"If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."

...Ludwig Wittgenstein

My family and I live in a village that was once home to a thriving Roman Catholic community. The church, Saint-Pierre-ès-Liens, (XIII c.), while not a cathedral, is large enough to have accommodated hundreds. Today it stands empty. This situation is typical in France today. Churches have value as historical and architectural artifacts, little more. France is an adamantly secular nation, so much so that one will find, attached above the cross atop any church, the figure of a rooster, le coq, the ancient Gallic symbol now embodying the French Republic. I applaud and support the idea of secularism, and I fully understand the dangers associated with any notion of an official religion. Saint-Pierre, once a center of life and a place where the rituals of life were performed for centuries, is now cold, empty, and dead. Without belaboring the history of abuses committed by the Church and the subsequent response of the Revolution, one can still sense something essential in people's lives has been lost.

Europe and much else of the world lost its faith for reasons too complex to mention in depth here, but part of the loss is due to the fact that the biblical world-view was that of the ancient Near East and, even though it was successfully imported to Europe via the late Roman Empire, science and reason finally rendered it invalid. Christianity, like most other organized religions, became merely an instrument of power.