Secularization Theory Unbounded

This fellow pretends the evidence in his favor, when all the evidence suggests that modernity has not in fact eroded religious faith. There may be some nostalgia, but the evidence is not suggesting the decline of religion as much he suggests.

My first reason (the increased acceptance of science) may seem counter-intuitive, especially in the US, where there seems to be a strong anti-science sentiment manifested by persistent opposition to well-established scientific theories like evolution, and a denial of the scientific case being made for global warming, accompanied by a vociferous form of general anti-science know-nothing religiosity. But those are just surface phenomena. The deeper conflict is between modernity (that is inextricably linked with science) and what can best be described as misplaced nostalgia, where people yearn for a golden past that never existed where truths about the world were unchanging and congruent with what their religions told them, and were unperturbed by scientific advances….

It is inevitable that they [young believing adults] will realize that they are way outside the mainstream. It is this routine acceptance of the basic premises of science by the more educated segments of the community is what will undermine religion, not a frontal attack on it. The frontal attacks on religion by new atheists are like violent thunderstorms that cause religious beliefs to severely buffeted and weakened. But they can still be weathered and the edifice patched up to cover the holes. Creeping modernity, on the other hand, is like a slowly rising flood that comes from all directions and strikes at the very foundations of the religious edifice and causes it to crumble from within. You cannot hold back that tide.

However much religious leaders might try to shield them, young people are going to experience a world in which facts that contradict their religious beliefs are seen as the norm among educated people. And that has to be deeply unsettling.