The desecularization of this so-called postmodern world and the rise of a substitute religion

The secular humanists of the old Enlightenment regime must have been appalled for having finally realized that all of their efforts combined together to secularize the modern world have failed.  Lest it be counted as an overstatement or a sheer exaggeration, perhaps it would be best to draw our attention to what many sociologists have to say in this regard, one of the leading voices of which is Peter Berger of Boston University. 

Take for example the words of this veteran sociologist from one of the books he authored more than 10 years ago: "My point is that the assumption that we live in the secular world is false.  The world today ... is as furiously religious as it was, and in some places more so than ever.  This means that the whole body of literature by historians and social scientists loosely labeled 'secularization theory' is essentially mistaken."

Who in the world has the courage to say today that Berger must have missed the point when he penned these words in 1999?  Indeed, a vast majority of today's heated conflicts elsewhere around the world are essentially rooted in religious differences.  At the end of the day, the secular humanists appear to have been reduced to a tiny minority, dwarfed, or to say the least, overshadowed, by the religious crowds of the so-called postmodern world.

But there seems to be a twist to what Berger describes in his book as "the desecularization of the world."  A substitute religion is on the rise, a godless religion living under the shadow of the prime architect and preacher of the "death of God" gospel, Friedrich Nietzsche.  Here is a religion that refuses to submit itself under the authority of the God of the Judeo-Christian faith, a substitute religion that has dismissed the reality of His existence as sheer non-sense, and following the Nietzschean formula, has instead settled for something else to take the place of God. 

According to Stephen T. Asma, a professor of philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, one of the most recent expressions of this substitute religion in the 21st century world is radical ecology or environmentalism. In his article titled "Green Guilt" published by The Chronicle of Higher Education on January 10, 2010, he says, "Now the secular world still has to make sense out of its own invisible, psychological drama - in particular, its feelings of guilt and indignation. Environmentalism, as a substitute for religion, has come to the rescue. Nietzsche's argument about an ideal God and guilt can be replicated in a new form: We need a belief in a pristine environment because we need to be cruel to ourselves as inferior beings, and we need that because we have these aggressive instincts that cannot be let out."

What Asma calls as "aggressive instincts that cannot be let out," or what may otherwise be called as the religious constitution of man, now express themselves in ecological terms, in therapeutic exercises, in psychotropic drugs, in Oprah Winfrey's scheme of confessing one's misdeeds, among others. 

Here is what Blaise Pascal described long time ago as the God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every human being waiting to be filled, a void lying deep beneath the human spirit that God alone is able to fill.  Problem is, not a few people in this postmodern world want it filled with something else, only to leave it in the end empty and dry, frustratingly dissatisfied, despairingly dissolutioned, with no lasting peace and joy, without hope and meaning - all of these because of their refusal to come into terms with God.

References:

Asma, Stephen T.  "Green Guilt" in The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 2010.

Berger, Peter.  The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics.  Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999.