A letter on Religion in Society
Posted on | June 23, 2011 by J.C. von Krempach, J.D. |
The European Union is currently financing a pluridisciplinary research project on Religion and Society called “RELIGARE“. The stated purpose of the project is to “to explore adequate policy responses to religious diversity”.
It is no wonder that the militantly atheistic European Humanist Federation (EHF) have seized the opportunity and addressed a memorandum to the RELIGARE researchers through which they hope to influence the outcome of the project. According to them, the best answer to religious diversity is “secularism”, by which term they mean the complete elimination of religion from the public sphere.
In response to the EHF pamphlet the Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians has from its side submitted a paper to the RELIGARE research team, providing a brief analysis of EHF’s radical and aggressive agenda. It comes to the conclusion that the atheist ideology “by its very nature must be intolerant. While religions like Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc. which make propositions of their own, leave ample room for their followers to encounter with tolerance all those who do not happen to share their beliefs, such attitude is not possible for atheists, whose sole mission is to fight against the religion of others.”
