Monday, March 01, 2010

An European and an American question

The main difference between Europe and America…

Wait a minute, which Europe and which America do you mean here? Easy, America and Europe as they stand today, as political entities called EU and USA.

However, if you insist, I'll qualify them, from the cultural bias prevailing in one and the other, as new Europe and old America.

Funny thing, to qualify them in this way, one would rather think the reverse: Europe being old and America new!

It's not really so, because America appears to be closer to the overall European tradition than Europe, where the fashion of the day appears to be the detachment from her own tradition, often rejected with venomous hatred. It is there to prove it what I started saying:

the main difference between Europe and America is that in the USA nobody taking a radical anti-religious stance, say, with open declarations of atheism, would have any hope of being elected to high office. Not so in the EU, where it is quite the opposite, and declaring oneself a man of faith might even be politically an handicap.

Therefore the first, European question is: who, between an atheist and a theist, has a better claim to be a thinking man with the science necessary to govern?

The second, American question is: does any theism whatsoever enables to such a science?

HP

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