Europe is “dying’’ because its secular residents are too selfish to have children, according to Lord Sacks, the Chief Rabbi.
The leader of Britain’s Jewish community claimed the continent’s population is in decline because people care more about shopping than the sacrifice involved in parenthood.
He blamed atheist “neo-Darwinians” for Europe’s low birth rate and said religious people of all denominations are more likely to have large families.
The Chief Rabbi, who entered the House of Lords last week, made his comments in a lecture on religion in the 21st century hosted by Theos, the public theology think-tank, on Wednesday night.
Lord Sacks said that faith had survived so far because it could provide answers to mankind’s eternal search for meaning in life – unlike the market, the state, science or philosophy, which underpin modern liberal democracies.
He claimed religion could continue to play an important role worldwide in the future, by engaging in debate with scientists, by campaigning on issues such as global poverty or the environment, and by discussing the nature of the common good with humanists.
The Chief Rabbi warned that secular Europe is at risk, however, because its moral relativism can easily be defeated by fundamentalists.
And he claimed that its population is also in decline, compared with every other part of the world, because non-believers lack shared values of family and community that religions have.
Lord Sacks said: “Parenthood involves massive sacrifice of money, attention, time and emotional energy.
“Where today in European culture with its consumerism and instant gratification – because you’re worth it – where will you find space for the concept of sacrifice for the sake of generations not yet born?
“Europe, at least the indigenous population of Europe, is dying.”
“That is one of the unsayable truths of our time. We are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change and no one is talking about it.
“Albert Camus once said, ‘The only serious philosophical question is why should I not commit suicide?’.
“I think he was wrong. The only serious philosophical question is, why should I have a child? Our culture is not giving an easy answer to that question.”
He added: “Wherever you turn today – Jewish, Christian or Muslim – the more religious the community, the larger on average are their families.
“The major assault on religion today comes from the neo-Darwinians.’’
Discussing the popular secular idea that there are no absolute moral values, he said: “You cannot defend a civilisation on the basis of moral relativism.
“In a head-to-head contest between a moral relativist and a fundamentalist, who wins? The fundamentalist must win because he is sure he’s right, and you are not sure he’s wrong.”
He said that although the war on terror had been portrayed by Western politicians as a “battle of ideas”, there is little hope that Islamists who believe they owe allegiance to God would be swayed by talk of freedom or democracy.
“The place for religion is in civil society, where it achieves many things essential to liberal democratic freedom. It sanctifies marriage and the family and the obligations of parenthood, and it safeguards the non-relativist moral principles on which Western freedom is based.
“It may not be religion that is dying, it may be liberal democratic Europe that is in danger, demographically and in its ability to defend its own values.”
Lord Sacks, who has been Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth since 1991, described the modern phenomenon of “angry atheists” as the “intellectual equivalent of road rage”.
He said that more respectful dialogue is needed between religious groups and the secular world.
“All peace depends on compromise and that is why peace comes to seem to some religious groups to be a form of betrayal, and that is why peacemakers get assassinated.”
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I think there are other problems unrelated to religion causing population decline in the West.
The rise of anti-male laws created by extreme feminists is one problem. The Andrea Dworkin inspired extreme feminists mistake was to go for dominance rather than equality with men.If a male is seen in a public place in the West he will be accused of being a “voyeur”,”stalker” or “potential rapist”, much like women are accused of being “whore” if seen in public under the Taliban.
If a man divorces, he loses his home and is in financial bondage to the woman for life,regardless of blame. Cast as either a molester or a milch-cow, European men have become frightened of both women and the breeding of children, so instead exist in an extended childhood as irresponsible single men playing with video games,cars and other toys.
Also the outsourcing (by the over-class)of all productive, well paying jobs to third world slave states mean that only over-class males can support a family, and welfare is being withdrawn from the shattered underclass and middle class who will all have to live in sky prisons (tower blocks) when the countryside is covered in concrete to accommodate third world immigration.
Tower blocks are of course unsuitable for families,leading to spacial deprivation and no responsible man would want to bring children into such a degraded artificial environment. This will not worry the over-class, who will have moved abroad,leaving a failed state similar to Somalia.
Low reproduction rates would actually be a good thing if Third World immigrants were kept out. Everyone in England would be living in large “American Dream” style suburban bungalows, and we would still have a countryside.
Eventually the Jews will rule over the mud races in Europe and the USA with a totalitarian and plutocratic iron-fist just as they do in nations like Brazil.