Secularism and the Rise of ‘Pre-Modern Religion’

Screwtape, the fictional senior demon in Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, pontificates about how the mythologizing of science will ultimately lead adherents to demonic devotion, of course under another name, and create a new class of “scientist” known as “the Materialist Magician.”

“I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise [human] science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The ‘Life Force’, the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls ‘Forces’ while denying the existence of ‘spirits’—then the end of the war will be in sight.”

This new breed of scientist, “is not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls ‘Forces’ while denying the existence of ‘spirits.'” According to Master Screwtape, when this happens, “the end of the war [between men and devils] will be in sight.”

A recent NY Times article, Norway Has a New Passion: Ghost Hunting is but another indication that we are moving into that new spiritual era.

Ghosts, or at least belief in them, have been around for centuries but they have now found a particularly strong following in highly secular modern countries like Norway, places that are otherwise in the vanguard of what was once seen as Europe’s inexorable, science-led march away from superstition and religion.

While churches here may be largely empty and belief in God, according to opinion polls, in steady decline, belief in, or at least fascination with, ghosts and spirits is surging.

For all its claim to sufficiently address man’s existential plight, Darwinian materialism and scientistic reductionism have don’t little more than amplify the vacuum in our souls. In this case, the waning of traditional religion is not giving way to less superstition. Rather, traditional religion is giving way to “premodern religion,” aka, “paganism.”

“God is out but spirits and ghosts are filling the vacuum,” said Roar Fotland, a Methodist preacher and assistant professor at the Norwegian School of Theology in Oslo. Instead of slowly eliminating religion, as Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and other theorists predicted, modernity has only channeled religious feelings in unexpected ways, Mr. Fotland said.

“Belief in God, or at least a Christian God, is decreasing but belief in spirits is increasing,” he added, describing this as part of a general resurgence of “premodern religion.” (bold mine)

Apparently, the attempt to quash the supernatural with naturalistic formula is a losing proposition. Like an existential game of  Whack-a-Mole, we pummel our constant hunger for the Eternal, hoping to permanently rid ourselves of the angst, only to see it poke its head up elsewhere. As Chesterton was believed to have quipped, “When a man ceases to believe in God, he does not believe nothing. He believes anything.” Or in the case of secular Norwegians, going secular does not terminate “religious feelings,” it just channels them elsewhere.

People want the supernatural without the Supernatural. They secretly crave mystical transcendence while professing Materialism. They scrabble to fill the soulish vacuum created after God’s eviction, while trying to explain away the existence of such a vacuum.

Which is why this the Materialist Magician can never be truly “religionless.” For all his rejection of God, the Force he inevitably turns to incurs its own primitive demands.