🔍 Has secular optimism lost its spark? 😮

The psychology of secularism in the first decade of the 21st century was just very optimistic. There was this really strong sense, especially among liberals around the election of Barack Obama, but sort of generally that like, you know, the world was making progress. We were advancing. The darkness of the past was being left behind. You know, Bill Clinton's Bridge to the 21st Century, the audacity of hope and so on, right? And the reality is it's just a little easier to be an atheist an environment where you think secular history is going in some wonderful direction, right? Because then you have a kind of optimistic horizon. I don't think it's an adequate horizon, obviously, as a religious person, but it is a horizon to sort of orient your life around to say, okay, we are working for this better tomorrow. And good news, the better tomorrow is coming. It's on the way. You know, fewer people, especially fewer secular liberals in the age of populism and Trump and a multipolar world and COVID and everything else, fewer people believe that. It's harder to believe in an arc of history that's just bending secular liberalism's way.