Alan Jacobs


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William Deresiewicz:

No, secularism cannot reassure us that the universe is governed by a benevolent deity, or that the wicked will be punished and the good rewarded, or that our souls will be clasped after death in the bosom of Abraham. But in leaving us to our devices, it does something better, because it does something truer. It forces us into the search: for truth, for beauty, for justice. 

The notion that secularism forces some unspecified “us” into searching for truth, beauty, and justice is a purely religious notion; and a more spectacular example of wishful thinking than any other religion has ever managed to put forth.