"and the "Eurofighter" will have been contracted out to the cheaper Eastern European manufacturers who will promptly bomb Germany and Russia to "get their own back" for the 20th century."
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Thank you for making my day. Given that I live in Romania, this comment made me laugh for minutes on end. The fact that MrMann is so obviously ignorant of the complex social, ethnic and religious structure of this continent -- choosing to lump all of us into the bowl of his own delusions -- says quite abit about this general level of knowledge.
As was said before, the 'generally atheistic and agnostic' description applies mostly to Western Europe -- and to some countries in Central Europe as well. The farther one travels eastwards, the more visible the trappings of religion within daily life become. Case in point: my own country, where 'Religion' is an obligatory subject in school, from the first grade all the way to the end of high-school, where religious symbols reign undisturbed on classroom walls, where you can find dozens upon dozens of churches in a single large city and where millions of people trample each other every Easter, in order to take 'holy light' at midnight, where evolution was removed from the national educational curriculum and where Science high-school manuals deal openly with Creationist topics. I kid you not.
MrMann, I would very much like to see you describing Romania as something else other than a very religious nation (regardless of the fact that the Constitution specifically says that the state is to be a secular construction -- almost no one reads that pierce of paper over here...)
The only good thing that I can say about my country, as far as spiritual beliefs go, is that it has little of the 'hellfire and brimstone' that especially fundie locations in the US do -- possibly as a result of the Orthodox-Christian religion's views in regards to proselytism (one of the basic tenets is that there is no such thing as salvation by force, reason why religion tends to be seen as a personal and social thing, rather than a political phenomenon -- of course, setting aside the people who defend it to unreasobale levels no necessarily out of a measure of great personal faith, but out of a desire to appear 'pious', honest and well-meaning, in order to receive respect from others.
Amusingly enough, the ones who often outright stick their heads into our already poorly-functioning political system are Fundamentalist preachers from the States.
