The voice of Reason today:  Natural human morality is socially
conservative, tribal, hostile to outsiders, and vindictive. The
repressive use of religion is a symptom of this condition, not
its cause. Yet this symptomatic use is enough to ensure that a
recovery of religious practice does not automatically lead to a
restoration of a purer moral order, or deliver religion from the
hatreds of human life generally. It is almost always mistaken to
think that religious revival will produce moral renewal. It is
as likely to lead to different forms of supine conformism,
attempts to enforce rationally unjustifiable but allegedly
ancient or revealed traditions, and repressive hostility to
those who differ.  Nevertheless, it is not true, as some
secularists claim, that the practice of religion is bound to
lead to obscurantism, reaction, and hatred. If the practice of
religion needs to be humanized by consideration of what makes
for the welfare of human beings, secular morality needs to be
motivated by belief in a more t