a bolder techno-religion seeks to sever the humanist umbilical cord altogether. It foresees a world that does not revolve around the desires and experiences of any humanlike beings. What might replace desires and experiences as the source of all meaning and authority? As of 2016, there is one candidate sitting in history’s reception room waiting fo

Spencer Klavan, in a recent essay on the long wrangle over quantum mechanics, makes the point this way: It has become customary to speak of the universe as existing for “billions of years” before the advent of conscious life—an empty cathedral built by no one, hurled into existence by a great burst of energy. The various competing explanations of t

There are two good answers to the question of why religion continues to persist and grow. One explanation is that many people find secular reason to have “things missing” from it that are necessary to live life well. Another explanation is that great numbers of people intuitively sense a transcendent realm beyond this natural world.