[Mavdog]

How this writer can link the economic issues facing Europe (challenging Europe) and then extrapolate from that a religious/moral base is a reach of epic proportions.

The economic issues are very very deep. It starts with a regulated and protected business climate, and is compounded by the structural issues of the aging workforce/lack of training of youth. We have similar issues as it relates to pensions (anybody look at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Board?) yet America has invested in its youth with a much criticized but effective school system. We have also refused to fall victim to the calls of protectionism, and rejected the idea of erecting barriers to our integration with the rest of the worlds economies.

So how do these economic issues tie into a religious trend? They don't. The writer makes grand claims of "31 percent of pediatricians in the Netherlands have euthanized an infant, and that a fifth of these took place without the knowledge or consent of parents" which would place that physician as a criminal. The law is clear, a child of under 16 who qualifies under the law for euthanasia cannot be euthanized without parents involved, and to do so would cause the doctor to be prosecuted.

Just how is population growth an indicator of a economic competitiveness? It isn't, or otherwise all those lesser developed countries who have a hiogh pop groth rate would be seeing impressive GDP growth. Guess what? The top 15 countries in the world, ranked by pop growth rates, include

1 United Arab Emirates 6.51
2 Turks & Caicos Is. 6.07
3 Qatar 5.86
4 Afghanistan 4.59
5 Eritrea 4.26
6 Sierra Leone 4.07
7 Kuwait 3.73
8 Marshall Is. 3.45
9 Chad 3.42
10 Uganda 3.4
11 Niger 3.39
12 Somalia 3.2
13 Benin 3.18
14 Burkina Faso 3.17
15 Yemen 3.13

not what I'd call an impressive list of dynamic economies. In fact, it is a list of poorly performing economies (outside of the oil pproducers of the Gulf), while the strongest growth economies (such as Canada, Chile, South Korea and the US) have groth rates slightly above or below 1.

No, the issues facing Europe economically are rooted in their cloistered system, their attempts to erect trade barriers and a pension system that frankly cannot be supported with the level of worker productivity its workforce produces. It has nothing to do with the incidence of the population who are religious or not religious.