Global Consensus: Godlessness is in Trouble

Uwe Siemon-Netto / Teresa Neumann Reporting : Mar 4, 2005
United Press International

There seems to be a growing consensus around the globe that godlessness is in trouble, says UPI reporter Uwe Siemon-Netto.

Munich theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg agrees, "Atheism as a theoretical position is in decline worldwide." His Oxford colleague Alister McGrath echoes his assessment in Christianity Today: Atheism's "future seems increasingly to lie in the private beliefs of individuals rather than in the great public domain it once regarded as its habitat."

Noting an example a few years ago, European scientists snickered 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." There yet remains a battle for the contenders of atheism however . . .