It is a tantalyzing thought that there's an atheistic, humanistic religion that's arising, a duplicitous secular faith that's tainted by the secularist's pretense that she's opposed to all religions. This is the religion that dare not speak its name. Science and technology certainly empower us, and capitalism and democracy liberate us, but the idols that substitute for the old gods don't fully satisfy. The old religions didn't satisfy either, which is why the most educated classes of the developed societies are secularists. The new religious or philosophical suspicion is that nothing satisfies (as the Buddhists say), so we need to learn to live with alienation and anxiety.

Consumerism is the exoteric side of this secular faith, supplying the distractions for the less reflective folks who are used as pawns to maintain our artificial strongholds. The mystery is whether anyone has the esoteric take on this dawning secular faith. Who if anyone has the prophetic vision of what's really going on in late-modernity?