The Spirit of this Age Makes No Moral Demands

The emerging, dominant spirit or our age is not the skeptical one that denigrates all religion, but rather a profoundly and perennially religious spirit that stands opposed to the ethical monotheism of the Christian faith and of Orthodox Judaism.  The tenets of this newly emerging religion, whether articulated deliberately or merely at work tacitly in the background, are coming swiftly to dominate our public morality.  But the religion itself is not really new, neither are its theological beliefs.  It is simply the reemergence of paganism, and its beliefs are gnosticism. …

Clearly this reemerging paganism is not merely a belittling of religion.  Nor is it merely the religion of humanism, even though humanism is a visible and prominent aspect of it.  For its followers the pagan spirit offers not only a meaningful answer but a better answer than Judaism or Christianity to the crisis of meaning that has followed the rise of the materialistic, scientific worldview.  Part of paganism’s appeal stems from the fact that pagan spirituality makes few moral demands on the individual, and is thus more “tolerant” of human differences—that is of “diversity.”  (In Joseph Campbell’s words, “Follow your bliss.”)

Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, pg.230