The article is in the UK Telegraph. (H/T MercatorNet via ECM, Big Blue Wave)
Excerpt:
The leader of Britain’s Jewish community claimed the continent’s population is in decline because people care more about shopping than the sacrifice involved in parenthood.
He blamed atheist “neo-Darwinians” for Europe’s low birth rate and said religious people of all denominations are more likely to have large families.
[…]The Chief Rabbi warned that secular Europe is at risk, however, because its moral relativism can easily be defeated by fundamentalists.
And he claimed that its population is also in decline, compared with every other part of the world, because non-believers lack shared values of family and community that religions have.
Lord Sacks said: “Parenthood involves massive sacrifice of money, attention, time and emotional energy.
“Where today in European culture with its consumerism and instant gratification – because you’re worth it – where will you find space for the concept of sacrifice for the sake of generations not yet born?
“Europe, at least the indigenous population of Europe, is dying.”
“That is one of the unsayable truths of our time. We are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change and no one is talking about it.
I blogged about the UK’s looming demographic crisis previously.
So the Chief Rabbi seems to be in agreement with my views on atheism and morality. Logically speaking, atheism simply doesn’t meet any of the minimum requirements for rational morality. The problem for atheism is that the decision to commit to a marriage for life and to have children involves massive self-sacrifice. But on atheism, life is just about having happy feelings before you die – so they cannot rationally ground the decision to marry and procreate.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
That’s an interesting article. I think Mr Sacks is incorrect in stating that a relativist society means that “you’re not sure [the fundamentalist] is wrong.” Relativism doesn’t mean there is no right-and-wrong. Relativism means that we recognize that morality is inconsistent across time and region and culture.
For example, in Society A, taking game on public land might be considered immoral because they share a value (let’s say, beauty of the wild animals) where it is considered selfish and stealing to take that game for private use; where in Society B, taking game on public land might be considered perfectly moral, and indeed encouraged, by the society, to feed families and keep populations under control; while in Society C, taking that game on public land may be completely amoral because no one has ever thought to care about or value the public land or the game found therein.
Is it proper for any of these societies to view the others as immoral? Actually, it very well may be! The benefit of relativistic morality, is that the morality that has evolved in our society need not be subservient to that of the other two.
This is how most societies actually operate. What is moral and immoral here is much different from what is elsewhere.
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This means that on your view, morality is culture relative, like clothing fashion. There is no such thing as moral values or moral duties that exist independently of what humans think, like mathematics or logic. There are only customs and conventions that vary by time and place. So for you, what we ought to do is follow the customs of the majority of the people wherever we are – this is “right”, as you understand it. For you, “right” is “what is popular”.
For example, it seems to me that on your view, if you were a Hindu living in India, then you would not be able to object to burning widows alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Lacking a moral foundation for moral judgments, you would have to say that this practice was a valid fashion for Indian culture in that time and place, since the majority of people agreed with it in that time and place. You can’t really DISAGREE with it, you just say that OUR CULTURE in this time and place don’t PREFER that custom. It’s preference, not MORALITY. Our CUSTOMS and CONVENTIONS are different from their CUSTOMS and CONVENTIONS. But what they do isn’t wrong, any more than butter chicken is wrong because in our time and place we eat hamburgers. The people who committed those injustices had as much warrant for their cultural preferences as you have for yours.
And what follows from your view is that when you see real injustice, like a 60 year old man marrying a 9 year old girl, you are not able to do anything about it, since it is “right” for those people in their time and place. This is atheist “morality”. Stand back an celebrate evil, because that custom is as valid as our custom of eating hamburgers and driving on the right hand side of the road.
That is why atheistic societies caused the deaths of 100 million people in the 20th century. They have no rational foundation for moral values or moral duties. They could not stand against injustice if it meant sticking their own necks out. Why stick your neck out for a cultural custom or convention? And you can see the same thing going on today with the victimization of millions of unborn children. Even of born children are denied the right to be raised by a mother and father due to adult hedonism and the desire not to be “judged” or “offended” by objective moral values and moral obligations.
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