Religion and Politics: Philosophical Implications of 9/11

Abstract

In my introduction, I situate the issue under discussion in a broad context, comparing its treatment in Europe with its treatment in the U.S. In the first part, I argue that in European Protestant Christianity, trans-individual issues, such as that of economic justice, dominate the religious agenda. In the U.S. however, issues pertaining to the individual dominate, such as abortion, gay-marriage, euthanasia etc. In the second part, I give an example of the way in which philosophy may contribute to issues of religion and politics, discussing the issue of ‘theory of evolution versus Intelligent Design’. This issue does not only receive attention in the U.S. but has recently received some attention in Dutch media as well. My theses are that, first, evolution theory does not prove atheism but, rather, presupposes it; second, the real issue behind it is not only the theological question of whether or not a creator-God exists. Rather, the philosophical question to what extent a culture is prepared to accept contingency plays a pivotal role as well.