March 2nd, 2013 – Do We Really Live in a Secular Age?
The so-called “myth of secularization” held that, with standards of living and education levels rising around the world, traditional religious beliefs and affiliations would eventually fade away. More and more people, it was thought, would join the West in its state of what the philosopher Charles Taylor has called “unmarked modernity”: living without supernatural commitments or ancient superstitions, guided solely by rationality, empirical evidence and enlightened self-interest.
This myth appears to be mistaken on at least two fronts. To begin with, religiosity has by no means faded away. In some regions of the world levels of religiosity have risen dramatically, and in many places strongly fundamentalist regimes have replaced secular ones. Religious-based violence seems to be alive and well. At a deeper level, it is questionable whether or not it is possible for human beings to live as purely “unmarked” moderns. My talk will focus on this deeper level, discussing a variety of historical, philosophical and psychological evidence suggesting that human beings cannot function outside a framework of metaphysical commitments that function to support both moral judgments and a broader sense of purpose or meaning. My purpose is not to deny the uniqueness or desirability of modern secular liberalism, merely to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of what it means to live in a secular age.