The rise of secular religion

This leads to the origin of Casey’s title. The thin veneer behind which our civilisation now sits is its desertion of reason for myth. Unfettered instrumental rationality will keep the wheels turning but such a civilisation will be unable to respond to challenges to its dominance as is now happening with Islam.

Michael Casey’s article is a challenge to present day understanding of the forces we have unleashed under the name of the secular.

It is about time that our intellectuals, ensconced as they are in a tired rebellion against ghosts of their own making, shook off their lethargy and underwent a major rethink of their position.

The experiment with rational secularism has demonstrated the fragility of the reliance on reason alone and has resulted in the abandonment of reason. Christianity offers us a way of rational reflection on the real and therefore a solid basis for being in the world. The real cannot be reduced to individual subjectivity but is to be found in Israel-history and Jesus-history.

Without this combination of reason and the shared experience of the community of faith, natural science, (an important gateway to physical realty but alas not to the reality of the human) would never have arisen. As it is, natural science has abandoned its roots and now stands alone as the only source of truth. That truth may give us flat screen TVs but increasingly, as culture decays, there is less and less to watch.