Quote Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla View Post
2. Prior to the First World War Europe was as relgious as anywhere else, atheism was confined to the fashionable intellectual elite and Communists. It was, I submit, the horrendous social shock of two wars that fractured society and caused religion to enter decline. the two generations that experienced that shock, the War and Post-war generations, are now passing on and their children find atheism and pure "Reason" not to their liking.

They want something more, and hence the rise of religion in general, where Christianity has a head start and has been quietly shoring up it's defences while bleeding away.

So - religion in general is due a comeback, and this is no bad thing when one considers the brilliant artists, politicians and Scientists driven by religious faith to better mankind.

After all, people didn't turn out to see the Pope just because they were bored.
The war and post war generations saw with their own eyes that total destruction can be brought upon them by other men and that in the late 1940s to the early 1950s Western and Central Europe had to basically rebuild their cities and society almost from the ground up. God may be all powerful, but now humanity can bring the apocalypse as well and praying won't be influencing them. When Western Europe rebuilt, there was no "heavenly intervention" coming to help them, they rebuilt with their own hands and made their own future again. So yeah, they saw first hand that God either isn't there or doesn't care.

Now you have generations that were brought up in the rebuilt countries with no idea of how much effort the generations before them put in to built it all back up and the history books were just too boring for most to care about. Now without any knowledge of where the world around them came from their ignorance naturally breeds more ignorance and they feel that there a higher purpose or deity looking down to give them their purpose. Everything is handed to them so they don't realize they need to make their own purpose and instead naturally gravitate towards religion which hands them their purpose.