On Friday I will write about the Giuliani candidacy, but given the ructions kicked up by the previous post let me pause to respond. Rest assured, there will be more columns critical of secularism--in particular its political and intellectual listlessness (and, yes, religious groups will get some of the same, especially the ones that are anything but politically listless). Too, there will be posts that speak about interesting new possibilities and trends in nonbelief, especially in literature.
But please note that the ideas discussed in Monday’s post were not tantamount to saying that secularism is evil, that nonbelief is an unworthy way of life or that there is anything the least bit wrong with individual atheists or agnostics. Why would anyone have drawn such conclusions? I just said it was a bit, you know, predictable.
Another thing struck me: The certainty by which all the respondents assumed that the author must be a religionist, a fundamentalist of some sort, or a person constitutionally ill-disposed toward atheists and agnostics. It was as if the assorted crowd had never—never once—heard a nonbeliever (yoo hoo!) criticize nonbelief.
So, come now nonbelievers, forgo the martyrdom complexes, conspiracy theories and herd mentality. You are the heirs of a restless and proud tradition of inquiry, are you not? Soar, little ones, soar like Nietzsche’s noble bird who flies high because he wants to see, and then flies higher because he wants to see more.
Jacques Berlinerblau is the Rabbi Harold White Chair in Jewish Civilization in Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior advisor to the Center for Jewish Civilization, where he was director from 2006 to June 2020. Berlinerblau has published on a wide variety of issues ranging from the sociology of heresy and modern Jewish intellectuals to African-American and Jewish-American relations.
