@Dan

It is not so much European behavior but the nature of man.

The only thing the Europeans have done is traded one dogma for another.  All the traits and characteristics that they fear, resist, and hate in Christianity can now be found in their new religion of Atheism, which was my point in my lower post.

How much of what is described as Christian behavior is really just European behavior wrapped in a Christian guise. Detractors often point to when Christianity was used as a tool the state to enforce conformity; but today we see the same behavior under an atheist EU. It’s worth noting that other Christian areas do not behave this way, simply look south or to the Americas. The religious tolerance in the US was created by Christian zealots.

@peter vanderheyden

Whew, I sure am glad to hear that atheists are above all that killing and torturing stuff.  Apparently, it is simply because they have no religious text to guide them to do such horrendous things.

However, that does beg the question....What book did Stalin use?

By the way, don't forget to bring your knee pads tommorrow!

@ pvdh

Actually, if you were to read Truth Serum's posting with an open (unprejudiced) mind, you might be able to see that it is quite 'accurate' as a description of certain people.  It definitely is funny.  And nowhere did he/she use or advocate anything "as a pretext to kill and torture".  That particular "strawman" was entirely yours, born from a prejudice (probably based on a presentation of 'religion' in a long-ago elementary schoolsetting).

@ Snorri Godhi

1) I did NOT claim to be "qualified" to decide who is a real Christian.  But, I did ask relevant questions, implying that these are matters up for discussion and interpretation.  It was YOU who claimed to know that certain prime ministers were "believing Christians". 

2) Also, Pipes did NOT claim that "anybody who believes in Christianity is seen as unfit for public office by Europeans".  That is entirely your false strawman.  Pipes did claim that Buttiglione was "denied" an EU Commissionership because of "his views on issues like homosexuality".  That was factually correct.  Whether it was Italy or a European Parliament committee that "rejected" is a matter for debate, and depends on one's views about how the EU 'really' works.  In my view it depended on the degree to which 'Italy' was willing to stand up for 'its' Commisssioner.   

You missed the core of Pipes point.  His point was NOT that there are no (selfclaiming) 'Christians' in Europe, but rather - as I interpret his comment - that "entrenched secularism" creates a vacuum in the face of an expanding 'missionary' religion like Islam.     

The strawmen seem to be multiplying today.  Everybody should read more carefully, before misrepresenting what someone else wrote.       

I don't know how you feel qualified to decide who is a real Christian, and who isn't. (For the record, I am not.) However, this is irrelevant. The point that Pipes tried to make is that anybody who believes in Christianity is seen as unfit for public office by Europeans, and if Pipes had spent 5 minutes on wikipedia he would know how wrong that is. The only case that he can cite is Buttiglione, which is an isolated incident. Anyway Pipes gets it completely wrong: it is not "Italy" that rejected Buttiglione, but a committee of the European Parliament. Heaven knows (no pun intended) what their hidden agenda was: maybe they were trying to damage Berlusconi. Anyway Buttiglione returned to Italian politics and was elected senator in 2006.

Atheism is as much a religion as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam.

What they, the atheists don't like is having moral judgements placed upon them, while pronouncing their own set of judgements upon religions or religious people in general.

1.  Thou shalt not cast God's name in my presence!

2.  Thou shalt not allow any religious symbols before mine eyes!

3.  Thou shalt honor ludeness and debauchery.

4.  Thou shalt not celebrate religious holidays in mine presence!  (St Patricks Day and Carnival excluded)

5.  Those that worship in mine presence shall be cast into the judicial court of hell fire! 

Being nihilistic and a fundamentalist at the same time must be a mental strain

"I've never been woken up by Jewish missionaries ringing my doorbell."

The morality police in Israel goes around and rounds up clothing deemed to be immodest.  Their Orthodox view on gay rights is only slightly less extreme than muslims.  All children of Abraham remember.  Muslims use the Torah AND the New Testament.  I consider all three a threat to my freedoms AND prosperity as I work in biotechnology.

From Dan

" It’s fairly obvious that militant atheists don’t disbelieve in god, they hate god."

No we just hate having G-d forced down our throats by brainwashed idiots who vie to control the political system to spread their own dogmatic "morality" by force of law.  Christians and Jews are no different than muslims in that regard. 

For an atheist or agnostic that might be true but when one talks of militant atheists they are speaking of something else entirely. It’s fairly obvious that militant atheists don’t disbelieve in god, they hate god.

@ Snorri Godhi

You make interesting comments, but do they deal with the core of Pipes' argument?  

1) All these Prime Ministers may be nominally Christians, but are they real Christians?   Are the Christian churches themselves by and large still "Christian"?  Do they still have a 'missionary' spirit?  Do they actually 'fight', or sacrifice, for the primacy of individual conscience and for true freedom of religion everywhere and for everyone?  Or, are they accomodating to modern relativism?  And, what are the consequences of that in a world which - history shows - constantly produces new forms of totalitarian ideologies?   

These "christian" churches certainly did not stop communism nor fascism in Europe in the past century, but were rather 'accomodating'.

2) Also, we are currently (and only temporarily) in an asymmetrical conflict.  So, those "thousands of nuclear warheads" are irrelevant in terms of determining "the key to the outcome of this global conflict".  Their value lies solely in 'deterrence', and that assumes a 'rational' adversary. Thus, "the key" will not lie in weapons systems as such, but rather in willpower or political will.  

3) But, your reference to "American campuses" is well taken.  Indeed, whether western civilisation in the end will defend itself again, or not, will ultimately be 'determined' by the values transmitted by the American educational system (broadly) to American voters.

So, the outlook appears rather grim at present.

4) I think that Pipes made more sense than either Fried or Farrah did.

Daniel Pipes has lost touch with reality: the prime ministers of the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Poland, and who knows how many other countries, are all believing Christians, and nobody has any problem with it (except Brussels, perhaps). Christian Democratic parties dominate the politics of Germany and the Netherlands.

As for Joseph Farah, I don't agree that the key to the outcome of this global conflict is in Europe for the simple reason that Europe does not have thousands of nuclear warheads. I believe that the current conflict will be decided on American campuses. David Horowitz seems to have the best insight into the current situation.

Why should atheism always be “leftist-induced” and “militant”? Couldn’t it be that a man just thought about it, religion that is, and found out that it is just impossible? And does that man, by doing so, become all of a sudden “leftist”? And if that same person wants just to tell other people that he doesn’t believe anymore, and give arguments for his atheism, does that make that man a “militant” Christian hater? Of course not! Most certainly not! It proves him human! It even proves him western! “Christianity underpins the culture of the west.” You would probably agree with that. “One of the things that makes western culture what it is to day, is believe in the free will of the individual, his ability to think and decide for himself.” You’d probably agree with this one to. So somebody actually puts this in to practice and decides to think for himself, not taking all the stuff for granted they’ve told him when he was too young to understand anyway. By doing so he reaches a conclusion. It turns out not to be the same as yours, but that’s what western civilization is all about: He has the right to his own opinion. But then something weird happens. All of a sudden he is seen as the enemy of western culture itself, spit out and despised by his Christian compatriots, the heritors of the underpinning philosophy of his right to an own opinion. He becomes a leftist-induced militant, lost for this world.

Britain [and much of Europe] is in the grip of a Leftist-induced militant atheism that has nothing to do with the separation of church and state and everything to do with deconstructing the common Christian heritage that underpins Western civilisation. So successful has this anti-Christianity been that the majority of the population are no longer even capable of acknowledging the historical role Christianity has played in shaping our culture - let alone practicing the actual religion on a day-to-day basis. God has been brain-washed out of their lives.

We should all try, regardless of background, Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Christian to ensure that secular values and a secular Europe free from the shackles of religion prevails. There is no place for religous dogma in a modern Europe.