Many people, who deny the existence of God, are consideres 'atheist'. However, this term has another meaning, closer to its initial meaning, given by the ancient Greek, i.e. a person who can live without the help of God. We denote this term by "atheist-2" and we associate this definition to it: a person who can live without the help of God, without any other specifications. An atheist-2 could e.g. not deny the existence of God, but he doesn't need Him to live normally in a European-type society. This also means that an atheist-2 can enter any religious site (Christian or not) and respect the site, faith and the believers. This has been mostly the European spirit of all times.
One of the tendencies of Europeans, in accordance with the European spirit, has been to be atheist-2 (an effect of the liberalism and tolerance), but only lately, as an effect of the increase of the power of symbolic models, this shows, including in the statistical data. This tendency will grow and it will depend only on the Christian Church to change, and accept the atheist-2 as they are.
Europe has another problem: it started the most destructive wars of the 20th century and created horrible ideologies: Nazism and Communism. The wars, Nazism and Communism can be associated to the adventurous spirit specific to Europeans, but contradict liberalism and tolerance. The Europeans wars appeared when the relative importance of the 4 factors has been distorted. Thus, those who started the wars, those who applied the Nazi and Communist principles have departed from the European spirit. There will always be a high risk for Europe, when this spirit is distorted.
Let's see, for evaluation purpose, Europe's relationship with its main 'competitor', USA. The Europeans, who have formed mainly the population of USA, have been the Europeans with a strong tendency to action (they have been building easily ZAMs and AZM and they have been eager to activate them).
This explains the power and efficiency of the American society, but also the weaknesses of the USA (does not 'produce' top personalities and needs to 'import' them). This also explains the very high level of XS1-type schizophrenia in the American society.
As we know, in a stable and efficient society, the tendency exists to build suitable models to each problem. The Americans consider generally that there is only one optimal way to solve a problem. The specialists will find this optimal solution and will impose it to everybody. Thus the population reacts suitably to any problem.
However the price for efficiency is XS1-type schizophrenia; if the situation is changed, the people have no suitable solutions anymore, and they are blocked as they are not prepared to build on their own new models in front of a new changing reality (this problem has been presented in several other ETAs). From here emerge the differences between the two cultural environments, the European and the American ones.
Example: In any country, included USA, there is a white line in front of any traffic light. If the traffic light changes to red and somebody stops after passing the line by 10-cm e.g., this is illegal in the USA and the driver is called in court. In Europe this 'illegality' produces at most smiles. Europeans will never accept 'perfection'.
The American success is given by perfection, and perfection is in contradiction with creativity and the European spirit. The European spirit is knowledge oriented, while the American perfectionist spirit is goal-oriented.
Let's see some examples of the competition between Europe and USA.