[Orion]

(05-20-2016 05:13 PM)Gilders Wrote:  

I quite recently had a chat with my father where he literally said that the government has replaced the church. And that was not a good thing, at all.

I believe such dichotomies, i mean, religion/government are fallacious at best, and politically motivated and subversive at worst. They are particularly used by christian-libertarian preachers.


Decline of religion, or shall i say, desacralization and reduction of religion to base levels (petty humanitarianism and post-nihilist soul searching) is a general trend of last couple of centuries of devolution of Europe into a mass society, and of an European into a mass man. European man, even 100 years ago, didn't have any real spiritual questions. And you can't fake religious feelings. This current trend of unleashed atheism is nothing but Europeans finally being honest about their spirituality. Christianity, Christ, and Christian tradition does provide many answers - but not to questions of interest to Europeans.

That European man fully morphed into a mass society creature shows pretty much every possible trend. He is fascinated with galactic expansion, population control, food distribution, migrations, robots - in short, everything that is numbers and base, lowest level of consciousness. If an idea isn't presented into a fatalist scheme of abstract numbers and abstract theories, it is immediately dismissed by academically trained European mind.

Of course, such trends are hailed as a mark of progress. After all, European mass man is completely keen on idea of him being completely replaced by humanoids, and rejoices at any proposal to abandon labor and production. It is as if European spiritual trends (his spiritual self-destruction) is being followed by his biological self-destruction. His weak, passive, base life-elan came to be accompanied by weak, passive and base spiritual elan. Of course, we shouldn't fall for a trick, and consider atheism complete lack of religion. Atheism is the new religion. It's goal is an idealized, delusional picture of a man in some not too much distant future, reigning over vast new expanses of quantity and matter, somewhere in Cosmos.

If it is general trend, than we cannot really honestly hope for any kind of true "revival" of religion in Europe. At best, we will revive spirit of 1950's religion. And that leads us precisely where we are, not to take into account the fact that such revival is nearly impossible. Let no one fool himself that Europe, without any spirit shall survive as recognizable entity. If it emerges politically victorious, than it's real spiritual order will be brand names, corporation logos, machines, drones, numbers, worthless items, anything completely devoid of any differentiated character.

[Leonard D Neubache]

In response to the OP, it isn't dead but the flame of it dwindles.

Organised religion and its tax-exempt status means that the various governments kept Christianity around while the preachers were useful in keeping the masses in line. "Render unto Caesar" and all that.

Now that Christianity is no longer of benefit to their various schemes they rip the guts out of the church by telling them what they can and can't preach if they want to keep their precious tax-exempt status. Gay marriage for example. In places like the American South I suspect there will be a revival of sorts that falls in with a general rebellion against globalist "values". The same will happen in other places. The final question of what happens to the older spiritual codes of Europe and her offspring nations will ultimately be decided (I suspect) by whether or not we suffer a serious civilisational collapse. "No atheists in fox-holes" and all that.