The Future of Religion in Secular Societies

This book is available in French only.

Atheism and secularism emerged from the questioning of the supernatural by the sciences of matter and nature. These same sciences were simultaneously responsible for the extraordinary leap forward of contemporary societies known as modernity.

Yet this modernity remains desperately technological. Having lost, along with religion, the authority that provided their meaning, coherence and cohesion, our societies are now threatened with disintegration.

For Adrien Morel, if religion defines and constitutes civilization, it also ensures its maintenance. What becomes of a civilization that no longer has a religion? Can societies without religion even exist?

Having invalidated its historical religion, secular society, supposedly without religion, has exposed itself to the appetite of competing cults. These do not hesitate to seek openly to conquer it, both in their traditional form and through more discreet channels, secularised under the guise of politics and even science. For in reality, there are several competing religions.
In fact, this is a conquest that does not speak its name, and that leads the very civilization which invented atheism and secularism by moving beyond the supernatural to be downgraded by the religions that still remain within it.

Fortunately, if modernity did indeed arise from science, there is still a second half to be played. The human sciences, now entering the field, will enable us to recover meaning and coherence, and to restore our civilizations to a spiritual, moral and political order of movement, leading at last to what will be their true modernity.