The media regard it almost with derision. So at the moment it looks as if Islam will win. Yet Islam has dug itself into the same hole as Christianity, by demanding that its doctrine be deemed infallible. Both religions suffer from a stultifying lack of imagination. And perhaps the true race is to see which religion can break free of its prison-house first, and evolve?
Suppose Christianity loses, how long does it take mankind to recover from a new dark age in which freedom of thought is suppressed? Islam has been tolerant in the past; but no-one can say convincingly that Islam is tolerant today. It would suppress any other religion, and even suppresses freedom of thought in science. There has to be “Islamic science”. History records only one dark age, although there may have been a number in pre-history. The Roman Empire took a long time over its decline and fall, but the final collapse of Rome North of the Alps came very suddenly. After their disastrous invasion of Italy, the German tribes found the Rhine frozen on New Years’ Day AD 406. The natural defensive boundary of the Empire vanished almost literally overnight. The German tribes crossed over without opposition, and for three years turned Gaul into a Flaming desert. And Gibbon confirms that this may be considered the fall of the Empire beyond the Alps. The clergy of the Catholic church at the time were not idle. The Gallic clergy exhorted Christians to repent the sins which had provoked the Divine Justice to bring about this disaster; and the Latin clergy busied themselves with the Pelagian heresy. Neither saw the disaster as being due to lack of valour. You could hardly imagine a more inept response; and the peril of the C.of E. is that things have not changed.
The poet Ausonius, who lived from AD 310 until about 393, and who wrote lyric nature poetry like Wordsworth I understand, had the inimitable privilege of living through a period when the Gallic war was but a distant memory, and the horror of the German invasion had not happened, and was not feared at least by the poet. Yet England’s turn came next; and history was wiped out in England from about AD 450 to 600, until the arrival of the Canterbury St. Augustine. Durham cathedral was built from about 1200 onwards, and for the first time buildings were erected which rivalled those of Rome. In 1300 Edward I was recognised as one of the foremost soldiers in Europe, and with the long-bow his army could be compared with the fighting power of the Legion. Most of us think modern history began with the Tudors in about 1500; but the modern mind only dates from about 1660, with the return of the Stewarts, the Royal Society and natural science, Dryden and modern prose, Locke and the enlightenment. Even in 1815 it was harder for the Duke of Wellington to travel in England than it had been for the Roman Legions.