Despite the recent post-modernist revolt, Western culture still labours under much of the mythological residue left over from the Enlightenment. The axiom, for example, that religion is unimportant and irrelevant still survives.
Society should be redesigned along secular lines. Substitution of a materialistic for a religious worldview would leave morality unaffected and economic prosperity and political peace to thrive. It would simply be a case of being more practical - more tolerant, more progressive, less superstitious.
But after two centuries, the discrediting of such mythology seems complete. To the collapse of secular philosophy has been added the disappearance of secular ideologies. To political disillusionment has been added the surprisingly widespread fear that science itself may, after all, prove more sorcerer's apprentice. That there is a moral crisis, few would deny. To ordinary men and women it seems self-evident.
