question how this affects me but my relationship with God. God leads us into the community, to reference Pope Benedict XVI again,
“God is not solitude, but perfect communion. For this reason the human person, the image of God, realizes himself or herself in love, which is a sincere gift of self.” (Angelus, Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, May 22nd, 2005.)
As stated above atheism has not produced a sustainable answer to the problem of creating a state which flourishes. Atheism has only progressed within theistic states which were sufficiently pluralistic in nature to tolerate them, these are primarily Christian states. Atheists then start pushing hard within these states to create an atheistic society rather than the pluralism they enjoyed.
Suffice it to say Europe is now a very atheistic place and the financial crisis echoes that statement. There are roughly 20-30% of central and western Europeans who are atheists; there are also majorities in most of these states who agree with the idea of a “life force” rather than a religion. The idea of a life force makes sense in the midst of Europe’s descent into chaos as a life force demands nothing of us, arguably less than atheism. It has to do with making oneself feel good about eternal issues without the self discipline required by a real code of ethics.
“Joan of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy, or by accepting them all like Nietzsche. She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. Yet Joan, when I came to think of her, had in her all that was true either in Tolstoy or Nietzsche, all that was even tolerable in either of them. I thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy, the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back. Joan of Arc had all that and with this great addition, that she endured poverty as well as admiring it; whereas Tolstoy is only a typical aristocrat trying to find out its secret. And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche, and his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time. I thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his hunger for the rush of great horses, his cry to arms. Well, Joan of Arc had all that, and again with this difference, that she did not praise fighting, but fought. We know that she was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was afraid of a cow. Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other. Yet she was a perfectly practical person who did something, while they are wild speculators who do nothing. It was impossible that the thought should not cross my mind that she and her faith had perhaps some secret of moral unity and utility that has been lost. And with that thought came a larger one, and the colossal figure of her Master had also crossed the theatre of my thoughts. The same modern difficulty which darkened the subject-matter of Anatole France also darkened that of Ernest Renan. Renan also divided his hero's pity from his hero's pugnacity. Renan even represented the righteous anger at Jerusalem as a mere nervous breakdown after the idyllic expectations of Galilee. As if there were any inconsistency between having a love for humanity and having a hatred for inhumanity! Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist. In our present atmosphere such cavils are comprehensible enough. The love of a hero is more terrible than the hatred of a tyrant. The hatred of a hero is more generous than the love of a philanthropist. There is a huge and heroic sanity of which moderns can only collect the fragments. There is a giant of whom we see only the lopped arms and legs walking about. They have torn the soul of Christ into silly strips, labeled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by His insane magnificence and His insane meekness. They have parted His garments among them, and for His vesture they have cast lots; though the coat was without seam woven from the top throughout.” (Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton, 1908)
Europe’s crisis with finance is that finance is not a suitable substitute for the Church and the psychoanalyst is no substitute for the confessional. Like Tolstoy and Nietzsche it produces theories which cannot be lived in reality. The end result is that the supposed superman has a nervous breakdown as the tools he used to deconstruct the world turn inward in response to the lack of actual positive effect they seem to have on the world. The problem is not with the modern philosophy but with the phantom of those who cling to the old world. “If only I could be free of the effect of a dead religion and its dead morality I would be happy!” Yet the further society travels down this road the larger the problems loom. The Church is not a huge factor in Europe and the humanists still blame it for their failures. The fact that humanism may actually be lacking in the humane is not sufficiently explained by a call against a moral agent which now numbers in the minority, even among those claiming to be Catholic a very small number of those attend Mass even once a month; so these are in the state of mortal sin and not effective moral agents for the Church anyway.
Finance is indeed not the major attribute of a great state at any rate. One looks to China which has to have the largest percentage of atheists in the world, at least officially. One sees a very disturbing picture as one examine very “humanist” policies. There is a void of young Chinese to care for the rapidly increasing elderly population; one finds this played out throughout the world but very acutely in China as it was lacking in any old world hangers on due to the totalitarian control of the Communist regime.
The lack of able bodied Chinese is, of course, due to China’s one child policy and is further exacerbated by the violence against female babies especially due to abortion; resulting in a ratio of 10 boys to 1 girl. Forced sterilization is also common place and so China has become the logical conclusion of the fruits of the great atheist Margaret Sanger’s work, congratulations Margaret. It may be considered backwards, however, that the way one eliminates the exploitation of women is simply to eliminate the women; that is only my small critique.
What one finds also is a system in which a handful of Chinese families have 2.7 trillion dollars or more in assets each. So one sees a professed Communist state, a people’s republic, in which the government owns everything and in which the disparity in the distribution of wealth in greater than anywhere else in the world. “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” (George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1945)
The state most atheists would claim as the fruit of their secular ideas is obviously Sweden. Sweden is a rather singular country; however, I do not believe one could replicate it. Sweden never had a feudal state of land distribution; Swedish farmers have always freely held their own land, even though the country they held it in was backwards and poor it was theirs. Sweden’s agrarian culture influenced the development of their parliamentary system which occurred during the same time as Sweden’s industrialization; which wasn’t until the latter half of the 19th century. Democratizing factors enabled Sweden to avoid a Communist revolt in 1917 and the country has held firmly to a strongly democratic ethos ever since.
Great so far right! Here’s the issue with Sweden, they can’t pay people enough to reproduce. All efforts to incentivize an increase in the birth rate have met with no result. Since Sweden has only been progressing as a country for about 100 years there was an initial flourishing in the nation which made the modern socialist experiment go like gangbusters; but as the next generation levels that population off and the one after drags it down the thing goes top heavy and short of a comprehensive and egalitarian (of course) die off of the extremely fit elderly one wonders how far one can take such an experiment as Sweden.
There is one section of Sweden’s population which could bring the numbers up; Sweden’s immigrant Muslim population is booming. Sweden is a totally secular society, but the Muslim’s are not a secular people in the least, there is but one logical outcome- the complete conversion of the Muslim populace to a wholly secular worldview! Well maybe not, maybe what will happen is a sharp increase in prayer mats in IKEA followed by Sharia law.
Talk about Social Darwinism! How will the evolutionist ever win if his philosophy keeps trying to rub him out? Only time will tell but it is not looking very good for the Great Atheist State!
