*http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050301-123015-2069r.htm*

*Analysis: Atheism worldwide in decline


By Uwe Siemon-Netto
UPI Religious Affairs Editor
*

Gurat, France, Mar. 1 (UPI) -- There seems to be a growing consensus
around the globe that godlessness is in trouble. "Atheism as a
theoretical position is in decline worldwide," Munich theologian
Wolfhart Pannenberg told United Press International Tuesday.

His Oxford colleague Alister McGrath agrees. Atheism's "future seems
increasingly to lie in the private beliefs of individuals rather than in
the great public domain it once regarded as its habitat," he wrote in
the U.S. magazine, Christianity Today.

Two developments are plaguing atheism these days. One is that it appears
to be losing its scientific underpinnings. The other is the historical
experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are
in no position to claim the moral high ground.

Writes Turkish philosopher Harun Yahya, "Atheism, which people have
tried to for hundreds of years as 'the ways of reason and science,' is
proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance."

As British philosopher Anthony Flew, once as hard-nosed a humanist as
any, mused when turning his back on his former belief: It is, for
example, impossible for evolution to account for the fact than one
single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia
Britannica put together.

Flew still does not accept the God of the Bible. But he has embraced the
intelligent design concept of scholars such as William Dembski who only
four years ago claimed to have been mobbed by pro-evolutionist
colleagues at -- of all places -- Baylor University, a highly respected
Southern Baptist institution in Waco, Tex.

The stunning desertion of a former intellectual ambassador of secular
humanism to the belief in some form of intelligence behind the design of
the universe makes Yahya's prediction sound probable: "The time is fast
approaching when many people who are living in ignorance with no
knowledge of their Creator will be graced by faith in the impending
post-atheist world."

A few years ago, European scientists sniggered when studies in the
United States -- for example, at Harvard and Duke universities -- showed
a correlation between faith, prayer and recovery from illness. Now 1,200
studies at research centers around the world have come to similar
conclusions, according to "Psychologie Heute," a German journal, citing,
for example, the marked improvement of multiple sclerosis patients in
Germany's Ruhr District due to "spiritual resources."

Atheism's other Achilles heel are the acts on inhumanity and lunacy
committed in its name. As McGrath relates in Christianity Today: "With
time (atheism) turned out to have just as many frauds, psychopaths, and
careerists as religion does. ... With Stalin and Madalyn Murray O'Hair,

atheism seems to have ended up mimicking the vices of the Spanish
Inquisition and the worst televangelists, respectively."

John Updike's observation, "Among the repulsions of atheism for me has
been is drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position," appears
to become common currency throughout much of the West.

The Rev. Paul M. Zulehner, dean of Vienna University's divinity school
and one of the world's most distinguished sociologists of religion, told
UPI Tuesday: "True atheists in Europe have become an infinitesimally
small group. There are not enough of them to be used for sociological
research."

The only exceptions to this rule, Zulehner said, are the former East
Germany and the Czech Republic, where, as the saying goes,
de-Christianization has been the only proven success of these regions'
former communist rulers.

Zulehner cautions, however, that in the rest of Europe
re-Christianization is by no means occurring. "What we are observing
instead is a re-paganization,"

theologians such as Munich's Pannenberg

an Episcopal priest and professor of religion and philosophy at Roanoke
College in Salem, Va.

For although in every major European city except Paris spirituality is
booming, according to Zulehner, this only proves the emergence of a
diffuse belief system, Pannenberg said, but not the revitalization of
traditional Christian religious faith.

Observing a similar phenomenon in the United States, McDermott stated
that the "rise of all sorts of paganism is creating a false spirituality
that proves to be a more dangerous rival to the Christian faith than
atheism."

After all, a Satanist is also "spiritual."

Pannenberg, a Lutheran, praised the Roman Catholic Church for handling

this peril more wisely than many of his fellow Protestants. "The
Catholics stick to the central message of Christianity without making
any concessions in the ethical realm," he said, referring to issues such
as same-sex "marriages" and abortion.

In a similar vain, Zulehner, a Catholic, sees Christianity's greatest
opportunity when its message addresses two seemingly irreconcilable
quests of contemporary humanity - the quest for freedom and truth.

"Christianity alone affirms that truth and God's dependability are
inseparable properties to which freedom is linked."

As for the "peril of spirituality," Zulehner sounded quite sanguine. He
concluded from his research that in the long run the survival of
worldviews should be expected to follow this lineup:

"The great world religions are best placed," he said. As a distant
second he sees the diffuse forms of spirituality. Atheism, he insisted,
will come in at the tail end.

--
Damian J. Anderson

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050301-123015-2069r.htm
Analysis: Atheism worldwide in decline

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050301-123015-2069r.htm
Analysis: Atheism worldwide in decline