One of the best-known sociologists and intellectuals in the world, Peter L. Berger (1929-2017) strongly believed that the cultural trend of modernity would cause religion to decline. Then he had a mid-career transformation and dramatically changed his view.
Berger admitted that he was wrong when assuming that a modern society automatically would lead to religious alienation.
Atheists renounce atheism: Convinced by overwhelming new research and statistics, Berger published The Desecularization of the World (1999) in which he and other writers argued that modernity has produced the return to religion and strong religious movements all over the globe, writes Hanne Nabintu Herland, historian of religions, author, founder of The Herland Report. Latest book: The Billionaire World. How Marxism Serves the Elite, available on Amazon here. The article first appeared at Herland’s regular WND column.
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This has been biasedly overlooked by the broadly atheist, Marxist academic community in the West. Berger came to believe that precisely because Marxist secularism removes all faith in the historic and traditional values in society, many feel uncertain when facing the harsh realities of this world, and turn to religion and world views that present firm answers rather than the floating uncertainty of modern relativism.
Atheists renounce atheism: Yet, because Western universities the past decades have been completely dominated by atheist secularists who have no regard for the sacred, one seldom hears about these dramatic changes in leading philosophers’ views.
It is quickly buried in some academic drawer, tucked away from public debate as it tears apart the ruling Marxist paradigm and narrative – particularly in the social sciences. It becomes vital for professors and scholars to hold on to the theory that God is dead, the universe is benevolent, and that the only existence is the material dimension and its materialism.
Since the carefully controlled mainstream media is silent too, the information hardly reaches the Western public.
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Atheists renounce atheism: In recent articles at WND, I have discussed this phenomenon in light of the famous atheist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s conversion to Christianity and the hardcore demonizer of faith in God, Richard Dawkins’ proclamation that he now counts himself on “team Christianity,” and a cultural Christian.
These changes of heart happen, I presume, as a result of experiencing the current depressingly rapid disintegration of Western societies.
The degeneration of the West is happening as a result of precisely the Marxist narrative that has worked so hard to tear down the firm historic and traditional pillars of the Western civilization, rendering the population confused, disoriented, suicidal without purpose and certainly without help from God – who has been cursed by the Marxists for generations.
Another leading philosopher, Europe’s arguably most influential social scientist, Jürgen Habermas has also revised his position on the role of religion. Upon receiving the Holberg Prize in Bergen, Norway in 2005, he delivered a remarkable acceptance speech that represents a strong abandonment of the academic theories that professed that faith in God is an attribute of an unenlightened, old-fashioned and archaic society.
He stated that the historic, Christian code of ethics has a much more vital role to play as ethical foundation in the West, as the tendency is that solidarity, empathy and compassion is declining. The permissive relativism, hardcore hedonism and legalization of egoism encouraged by Marxist philosophy has not produced a more loving society, rather the opposite.
The atheist and neo-Marxist thinker, Habermas has argued his entire life that the role of religion is doomed in modern societies. His late, dramatic change of view is therefore quite sensational, as he now points out that religion plays, in contrast to what was predicted, an important role in the modern world.
For example, in Time of Transitions, Habermas points out that the ideals of personal freedom, a collective life in solidarity with others, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy are all the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love.
An overwhelming international trend thereby destroys the myth that there is a conflict between modern rationalism and faith.
Atheists renounce atheism: Habermas says in The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion, a book written together with Pope Benedict XVI, that Christian theology in the Middle Ages and Spanish scholasticism as the origins of what we today call human rights. He points out that modern political theory pays a high price for excluding the very ethics that was able to motivate the individual to willingly choose to do good to others.
When former atheists such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali places God back in the center of public debate with her personal conversion to Christianity, it is a testament to the mental and spiritual poverty that Marxism has produced in our now so decadent and disintegrating culture. Atheism simply does not have the answers to how to motivate individuals to love one another. Hating God solves nothing.
