Loudmouth,
I should have paid more attention to detail concerning inhabitants of the Middle Eastern regions. Thanks for the correction.

Peter Sellick writes; "Given all, this my criticism of the rationalists, the humanists and the secularists is their desire for a society in which the sacred is no more."

This is not quite correct. While Hitchens makes a credible case for the extirpation of religious belief I feel that a majority of atheists are a tad more tolerant of our misguided bretheren in their exhultation over being members of a flock.

Humankind it seems to me is in the later throes of reacting against the awful excesses in brutality, cruelty and mass murder it was prompted to commit in religion's name up to and including the colonial expansionism of European powers. Humankind is also aware that atheism was never, as christianity was, a rallying call for any crusade, genocide, war or battle. Atheism was in fact a victim of those ghastly centuries of religious blood-letting and doctrinal purefication. Sellick's comparatively moderate admonishment sounds like a plea that atheism will not visit those christian excesses upon religious faith in revenge. As I see it he sees atheism as something of substance like another faith in competition against his own when atheism is in fact a repudiation of substance for a vacuum to be filled as we progress with the product of intellectual sinew and muscle. Like so many who choose to live in flocks Sellick is not endowed with the capacity to see atheism for what it truly is.....it's more of an attitude, an evaluation and rejection of a way of living that depends on the suspension of skepticism, logic and reason, a view that arouses in the atheist a heightened sense of the frivolous and the ridiculous when he/she ponders upon religious faith.

Atheism is more concerned TRUTH than with gods and demons, to see revealed what is closest to an ultimate truth as the scientific method is capable of reaching.

Peter Sellick writes: "The main problem with programmatic secularisation is that it is anti-cultural. The Catholic historian and philosopher Christopher Dawson wrote: "A society which has lost its religion becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture." And culture, as the biologists remind us, is life."

Sweeping statements like the above are grist to an RCC mill. Not only do they claim aegis over so many practises and behaviours in society but now their hubris carries their claim to the entirety of society's "culture" [whatever that means] and even further now over our entire lives. It truly gives one pause to wonder just how preposterous must the posturing paternalism be before the author himself becomes embarassed.

One could commit the error of feeling sorry for his suffering at the prospect of such a dire and faithless future. But it reveals a fear well hidden behind a stance of assumed authority, as if the RCC had emerged unscathed from decades of paedophilia and hebephilia scandals and that it was business as usual as if nothing at all had happened to the fabric of the church's mission and responsibility. The fear is that of losing that pervasive nebulous influence in high places and the halls of power, of enforced retreat to the cloisters and the pews while a godless society prospers mightily outside.

Peter Sellick writes: "The main problem with programmatic secularisation is that it is anti-cultural. The Catholic historian and philosopher Christopher Dawson wrote: "A society which has lost its religion becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture."

Peter Sellick and Christopher Dawson ignore history and are dead wrong.

Christianity is responsible for the Dark Ages. After Christianity became the official religion of Rome the empire made a great effort to extirpate classical culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_persecution_of_paganism_under_Theodosius_I tells of the official Christian persecution of paganism.

“The Christian persecution of paganism under Theodosius I began in 381, after the first couple of years of his reign as co-emperor in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. In the 380s, Theodosius I reiterated Constantine's ban on pagan sacrifice, prohibited haruspicy on pain of death, pioneered the criminalization of magistrates who did not enforce anti-pagan laws, broke up some pagan associations and destroyed pagan temples.

Between 389 and 391 he issued the "Theodosian decrees," which established a practical ban on paganism; visits to the temples were forbidden, remaining pagan holidays abolished, the sacred fire in the Temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum extinguished, the Vestal Virgins disbanded, auspices and witchcrafting punished. Theodosius refused to restore the Altar of Victory in the Senate House, as requested by pagan Senators.

In 392 he became emperor of the whole empire (the last one to be so). From this moment until the end of his reign in 395, while pagans remained outspoken in their demands for toleration, he authorized or participated in the destruction of many temples, holy sites, images and objects of piety throughout the empire in actions by Christians against major pagan sites. He issued a comprehensive law that prohibited any public pagan ritual, and was particularly oppressive of Manicheans. He is likely to have suppressed the Ancient Olympic Games, whose last record of celebration is from 393.”

Christianity not only was intolerant toward other religions but destroyed classical culture and brought on the Dark Ages.

The Renaissance and the Enlightenment rescued Europe from the oppressive grasp of Christianity.

Continued

Continued

The Renaissance reconnected Europe with its pre-Christian past and culture which Christianity had done its best to eliminate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance

"The Renaissance's intellectual basis was its own invented version of humanism, derived from the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy, such as that of Protagoras, who said, that "Man is the measure of all things." This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science and literature. Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe.

As a cultural movement, it encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures, beginning with the 14th century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch; the development of linear perspective and other techniques of rendering a more natural reality in painting; and gradual but widespread educational reform. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, and in science to an increased reliance on observation and inductive reasoning. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man".

The Enlightenment directly questioned the tyranny of Christianity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

“The Enlightenment, ... was a philosophical movement which dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 18th century. The principal goals of Enlightenment thinkers were liberty, progress, reason, tolerance, fraternity, and ending the abuses of the church and state. In France, the central doctrines of the Lumières were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to the principle of absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. The Enlightenment was marked by increasing empiricism, scientific rigor, and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy.

The greatest anti-cultural force in European history was Christianity.

Peter Sellick writes: "Secularisation would remove all of this and have us stand naked in the world armed only with autonomous reason and our own shallow desire and choice. They can expect that this will be enough because they underestimate the fragility of the human psyche, the way it grasps after itself, the way it trusts in false gods, the way it lives in fear and turmoil"

And the denouement is the blaming of a secular society for its misery because it is secular. But if we examine the century and a quarter 1850 to 1975, when christianity was weilding considerable power in the highest political and economic circles, we are presented with a melancholy vision of a Europe devastated by wars with global involvement and with very little surcease, if any, between them. Those of faith rejoice in dramatising sporadic physical and economic misery and Sellick does a masterful job in his final couple of paragraphs. It is not an easy tactic to counter and many people have been convinced by it. They see their place in a stratified society as unjustifiably imposed upon them by faceless power, while they themselves are bereft of power. Quite a few famous figures of the 20th century employed similar tactics and led their nations into war. It is not difficult to convince people of their deprived circumstances if they are promised prosperity in the near future. Sellick works it in reverse by dire predictions if we fall from the vast but mysterious riches of grace and surrender ourselves to one who is more accomplished at facing the vicissitudes of life than we are

I am liberal enough to not want to disturb Peter Sellick's devotion and the ritual he so admires and finds comfort in. I am not that liberal that he should have the oportunity to teach his supernatural, spiritual legends and fables to my children in their public school. His faith is subsidised to an obscene degree with public money and that is enough to raise my hackles. It's true that religion inspired great works by great geniuses. I can appreciate the majesty of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, a Beethoven symphony with no less joy than he. But forcing religious symbols, oaths and artifacts upon the general public, evangelising in the public streets, insisting on proprietary rights over marriages, births and deaths and then charging a fee for the privilege of participating........that arouses my ire.

The constitution guarantees freedom of worship, it does not invest power in the faithful to insist that all citizens do so.