The American Spectator

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Christian Fall, Muslim Rise

By Tom Bethell on 10.24.06 @ 12:03AM

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THE MOST COMMON SECULAR RESPONSE to all this is to say: What was so great about Christianity? One blogger responded to Niall Ferguson: "I don't get it. What's wrong with, say, secular humanism filling the moral vacuum? Why does he think the Christian doctrine is irreplaceable?"

It's an important question, deserving a full response. Just at the most basic level of demography, however, the secular-humanist option is not working. Sustaining a population requires each woman on average to bear 2.1 children. In the European Union, Daniel Pipes wrote, "the overall rate is one-third short, at 1.5 and falling." Should current population trends continue and immigration cease, the EU population of 375 million could fall to 275 million by 2075. Furthermore, birth rates are not lower than they already are (in France and Britain, for example, they are noticeably above the EU average) because Muslim immigrants to those countries are having more children than fallen-away Christians.

As for those who imagine that the Christian legacy is one of imperialism, racism, and inquisition, and we are better off without it-legions on the left do believe that-they will have to start thinking about what will replace it. Some are already doing so. Whittaker Chambers is worth reading on these issues, even though Islam was still dormant when he wrote Witness. The attempt to reconstruct faith without God produced Communism, he wrote. And the attempt to live without any faith at all is, I believe, impossible. If faith collapses, civilization goes with it.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Catholicism, Islam, Law, European Union, Africa, Communism, Immigration