Western Atheists: Picking the Wrong Fight
Why is the secular West so determined to secure its own destruction? Europe and North America’s prominent atheists have an odd way of picking their battles. I say the Western Atheists, because their international counterparts seem to fare better.
Take for example, Ayann Hirsi Ali, an atheist from Somalia. Newsweek carried her piece chronicling the systematic attack and killing of Christians in Muslim countries. This was in February 2012, long after Obama and others had begun cheering the Arab Spring’s coming “world as it should be”.
While she was arguing for the plight of Christians being slaughtered en masse in Islamic countries, her European counterparts went another direction.
These European counterparts took to the podium to decry religious belief, but their target was primarily Christianity. Their efforts seem focused on erasing every vestige of Christian history and influence, to the neglect of other, more pressing concerns. And in so doing, they are typically praised for their courage.
What courage does it take for tenured celebrities to twitter-snipe at religious belief from the comfort of a campus built by Christians, in a country whose laws are extensively informed by Christian belief while they cash the royalty cheques for books written — not within the author’s area of expertise, but regarding the rejection of God?
We see examples like the vaunted Richard Dawkins (who, amusingly, has a cult following) who will gladly pounce on some hapless over-matched pastor, to make him look the fool, while turning down repeated invitations to debate with highly capable Christian apologists (such as William Lane Craig).
So, while Christians like Ravi Zacharias, and others travel the World, engaging countless audiences fact-to-face (many of them hostile) with a reasoned presentation for the claims of Christianity, Dawkins will decry Islam as the “greatest force of evil today”, while directing his books and lectures largely at Christian faith and practice.
What a bizarre approach, considering Mosques in England are now bursting at the seams. A Daily Caller article contrasted two photos. One was of a Church built for 1000 people, now frequented by only 20. The other was an overhead shot of a street crammed full of devout Muslims during daily prayers.
There is a very simple, mathematical reason that New Atheism’s approach is inferior to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s. Whatever thrill atheists may be feeling about the seeming collapse of Christianity, and their hoped-for triumph of Atheism, they have neglected one very important detail: demographics.
Secularists, for various reasons, have a notoriously low birth rate by comparison to their more religious neighbors. And, according to Darwinistic expectations, strong populations will inevitably multiply, dominating smaller, weaker ones. By failing to produce offspring, Secular society will eventually be judged and found wanting by its own dogmatics
By sheer weight of numbers, one of the religious communities will eventually outlast secularists. The big question to be decided is this: which religious group will inherit the keys to the country?
As this next wave inherits it, they will transform it according to their own preferences, in much the way that Secularists are today. With the looming disparity in numbers, the transition should not take very long. People today could live to see it happen.