Conventional wisdom states that as traditional religious practice declines, and more people claim to be atheist or agnostic, society will become more secular, guided by pure scientific reason instead of dogmatic faith. This is the conventional wisdom, anyway, among the New Atheists, and other champions of the secularized culture. Bishop Barron, most decidedly not an atheist or secularist, recently posted a commentary outlining social psychologist Jean Twenge's work on the post-millennial generation, dubbed iGen. Born since 1995, these young people have grown up with hand held tech, particularly iPhones, and don't seem to be the better for it. What preoccupies Bishop Barron is this latest generation's rejection of religion, and Christianity in particular, because of its perceived incompatibility with science. There are other reasons as well, but here's the video to get the rest of that story. What is of even more concern is that the iGeners have progressed passed the "spiritual but not religious" stance of their predecessors to a rejection of a belief in a spiritual realm, and the necessity of prayer all together. Dr. Twenge has been doing invaluable work in the field of generational studies for some time now, and I don't need to tell you the high esteem in which I hold Bishop Barron, but much like the conventional wisdom of contemporary secularists, I'm not sure that these assumptions are entirely correct either.
Columbia University social scientist Jonathan Haidt claims that dogmatic ways of thinking are humanity's default position, and we have to go to great efforts to stay objectively analytical, putting aside preconceived notions, when investigating reality. As I talked about last time, political correctness, the child of postmodernism, has it's roots in the Marxist dialectic. This takes for granted, without any recourse to the scientific method, that all reality is based on power struggles between oppressors and oppressed. In fact, if someone were to quote social science experiments that have conclusions contrary to this hypothesis they would be accused of using the tools of the dominant oppressor to keep the oppressed down. The postmodern assumptions, then, are taken on faith, not reason.
While postmodernism has filled the dogma gap left by traditional religion, and by extension offers a basis for a new moral code, there is another yearning inside of us that the new secular age can't fulfill. We are made for the mystical, and for transcendent communion, not just for systematized belief. There are some Oxford scientists who say that belief in the divine is a universal aspect of our human nature. As traditional religion declines, the alternative isn't a turning to the cold, harsh light of reason. Because the pull toward the transcendent is a part of our very being, people are going to find alternative expressions when the old seem irrelevant.
The alternates to established religion that younger people are turning to increasingly include various forms of witchcraft and astrology. A 2014 article says that over a half of US millennials think astrology, in particular, is a science. How much of this can be accounted for by the fact that many people need to stop and think a second when distinguishing between astrology and astronomy (which is a recognized scientific field), I don't know. Add to all the spell casting and star gazing, there are also reports of pagan revivals on campus. The most pernicious is the rise of satanism, which in true demonic form uses obfuscation to convince people that they really aren't what they say they are. They try to pose as "rationalists" who really don't believe in any spiritual reality, but use the archetypal symbol of the devil to signify their ant-establishment stance. I think there are people who really believe that, but at its core, along with all forms of occult practice is Satan, happy to seduce true believers and useful idiots alike.
I'm sure there are many reasons why these occult practices are on the rise. But if I were to focus in on two reasons, I'd say that one has to do with the large measure of control over outcomes they promise to adherents, and the other is the lack of a clear moral code that practitioners of the dark arts need to follow. In different ways they all allow us to do as we will, and get what we want without apparent consequences or responsibilities.
A central tenant of traditional monotheistic religions is the belief in a personal God who calls people into right relationship with Himself and others. We are responsible to God, and in exchange, it's not so much that we have rights in the common sense of the word but rather that, God has made promises to us that He will be faithful to if we persevere.
In Christianity we continue in the Jewish tradition of covenant: The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is our God, and we are His people. Through a series of covenants God called first a family by way of Abraham, then a nation through Moses and finally all humanity through Jesus. This call to communion and fidelity was sealed each time by a covenant of blood. Christ's covenant wasn't sealed with the blood of an animal, as were the others, but in His own precious Blood shed on the cross. We enter into the covenant through baptism. In this act we receive rights as members of the Church, God's assembly, but we also incur responsibilities. We are called to be holy, living differently than the rest of the "nations," not seeking our own wants and desires first, but seeking to do God's will first and foremost.
Traditional religions also acknowledge, one way or another, that human beings are imperfect and aren't perfectible by their own powers. Or, at the very least, this process isn't easy and in some cases takes several lifetimes to come about. There is almost always some call to self denial as a way of purifying the self, either as a way of eliminating desire which causes unhappiness, or of purification of the soul that leads to union with God. Following Eastern religions was a fad for a while, because they appear to dispense with Western notions of morality (this in part was where all the spiritual but not religious drivel came from). There is a great deal made of the Karma Sutra, for example, as a sex manual for the erotically adventurous in contrast to the supposed repressive Judeo-Christian ethic. What people usually miss is that the “naughty” part of the book represents just one section of a larger work meant as a guide for men seeking a wife. The sexual acrobatics recommended within are meant for a married couple at the beginning of their marriage. Eventually, once they've gotten these things out of their system, if you will, they are to move on to higher, spiritual pursuits. Gandhi was married but he lived as a celebrate the last forty years of his life in line with this Hindu ideal.
Occult practices begin with the premise that human beings are either perfectible by our own powers alone, or else are already perfect, having no need of conversion. The highest good is the exercising of our will. There is generally some notion that we shouldn't violate the rights of others, but at its extreme the doctrine is do as you will, and woe betide the person who gets in your way. There is no personal God that we are responsible to, but spiritual forces we can manipulate to our ends. There are either spells that we can cast, potions we can ingest (or get others to take), secret, gnostic knowledge that will unlock secret doors of consciousness that are only open to the select few, that will get us what we want in this life. There is no need to worship God, because we are as gods, in control of our own universe.
This is obviously an overly simplistic explanation of what the occult is. But as I wrote, at the root of all of it is Satan. Going down these paths, as I've said in the past, is dangerous for many reasons. It is true that a relative few people will actually experience overt demonic consequences for their dabbling in the occult. But the devil is more than happy to have us spinning our wheels, stuck in the same place, keeping the focus on ourselves rather than looking outward to God and neighbor. He seeks to convince us that happiness in this life is all we need, and can be fulfilled by bodily pleasures, wealth or power. A so called satanist may deny the existence of Satan, and a practitioner of Wicca or some other neo-pagan religion may think they are contacting innocuous spirits they are able to control, but the reality is that they are playing into the hands of very personal forces seeking their destruction.
Both postmodernism and the new occultism are expressions of what happens when an old order is thrown away without first thinking through what is being rejected. Contemporary rationalist thinkers, and today these would be the New Atheists, are just as dumbfounded as believers in traditional faith by the rise of these two phenomenon. They see themselves as inheritors of the Enlightenment, and can't see why so many people are taken in by such irrational, anti-scientific movements. I would say that its because human beings are not cold, rational beings; that pure reason alone isn't enough to sway minds and hearts. We have a rational capacity that arguably separates us from the animals. But we are more than our rational, logical selves. We are spiritual creatures, who seek a reality beyond what logic can explain. The Medieval syntheses that joined faith and reason together wasn't overturned during the Enlightenment because it was wrong, but because it had become formulaic, unable to adjust to changing times. Combine with this the rupture in Christian unity wrought by the Reformation and the Wars of Religion that followed, and it's understandable why many would question religious faith's claims to truth. As I wrote, we are not cold rational creatures, and our emotions do play a roll in what we come to see as the truth. Until that synthesis is restored, with faith and reason seen as two wings on which the human being flies, we will continue to fluctuate between the nihilistic, zero sum philosophy of the postmodern neo-Marxists and the esoteric pablum of the occultists.
It's been a five hundred year journey, but faith and reason separated from each other has led to cultural decay and moral confusion - and quite possibly the end of Western Civilization as we know it. A new synthesis won't be forged in a day, but my faith tells me it will happen, and my reason tells me that it has to happen for humanity to truly flourish.
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