Secuarlism, North America and Europe

[removeduser_4536284751384]

Dont pretend to be stupid Ire.

Why would I be asking you to justify it if I understood the argument behind it?

[justicar5]

1)How does the latter point explain the complete collapse of British Christianity, or the relatively strong position of irish Catholicism?

2) No, it hasnt. Biblical criticism puts Christianity in a stronger position than a hundred years ago. Regardless, this isnt a thread to debate the merits of religion or trade petty insults like children, its to explain the possible causal effects for secularism in the west and the discrepancies in its nature between societies. Which that completely fails to do. France began to secularized in the 1800's, and its church attendance plummeted to pathetic levels post ww2, to virtually nothing. Long before the internet, long before easy access to information. Those who left the church became atheists. Canada had huge church attendance in the 50's, it began to plummet in the late 1960's, the plummet stopped and those who left the church are either still theists or are actually still Christians. Increase of information doesnt explain this whatsoever. Nor does an increase in educational quality, because as everyone whos studied this knows, test scores have stagnated and declined in most western countries in the last 60-70 years.

1) the linking of faith and identity politics in Ireland and Northern Ireland, Protestants are Loyalist, Republicans are Catholic, to the extent that the terms are almost synonymous , only knowing Church gives you a fair guess as to political position.

2) Church and Crown being so tangled as to be the same thing in France (under the kings as well as under Napoleon) leading to them being rejected wholesale? If the Priest and the Noble speak in one voice, doesn't rejecting one necessarily mean rejecting the other (especially when they tended to be literally brothers)?

That is the double edged nature of Church and State being entangled, the Church gets to enforce attendance and morality as it wishes on people to powerless to object, but it burns along with the Nobility in revolution (and indeed the wilful ignorance of the Nobilities and Royals wrong doings that it has to show to keep up it's end of the bargain, and the corruption it attracts into it's own ranks, robs it of any moral authority it may have possessed), If the church leads to wealth and power, then the ambitious flock to it's doors, not out of faith, but out of greed and ambition.

Unfortunately it lacks the virtue of truth.

If by Civic society you mean work houses and magedelane laundries, and forced religious conversion to stave of starvation, then you are right.