March 1, 2005: With the decline of atheism as evidenced when British philosopher Anthony Flew turned his back on his previous belief structure, new spirituality with new and ancient roots is replacing the former movement. Flew calls his new-found belief ’embracing the intelligent design’ and he said, “It is, for example, impossible for evolution to account for the fact than one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together.” Turkish philosopher Haan Yahya said, “Atheism, which people have tried to for hundreds of years as ‘the ways of reason and science,’ is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance. The time is fast approaching when many people who are living in ignorance with no knowledge of their Creator will be graced by faith in the impending post-atheist world.” The news release said, “A few years ago, European scientists sniggered when studies in the United States — for example, at Harvard and Duke universities — showed a correlation between faith, prayer and recovery from illness. Now 1,200 studies at research centers around the world have come to similar conclusions, according to ‘Psychologie Heute,’ a German journal, citing, for example, the marked improvement of multiple sclerosis patients in Germany’s Ruhr District due to ‘spiritual resources’.”
Traditional Christians have been waiting for this time when atheism, that was formerly backed by scientific evidence, would lose its credibility when new findings were recorded. However these same Christians are surprised that a different kind of spirituality is emerging. Rev. Paul M. Zulehner, dean of Vienna University’s divinity school, explained, “True atheists in Europe have become an infinitesimally small group. There are not enough of them to be used for sociological research. However, in the rest of Europe re-Christianization is by no means occurring. What we are observing instead is a re-paganization.” Rev. Gerald McDermott, an Episcopal priest and professor of religion and philosophy at Roanoke College in Salem, Va., commented about a similar phenomenon in the U.S., ” The rise of all sorts of paganism is creating a false spirituality that proves to be a more dangerous rival to the Christian faith than atheism.”
In conclusion, Zulehner said, ” In the long run the survival of worldviews should be expected to follow this lineup: The great world religions are best placed. As a distant second he sees the diffuse forms of spirituality. Atheism, he insisted, will come in at the tail end.”
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