If You Don't Have Religion...

...you don't have a future. So sayeth Mark Steyn, and he's got the evidence to back it up [no direct link available]:

Maybe the collapse of the church and the looming demographic disaster facing Quebec and most of Catholic Europe is just another coincidence. But, for whatever reason, Europeans have less and less interest in God's first injunction, to "go forth and multiply". And, as a consequence, they'll enjoy their post-Christian EUtopia, but only for the two or three generations it lasts. Russia is headed for the same fate. China, where Christianity is booming, seems unlikely to make the same mistake.

...............

In post-Christian Europe - where fertile women who not so long ago would have had three children by the age of 24 now have one designer child at 39, where social welfare programmes depend on a growing population, where the main source of immigration is from a culture that despises secularism as weak, short-sighted narcissism - societal "forgetfulness" isn't just a passing phase you can snap out of. In this situation, the Christian fundamentalists, Holy Rollers, born-again Bible Belters and Jesus freaks of America are the rationalists. It's the hyper-rationalists of secular Europe who are living on blind faith.

This feels similar to James Taranto's "Roe Effect" theory - the idea that, given past trends, liberal thinkers tend to non-breed themselves out of existence. The only trouble is, while they're about the business of dying off, will they ruin the world for the rest of us?
-- posted by Austin @ 3:59 PM (PermaLink/Comment) ¶