Religion and Politics: Philosophical Implications of 9/11

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