Did you know that Voltaire converted to the Roman Catholic Church on his deathbed? That's not something you see mentioned often.

Paul:

Likely apochryphal, as with Darwin's supposed deathbed renunciation of evolution.

Voltaire's last words:

Priest: "I urge you to swear off the devil."

Voltaire: "Now now, young man, this is not the right time to make enemies."

"The coming Muslim Europe will be an improvement on the current Secular."

OJ: Not if the Muslim Middle East is any example.

The burqa, the whip, the blood feuds, the honor killings, the harems, the stonings, the total predestination, the fatalism, the Koranic micromanagement of believer's lives, the jizya, the total male supremacy that makes The Handmaid's Tale look like NOW spin, the parasitizing on outsiders' technology & prosperity, and the absolute compulsion to kill all infidels and spread Allah's Perfect System (TM) over all the world, no matter what the cost...

Oh, yeah, and the 72 virgins (with legs already spread) and 27 pretty little boys (already bent over and greased) awaiting the Faithful in Paradise for all eternity, just kill yourself killing off the infidel...

Orrin will prefer the most vile, wretched, ignorant, backward, violent and insane religious society to a secular society. He seems to think that a belief in God will redeem any amount of social disfunction eventually. I guess you would call him a "religious progressive". Too bad history doesn't bear him out.

I'm with Ken, better secular Europe than a Eurabia

Possibly the Europeans have learned from experience.

AML:

The former leads to the latter.

No OJ, your comment is "Muslim Europe will be an improvement on the current Secular [Europe]." I disagree. Muslim Europe will be just a more advanced state of decline.

Islam is ascendant.

"Islam is ascendant"

That was a joke I hope. Just as long another major attack does not happen in the US again, after that Islam to most Americans will equal Nazi. I don't see to many of them around anymore.

Secular Europe will soon be available to let

BJW:

Do you question that a hundred years from now Europe will be Islamic? How else would you define ascendancy?

I question it.

Secularism has a way of making people reluctant to let others think for, and dictate to, them.

Muslims are no different than anyone else.

Oh, Jeff, if only . . .

Give me an hour with your average rationalist and I could convince him that Darwinism requires the sterilization of idiots. Two hours, and I could probably get him to go first.

>Islam is ascendant.

So was Fascism 70 years ago. That doesn't mean it's an improvement.

A secular Europe is just self-destructive; an Islamic Europe will be destructive to a lot more than itself, and I don't think Islam can mutate into a more benign "Reformation" form in time. (Not with the Wahabi and their oil-money machine.) Remember the phrase "Islam's Bloody Borders"?

Seems to me the question is whether European racism is strong enough to overcome their apparent complete apathy towards their historical culture. I bet yes, which is why an Islamic Europe is not yet a sure thing. Whether that would be better than a militant, Fascist EU superstate is another matter.

Jeff:

Yet you, Harry, Brit & Robert sound identical. Secularism is just another religion.

David Cohen:

Darwinism does NOT require the sterilization of idiots.

According to Darwin, idiots will die off of their own accord, or, the children of idiots will revert towards the mean.

Not necessarily highly intelligent, but smart enough to get by.

Michael:

Read The State Boys Rebellion by Michael D'Antonio & then tell us Darwinism didn't lead to sterilization of idiots.

Michael -- I was harking back to this thread, in which I agreed that natural selection, properly understood, did not lead logically to eugenics. However, my comment here was not that I believed in eugenics, but that I could convince your average rationalist (necessarily adrift on a sea of reason without any moral anchor) that it is an unpleasant but rational necessity of the type that only a brave, new man free from the shroud of superstition that is religion would have the courage to recognize.

oj:

One cannot blame Darwin for what's been done in his name, any more than Mike Judge, the creator of 'Beavis & Butthead', is responsible for inbred stoners burning down their parents' pre-fab homes.

David:

Well, when you put it that way...
Where do I sign ?

You have to be in a dissociated state to think that Europe in 2004 is worse off than in 1904 or 1804 or . . .

Harry -- Did you purposely pick years in which Europe was sliding inexorably towards devestating continent wide war?

Michyael:

Darwinism is merely a political ideology and eugenics is its natural outcome--as even Darwin said. Of course he deserves blame.

I was just counting back by hundreds, David.

Harry:

And thereby proving our point.

David:

Gee, that's funny, I don't can't find the word "rationalism" in my post anywhere.

Episcopalians don't seem inclined to take orders from Baptists, nor they from Lutherans, nor they from Calvinists, nor they from Jehovah's Witnesses, ad nauseum.

Once the dead hand of theocratic conformity was lifted, a whole bunch of people decided they weren't inclined to take spiritual orders from others.

Whether secularism is another religion, or the absence of imposed religion, is debatable. But here the distinction is without a difference. Harry, or I, or Robert, or Brit, are no less priviliged to make our relativistic religious claims than the plethora of sectarians. The sum of which is sectarianism.

Ken had it exactly right at the top--questioning eclesiastical authority is a habit, once acquired, that is difficult to shake.

Unless one is a racist, or has concluded that human nature is, per Communism malleable, the Muslims are no different than anyone else.

Jeff:

Bingo! And you've no greater claim of truth nor even rationality. You're just another credulous sect.

Jeff:

You're right: I did substitute rationalism for secularism, but I don't think I did so unfairly. You said "Secularism has a way of making people reluctant to let others think for, and dictate to, them." Rationalism, I think, is a better word for what I understand you to be getting at.

The state can be secular. I prefer a secular state for all the well-rehearsed American reasons and for one other: I think it is healthy for the nation to have more than one source of moral authority. But secular in this sense does not imply that each person is his own moral authority. The individual, whether as reasoner, worshipper or citizen, can still choose (I think must and will choose) an authority to help sort out the moral questions of the day.

The way in which you used "secular", on the other hand, did imply that the individual is his own moral authority -- he does not recognize any judgment as any better than his own. It is possible that such a person is suffering from delusions of grandeur and is his own prophet, but I take you to mean that each person will decide for himself the moral answer to each question presented to him, reasoning from first principles in each case. This is what I mean by rationalism.

Having so defined it, I deny that it exists.

David:

If by secular state you mean the one where the Reverend Danforth presided over a funeral today at which current and former presidents cast America's role in the world as fulfilling God's mission for us (at our National Cathedral), then I agree. In what sense is it a secular state though?

Yep, that's what I mean. It is secular in the sense that the state is not, itself, theocratic, despite the deeply religious nature of the nation. Powerful churches independent of the state give us a bridle with which to rein in the state, while the secular state prevents the Inquisition.

OJ:

Bingo! And you've no greater claim of truth nor even rationality. You're just another credulous sect.

Never said I did. In fact, I have quite often said I don't.

But at least you are finally admitting rationalism is on par with any other religious belief.